Public concern in Thailand has grown following the death of singer Tae Dragon 5 at the age of 46. Before disappearing, Tae had continued discussing plans with his family to expand his barber training business. More than a day after leaving home by bicycle, his body was discovered in the Chao Phraya River. His bicycle has not been found, while police are investigating the items recovered from his backpack.
Tae’s mother and girlfriend said the singer had shown no obvious signs of distress before his disappearance. They said he had not been involved in any serious conflict and was still discussing plans to expand his vocational barber-training center.
His family is now waiting for the autopsy results in hopes of understanding what happened during the final hours of his life.
His Mother Wants Answers
At Tae’s funeral, relatives recalled that the singer had been planning to turn his barber shop into a larger vocational training center. It was still one of the projects he talked about shortly before he disappeared. What happened afterward has left his family shocked and searching for an explanation.
At around 4 a.m. on August 6, Tae left his home in Bang Kruai district, Nonthaburi province, wearing sportswear, carrying a backpack and riding a bicycle. He did not take his phone or wallet with him.
When Tae failed to return, his girlfriend, Namkeng Walaiphan Srinapaphan, went to Bang Kruai Police Station to report him missing. Relatives and members of Dragon 5 also shared information online in an effort to locate him and asked authorities to examine surveillance footage along the route he may have taken.
At approximately 2:30 p.m. on August 7, authorities received a report about a body floating in the Chao Phraya River near Rama VII Bridge. Tae’s family later confirmed that the deceased was the missing singer.
An initial examination reportedly found no visible external injuries. A backpack was recovered with the body, containing two heavy objects and a piece of rope. The bicycle Tae was riding when he left home remains missing. Authorities are continuing to review surveillance footage, search for the bicycle and reconstruct the singer’s final movements.
According to his relatives, Tae had not displayed any unusual behavior beforehand. He had not been involved in any serious disputes and remained focused on his plans to develop his vocational training business.
At his funeral at Wat Buakhwan, Tae’s 79-year-old mother reportedly cried beside her son’s coffin and needed relatives to support her. She described him as kind, hardworking and respectful, saying he rarely gave her reason to worry. She said she still did not know what had happened to him during the more than 24 hours before his body was found.
Tae’s girlfriend also said she had noticed no warning signs before he disappeared. The family is currently waiting for the autopsy results, with the testing process expected to take around six to seven days.
The Singer Who Turned to Barbering
Born in 1980, Tae began his career in entertainment working behind the scenes before moving into commercial modeling and appearing in music videos. His major breakthrough came when he became one of the five members of Dragon 5, a group under the GMM Grammy system.
Dragon 5 debuted in 2000 and pursued pop and dance music, gaining attention for choreography that incorporated martial-arts-inspired movements. In a 2017 interview with Sanook, Tae said the group was active for around four years but released a total of seven albums in Thailand and Taiwan.
At the time, the members were still studying while dividing their time between recording, dance rehearsals, performances and overseas tours. Dragon 5 emerged during a period when Taiwanese pop culture was highly influential across the region, before the Korean idol wave became dominant.
After Dragon 5 stopped promoting regularly, Tae gradually moved into television and content production. During one rare Dragon 5 reunion performance, he struggled physically because he was no longer training at the intensity required during the group’s peak years. “My heart felt like it was going to stop, and I couldn’t breathe,” he recalled.
Yet he was surprised that when the five members returned to the stage, they still retained the group’s energy. Tae once described Dragon 5 as being “like my family,” explaining why he continued using the group’s name when introducing himself.
As Dragon 5’s activities became less frequent, Tae transitioned into television hosting. He previously hosted Wake Club before spending around 12 years working with True Inside as an entertainment host and reporter.
He later moved into children’s programming and established Sugar Junior Club, where he taught singing, dancing, acting and communication skills. In a 2017 interview, Tae described his programs as “clean content,” without profanity or shock-oriented elements. He acknowledged that such productions could struggle against louder, more viral entertainment, but believed human-centered content could survive longer than variety shows built around short-lived trends.
When rumors circulated that he had suffered depression after leaving the spotlight, Tae personally denied them. He explained that he had few friends and did not socialize much. He accepted that his time in the spotlight had passed and believed that there was a reason for everything that happened in his life.
After spending time working behind the scenes, Tae eventually made a complete career shift into men’s barbering. His VROD The Cutt barber shop was reportedly operating steadily and was preparing to expand into a training model.
When asked about leaving showbiz, Tae explained that barbering felt like another form of artistic work. Two barbers could use the same scissors, comb and clippers, he said, but the final result depended on technique, experience and how each barber viewed a customer’s face.
As he developed VROD, Tae did not want people to think of it simply as “singer Tae’s barber shop.” He trained students, although the program remained relatively small. His long-term ambition was to build a large-scale vocational training center. That ambition was still being discussed with his family shortly before Tae disappeared. More than a day later, the former Dragon 5 singer was found dead in the Chao Phraya River, leaving his loved ones waiting for answers about what happened.
Sources: kenh14