Logan Paul apologises after being filmed laughing at dead body in forest

He says he did not intend to make light of suicide

The Youtube star Logan Paul has apologised for posting a video in which he came across a dead body hanging in a Japanese forest.

The video shows Paul and his crew walking in the Aokigahara forest in Japan, which is known colloquially as the “suicide forest” because of the high rate of suicides there, which can see as many as 105 deaths a year (Japan doesn’t release official tallies there) in a country with one of the highest rates of suicide in the world.

At one point the group comes across a dead body hanging from a tree, and react with surprise and shock. They note that his hands were turning purple, and Paul says multiple times that he had never come across a similar sight. At one point he laughs in disbelief at the situation.

The video, which he posted onto his popular Youtube channel, drew wide-ranging criticism online from followers as well as other video bloggers, who claimed that he was making light of suicide in the video, and using a tragedy to promote his channel.

“I should have never posted the video. I should have put the cameras down, and stopped recording what we were going through,” Paul said in his apology video. “There’s a lot of things I should have done differently but didn’t. And for that, from the bottom of my heart, I am sorry.”

In the video, the video bloggers urge anyone with suicidal thoughts or depression to seek health if they’re having dangerous thoughts.

They also expressed shock at the site of the hanging dead body — which they estimated was a recent death — saying that they were only in the forest to document supernatural elements of the forest, even though the Japanese government has been forced to place signs at the entrance to the forest urging people to get help instead of killing themselves.