Paul J. Kim, Catholic Social Media Influencer, says his 5-year-old son died after battling severe flu, shares update in Instagram video as he mourns loss

Micah, the 5-year-old son of social media influencer Paul J. Kim, died on December 31, 2025 (Wednesday), after contracting a severe case of the flu. The influencer shared the news in an emotional video to his Instagram followers on Thursday, January 1, 2026. In the video, he broke into tears as he revealed that "after fighting 11 long, hard days, [Micah] went home to the house of our father."

"We are so proud of him. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart as his dad, on behalf of my family, for all the ways you guys prayed and lifted us up during this time. This is an incredibly difficult, impossible time for our family. It's been the hardest thing I've ever been through in my life, and it continues to be," Kim said in the video.

The Catholic influencer requested privacy. Noting that he owed his followers an update, he also stated that he needs time “to mourn with my family.”


"As much as this time I just want to have privacy and have time to mourn with my family, I felt like I owed all of you an update, just out of gratitude. Micah is already in Heaven at work; seriously, so many testimonies, so many ways in which God is using the light in my five-year-old to truly save souls and change the world," Kim said.

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Kim also revealed that his profile has been viewed over 50 million times in the last two weeks, with many people reaching out to pray for his family and for Micah.

The grieving father further stated that "For those two weeks we were fighting long and hard; we were consulting legal, health, and ethical teams even outside the hospital. Just to make sure we weren't leaving any stone unturned. In many ways we were fighting for Micah to buy him as much time as possible until he passed. As a father, that is my duty; I was called to do that. Even if in God's ultimate will it wasn't meant for him to recover."

Kim shared that coming home without his son was one of the most "heart-wrenching awkward experiences." "Coming back to a home where Micah is not running around, laughing, and screaming as he usually is," he said.

Kim maintains a following of over 350,000 on Instagram by sharing videos about his Catholic faith. He first revealed that his son had been hospitalized in a December 21, 2025, Instagram post. In the post, he had said that Micah was transported in an ambulance for a “medical emergency.”

Over the next few days, he shared subsequent posts giving updates about his son’s condition and treatment. Kim said that his son had a very severe case of influenza that prompted sepsis and seizures and required that he be placed on life support. He also shared that scans had found that Micah’s brain activity was “not present.”