Influencer Paul J. Kim’s 5-year-old son, Micah, died on Dec. 31, 2025, after contracting a severe case of the flu.
Kim shared the devastating news in an emotional video to his Instagram followers on Thursday, Jan. 1, saying 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 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 his in video.
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“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.
Kim shared that his videos and posts have reached all seven continents. He also shared 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.
Paul Kim/Instagram
Kim also shared the story of another woman who he spoke to at the hospital, who had a two-week-old in intensive care.
“We got to talking about, ‘Have you given baptism to your baby girl?’ She said no and I encouraged her to think about it, especially given this emergency situation. Yesterday, toward the end of Micah’s life when his bed was being pushed, right at that moment the mom walked up and she said ‘Hey, my husband and I have been talking about it but we would like for you to baptize our child.’ “
Kim said got the okay from his spiritual director and baptized the baby.
“How does this happen in the midst of all this we’re going through? There’s a real possibility that before Micah passed he may have already been gone. Coma, and the situation is very mysterious. His body was there but we know that his soul was already with the Lord. We were in a time of waiting. But, God’s already using him in miraculous ways.”
Continued the grieving father, “For those two weeks we were fighting long and hard, we were consulting legal, health, 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 — who maintains a following of over 300,000, by sharing videos about his Catholic faith — first revealed that his son had hospitalized in a Dec. 21 Instagram post, saying that Micah was transported in an ambulance for a “medical emergency.”
In subsequent updates over the next few days, 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.”
Paul Kim/Instagram
“This has undeniably been the heaviest cross my wife and I have carried in our entire lives. I have never felt so crushed and helpless in my life,” penned Kim in an emotional Christmas Day post. “But I have simultaneously never felt so strong and upheld by God’s grace in my life. To those I know and strangers I’ve never met, thank you for your prayers, generosity, and concern.”
Micah’s health journey captured the hearts of thousands of people online, who posted kind messages to his family while he was receiving treatment. His story even caught the attention of singer-songwriter Gwen Stefani, who commented on one of Kim’s posts, “🙏 praying for u.”