South Korean Male Superstars:
  
Kwon Sang Woo
Ryu
Siwon
Jang Dong Gun
Read This:
(It's long but totally worth it)
Japanese Women Catch the 'Korean Wave'
Male Celebrities Just Latest Twist in Asia-Wide Craze
By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, August 31, 2006; A01
TOKYO
-- Thin and gorgeous in a slinky black dress, Mikimoto pearls and a
low-slung diamond Tiffany pendant, 26-year-old Kazumi Yoshimura already
has looks, cash and accessories. There's only one more thing this
single Japanese woman says she needs to find eternal bliss -- a Korean
man.
She may just have to take a number and get in line. In
recent years, the wild success of male celebrities from South Korea --
sensitive men but totally ripped -- has redefined what Asian
women want, from Bangkok to Beijing, from Taipei to Tokyo. Gone are the
martial arts movie heroes and the stereotypical macho men of mainstream
Asian television. Today, South Korea's trend-setting screen stars and
singers dictate everything from what hair gels people use in Vietnam to
what jeans are bought in China.
Yet for thousands of smitten
Japanese women like Yoshimura, collecting the odd poster or DVD is no
longer enough. They've set their sights far higher -- settling for
nothing less than a real Seoulmate.
The lovelorn Yoshimura signed
up last year with Rakuen Korea, a Japanese-Korean matchmaking service,
to find her own Korean bachelor. And she is hardly alone. More than
6,400 female clients have signed up with the company, which says its
popularity has skyrocketed since 2004, when "Winter Sonata" became the
first of many hot Korean television dramas to hit Japan. Even in
Shinjuku ni-chome, Tokyo's biggest gay district, niche bars with names
such as Seoul Man have sprouted like sprigs of ginseng in a Pusan
autumn.
"South Koreans are so sweet and romantic -- not at all
like Japanese guys, who never say 'I love you,' " Yoshimura said as she
waited for her blind date, a single Korean man, in the 50th-floor bar
of a chic Tokyo skyscraper. A telephone operator who lives with her
parents in Hiroshima, she has spent thousands of dollars on her quest
for a Korean husband, flying to Seoul 10 times in the past two years
and bullet-training to Tokyo for seven blind dates with Korean men.
So far, though, she hasn't found the one she's looking for.
"Maybe
I'm living in a fantasy world," she said, pouting her blood-red lips.
"Maybe I'm looking for the TV stars I can't really have. But we are all
allowed a dream, aren't we?"
In part, the new allure of Korean
men can be traced to a larger phenomenon known as the "Korean Wave," a
term coined a few years ago by Beijing journalists startled by the
growing popularity of South Koreans and South Korean goods in China.
Now, the craze for all things Korean has spread across Asia, driving
regional sales of everything from cars to kimchi.
Meanwhile, the
number of foreign tourists traveling to South Korea leapt from 2.8
million in 2003 to 3.7 million in 2004. The bulk of the growth, South
Korean tourism officials say, stemmed from Korean Wave-loving Asian
women. Partial statistics for 2005 indicate the feminine tide has not
yet let up.
For the South Koreans -- who have long suffered
discrimination in Japan and who have hardly been known as sex symbols
-- it all comes as something of a shock.
Korean male celebrities
are now among the highest-paid actors outside Hollywood. According to
the South Korean media, "Winter Sonata" star Bae Yong Jun -- whose
character stood by his first love through 10 years of car accidents and
amnesia -- is now charging $5 million a film, the steepest price
anywhere in Asia. In a few short years, Bae is said to have accumulated
a merchandising and acting-fee empire worth an estimated $100 million.
At least nine other Korean male stars earn more than $10 million a
year, according to a list published in June by the Seoul-based Sports
Hankook newspaper.
In Seoul, the neon-lit streets are mobbed
these days by visiting Asian women, many sporting rhinestone-studded
T-shirts emblazoned with images of their favorite Korean stars. Some
fans have been known to stake out famous eateries for hours in the
hopes of catching a glimpse of their celluloid beaus.
"It's still
a little hard to believe that it's gone this far," said tall, tanned
Jang Dong Gun, now one of the highest-paid actors in Asia, during an
interview in Seoul.
Jang said he was shocked when, during his
first trip to Vietnam in 1998 to promote his new Korean TV drama,
thousands of women mobbed his plane at the Hanoi airport and an armada
of female fans on motor scooters chased his car all the way to his
hotel.
In 2001, the Seoul-based manufacturer Daewoo Electronics
hired him as its Vietnam spokesman. Over the past five years, the
company said, its refrigerators' market share in Vietnam went from a
blip to a robust 34 percent.
"If we can give them a little more
joy in their life and show them another side of Korea, than I can only
see that as a plus for us and them," he said.
In China, South
Korean programs broadcast on government TV networks now account for
more than all other foreign programs combined, including those from the
United States and Japan, according to South Korean government
statistics. Even in Mexico -- land of the telenovela -- a flock
of local women stood outside South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun's
hotel during a recent visit, holding placards with Korean stars' names.
In the United States, the Seoul-based singer Rain played two sold-out
nights at Madison Square Garden in 2005. Also last year, sinewy Daniel
Dae Kim, the Korean-born actor from the hit show "Lost," was the only
Asian to land a spot in People magazine's "Sexiest Men Alive" edition.
Entertainment
industry leaders in Seoul credit the phenomenon to good marketing
coupled with an uncanny response throughout Asia to the expressive
nature of the South Koreans -- long dubbed the Italians of Asia. A
hearty diet and two years of forced military duty, industry leaders and
fans insist, have also made young South Korean men among the buffest in
Asia. Most important, however, has been the South Korean entertainment
industry's perfection of the strong, silent type on screen -- typically
rich, kind men with coincidentally striking looks and a tendency to
shower women with unconditional love.
"It's a type of character
that doesn't exist much in Asian movies and television, and now it's
what Asian women think Korean men are like," said Kim Ok Hyun, director
of Star M, a major star management company in Seoul.
"But to tell you the truth," she said. "I still haven't met a real one who fits that description."
Though
the Korean Wave hit Japan relatively late, washing ashore only within
the past 24 to 36 months, the country has quickly become the largest
market for Korean stars. Bae remains the biggest, but his supremacy is
being challenged. Actor Kwon Sang Woo, for instance, is charging $200
for some seats at an upcoming "fan meeting" in Tokyo. Thousands of
Japanese are scrambling for a chance to watch him play games with fans,
chat and perform little song-and-dance numbers. Some tickets are going
for as much as $500 on online auction sites.
Almost all the major
Korean male stars have opened lucrative "official stores" in Tokyo. In
the three-story boutique of Ryu Siwon, a baby-faced Korean
actor-crooner who sings in phonetic Japanese for the local market, the
top floor boasts a recreation of his living room, complete with a
life-size, high-tech plastic model of Ryu lounging casually on a white
leather sofa. It has become a meeting place of sorts for his Japanese
fans, where a gaggle of women ages 17 to 61 sat and stared longingly at
his statue on a recent afternoon.
Some call it a fad. But
Yoshimura -- whose latest blind date turned out to be a slightly
paunchy Korean computer programmer -- says she is nevertheless digging
in her extraordinarily high heels for the long run.
"I intend to keep looking until I find the right one," she said.
Special correspondent Joohee Cho contributed to this report.
hAHaHaHaha... oh my gosh. LOVE IT. i was seriously dying of
laughter as i was reading it. props to james choung for sending
it to me. oh yah i bolded the text for emphasis.
SOOOooo what d'yall think??? Agree?? disagreE??
I think these guys are totally full of themselves (ie. Ryu Siwon and
his Tokyo store with a statue of himself or whatever). And it's
kinda annoying how they play off of women's "emotional needs" and
fantasies to market an actor. Well, I guess that's what they do
in media everywhere don't they?? And same thing with how they
market female actors for the male audience. But I gotta give
props to JangDongGun though. He's not so much of that pretty boy
type of actor who does Korean soap operas all the time, but he actually
goes for solid film roles and he's pretty good at it too.
(oh yah the picture below was of the rolly thing in our vacuum with all this hair stuck in it.)
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