The so-called Korean wave may be hitting a bit of a lull, but for South Korean pop singer Rain, who is these days viewing the world from a Korean Air jet with his face painted over it, things must be looking just peachy.
As K-pop's leading man, Jeong Ji-hoon is riding his own wave - he sold out New York's Madison Square Garden for two shows last February, was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World for last year, and in recent weeks filled a Seoul arena and a Las Vegas concert hall in a tour that aims to make the 24-year-old into something like the Ricky Martin of Asia.
Next weekend, the Rain's Coming tour, which will hit 17 cities in 11 countries over six months, brings him to Hong Kong's AsiaWorld-Expo Arena for three shows.
For Rain's producer, 34-year-old impresario Park Jin-young, the tour is part of a master plan to establish the R&B singer as a fixture in Asia's pop industry and, hopefully, launch him in the US.
So far, Park, who has worked with Will Smith and other big American stars, has steered Rain into preliminary talks with the production house of American hip hop mogul Sean 'P. Diddy' Combs, and a guest appearance on an upcoming album by Lil' Kim was squelched only when the rapper was sent to jail for perjury.
When Rain took the stage in the tour's only US stop, Las Vegas' Caesar's Palace Hotel on December 23-24, he addressed the crowd of about 3,800 in English throughout - he reportedly doesn't party and has been cramming all year to polish up his language skills - although the small irony is that the crowd was three-quarters Asian-American.
After the show, Rain was humble about his US ambitions, telling a press conference: 'Honestly, I still haven't put out an album in the US, so please don't say that my American performance was a big success. All you can say is that Rain is preparing to enter the US.'