After a dry run, Rain prepares to take the US by storm
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.'
Asia clearly remains the centre of Rain's mass appeal and the fan base that will sell most of the projected 700,000 to 800,000 tickets on this tour. As a regional commodity, Rain is trying to please. He released his first Putonghua single, a Jay Chou-esque number called Memory in My Hand, at the start of last year and will no doubt include it as one of the 20-plus songs he will perform in Hong Kong.
Much of Rain's success is largely thanks to Park, who before becoming a producer was one of the early South Korean singers to cross over into pop with hip hop. Rain got his start as one of Park's backup dancers when he was still a poor kid using the dance studio to fight his way out of a troubled background. A year before Park helped him release his first album, Bad Guy, in 2002, his mother
died of complications related to diabetes.
By 2003, Rain had landed his first soap opera role. He has starred in three so far, including Full House, which was distributed Asia-wide. Last year his acting career took another leap with a lead role in a new film by Park Chan-wook, the director best known for Old Boy and the Revenge trilogy.
The new film, I'm a Cyborg, But That's Okay, was released in South Korea last month. Rain plays an inmate at a psychiatric ward who harbours deep-rooted social resentments, but in the hospital finds tender moments with a fellow patient (played by Lim Soo-jung) who believes she is a cyborg. The role is a big departure from the singer's stage persona, but one he is happy to shift into.
'If I had to pick one, the image of me in the movie is closer to who I really am than the Rain you see on the singing stage,' he says.
Rain's Coming, Jan 12-14, 8pm, AsiaWorld-Expo Arena, HK International Airport, Lantau, HK$380-HK$1,280 HK Ticketing. Inquiries: 2301 1096
