I was talking with a friend about the canceled Rain concerts last month and most recently at the Staples Center. To date, he has canceled in Honolulu, San Francisco, Atlanta, New York and San Jose. The tour was called, oddly enough, “Rain's Coming.”
This time, apparently there were over 25 truckloads worth of stuff brought in from Korea as well as an entourage of people and press numbering around 100. While his previous troubles stemmed from a copyright challenge over the use of his stage name, this fiasco was pure unprofessionalism.
Rain recently took over his career management duties from JYP Entertainment. JYP stands for Jin Young Park who, in his own right, was a major Korean pop star back in the day. Apparently, the split on earnings was something like 90:10 (Management:Rain). So, it’s not that surprising that Rain would try to take over. Besides the split, Jin Young Park also was a media hog besides the fact that he speaks very good English and Rain cannot. This pretty much relegated Rain to the sidelines. For example, Jin Young Park would answer all the questions in English on MTV's Total Request Live after which Rain would say "I love you!" That was about a year ago so probably he can say more. I hear that Jin Young Park is planning a comeback CD. Rain's father is his main promoter now it seems and the company is made up of complete amateurs. JYP, of course, just keeps their mouths shut as they have nothing to do with this travesty.
Hopefully, Rain can hold on until the Speed Racer movie comes out and he gets some professional management to take over especially if wants to make it outside of Korea. No doubt Rain won't have much speaking-lines in the Speed Racer movie but hopefully he can leverage that somehow. The waves in this pop world are notoriously short-lived and he's no Usher. His most recent movie got trashed in Korea even with Park Chan-Wook at the helm but performing decently in Europe.
-Pat in Seoul
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I can deal with the fact that Rain has no talent and that Koreans have a high level of tolerance for mediocrity.
But why must the country try so hard to export his shit to uninterested foreign audiences? It's embarrassing enough I gotta hear those goddamn Hyundai and Daewoo jokes at work.
I know, I know. It's this can-do spirit that's got the country out its doldrums in the past. But here's a novel idea: let's craft something that is second to none, something original.
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