Alright, Still

Rain, a Korean pop star, actor and pan-Asian heartthrob, prepared for two concerts at Madison Square Garden in New York by studying. Day and night, an English tutor trailed him through Seoul, prompting him with conversational phrases as he labored to polish his singing, his martial arts-inflected dancing and, presumably, his chest baring.

You can never be too prepared to go global.

At 23, Rain, who has been labeled the Korean Justin Timberlake and Korean Usher, is a serious and driven performer (with a Hollywood body, winsome looks and a Gene Kelly-like ability to leap through puddles while performing his hit song, “It’s Raining”). He wants nothing less than to break down barriers, build cultural bridges and become the first Asian pop star to succeed in America.

“The United States is the dominant music market,” he said through an interpreter in a recent phone interview from Seoul. “I would really like to see an Asian make it there. I would like that Asian to be me. That’s why I studying the language, reading up on the culture and practicing every day to correct my weakness.”

Since his debut in2002, Rain, whose real name is Ji-Hoon Jung, has been riding what is known as the Korean Wave. As South Korean products, from cellphones to the music known as K-pop, have swept across Asia, Koreans have coined a new term, hallyu, to describe the phenomenon. Through his leading roles in soap operas and his music, Rain has become the personification of hallyu, which some see as a high-quality regional alternative to American cultural dominance.

Rain is inspired by American pop music, but his interpretations provide, at the least, an Asian face and filter. His producer, Jin-Young Park, describes Rain’s music as more”sensitive and delicate” than American R&B and says that his choreography is crisper and more precise, influenced by classical dance and martial arts.”

“In Rain, Asians might see the spirit of Usher or Timberlake or even Michael Jackson, but he makes the music theirs,” said Nusrat Durrani, senior vice president and general manager of MTV World. “He is a huge star in the making, but, at the same time, he is a very indigenous artist and a source of local pride.”

Last year, Rain sold out arenas across Korean, Chine, and Japan playing to more than 40,000 in Beijing and 20’000in the Budokan in Tokyo.

But Mr. Park, 34, said that Rain will be not officially ready to cross over to American until approximately October. That, according to a meticulously devised business plan, is when he is expected to achieve basic fluency in English, to release an English-language album and to smite the hearts of young Americans women.

Most of the 10.000 people planning to see him at Madison Square Garden earlier this month, however, already knew him. Like Julie Cho, 25, vice president of the Young Korean American Network in New York, who considers Rain” a very humble,” they are already fans.

The New York concert was not Rain’s first performance in the States. He played at a Korean festival at the Hollywood Bowl last year.

Inevitably, non-Asian-Americans are discovering such easily accessible foreign culture, too. Because of the “multidirectional flow of cultural goods around the world,” there is a “new pop cosmopolitanism,” according to Henry Jenkins, professor of comparative media studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In an essay in “Globalization,” Professor Jenkins writes that “younger American are distinguishing themselves from their parent’s culture through their consumption of Japanese anime and mange, Bollywood films and bhangra, and Hong Kong active movies.”

In the recent interview, Rain said that he had been dreaming about Madison Square Garden since he was a child imitating Michael Jackson’s moves. It is an incredible honor to perform there, “he said. And yet he is preparing himself for failure: In the case that my music is not loved by American people, I will work very hard to fix things and hope to please them the next time.”

Rain is a self-flagellating superstar. This kind of discipline defines him. In addition to his acting, recording and some modeling, Rain is finishing a university degree in postmodern music. Although unable to attend many classes, he does all the homework, he said plus studies not only English but Chinese and Japanese, too.

Mr. Park said he believed that other Asian pop stars have failed in the United States by trying “to impersonate what was going on here.” He said that he and Rain wanted to avoid” being another couple of Asian dudes trying to do black music.” by embracing their inner delicacy and letting their Asian-ness show.

Rain is sure that he has crossover appeal based on his own informal research: he had women － “real American women” － climbing all over him at a bar in Los Angeles last year.



By Deborah Sontag《The New York Times United Daily News》