Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Jay Park, writing neatly in Korean, not English… Colored letters show “Wittiness”

SOURCE: SPORTS CHOSUN; TRANSLATION: Judy@JAYPARK.NET
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Generally, celebrities hesitate to write something when asked to do it in handwriting. It’s because they’re afraid they’ll get criticized by netizens when their handwriting is made public. But Jay Park was different.  As soon as a piece of paper was given, he grabbed a pen without hesitation and began writing down.  He wrote in the unpolished yet neat Korean “An-nyung-ha-sae-yo!! (Hello!!).”  When I said, “Your Korean is good,” he waived his hand and said, “Nah, it’s not good enough.”  “I began learning Korean only after I had come to Korea. I studied very hard.  I don’t have much problem speaking now, but it’s still hard for me to understand complicated words.  But, now that I’ve learned Korean, I’m trying to speak with my parents in Korean.”
One thing that stood out was that he wrote each letter in a different color.  Jay Park explained, “It won’t be fun if I had all of them in the same color.  I thought it would be fun to use a variety of colors.”  After he filled the paper with large size letters in all sorts of colors, he picked yet another different color and made an underline.  He was surely freewheeling.  I had my doubts that he was done, but it was indeed the end.  He held out the paper while smiling big, “I’m done.” When I said “Don’t you at least have to write your name?”, he smiled with embarrassment.  And he muttered to himself, “Should I sign or should I just write my name?” and then he wrote his name in a corner.
He is simple enough to forget to write his own name. However, the leverage effect of the name “Jay Park” is tremendous.  Would that be because he came back after overcoming all kinds of hardships?  It’s well known that his fans are particularly loyal to him. Probably for that reason, he has been contacted by many advertising sponsors, and he has recently finished shooting a CF for the clothing brand Levis.  In addition, his songs, “Count On Me” and “I Want To Cry” swept first place on various online charts.
He left for the U.S. on August 31st for his fan meet tour.  He has caught the flu after he continued to go through intensive practice for his fanmeets.  Wouldn’t it be too much for him to withstand 11 hour flight in such condition?
He shook his head and said, “I feel happiest when I meet my fans.”  Out of the blue, it flashed across my mind that he suddenly left for U.S. last September in an economy seat.  Now, after overcoming everything, he must have a different feeling while heading to the States because this time it’s in order to enjoy the festival with fans, not to escape.  Jay Park smiled and said, “I’ll fly in business class this time.”
Reporter Baek Ji-Eun

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