By Michelle Woo Photograph by Eric Sueyoshi
Tim Hwang had just finished his first day of classes at Temple University when he got the phone call.
The producer liked his demo tape. Could he fly to Korea to audition?
That’s how it began.
Raised on soft pretzels and cheesesteaks in Upper Darby, Penn., a township near Philly, Hwang was a typical 18-year-old who played lacrosse, listened to Brian McKnight CDs and had hopes of becoming a pharmacist.
“I had my life all set,” says Hwang, now 26, sitting in the lounge area of the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, dressed in a black T-shirt, jeans and a Gucci visor. “I chose pharmacy because it seemed stable. You couldn’t be called in at 3 a.m. It wasn’t really in my personality to go outside of the plan.”
But today, here he is, surrounded by a small entourage of producers and managers on their wireless devices, casually recapping the story of how he never made it to his second day of college. How a phone call changed his life.
In Korea, Hwang is simply known as Tim, a singer whose soulful ballads and boyish good looks leave female fans swooning and swaying in packed concert arenas. Armed with a willingness to do whatever it takes to turn music into a career, he is among a growing crop of Korean Americans who’ve been recruited into Korea’s burgeoning pop industry and molded into celebrities.
Dubbed as the Justin Timberlakes and Ushers of Korea, they’ve been plucked everywhere from the quiet suburbs of Orange County to the bustling streets of New York. Brian Joo was raised in New Jersey before becoming one half of the R&B duo Fly to the Sky. Micky Yuchun was handpicked from a talent contest near his home in Northern Virginia to join the popular boy band TVXQ. Teddy Park and Danny Im, members of the hip-hop group 1TYM, both hailed from Diamond Bar, Calif. You may have never heard of these groups, but they’re making waves in a country where the clean-cut boy band formula continues to thrive.
The crossover trend emerged in the ‘90s out of a swelling frustration with America’s roped-off industry. There was no market for Asian American artists, so just as athletes have found their niche or gotten their start overseas, many star hopefuls fled to Korea for greater opportunities.
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For “American Idol” contestant Paul Kim, it took a string of rejections before he turned his sights eastward. While trying to make his mark in the U.S., the Saratoga, Calif., native says he was told numerous times that he would have been signed right away if he wasn’t Asian.
“Basically, label execs would say, ‘You know, we love your music but there’s no way to market you,’” says Kim, who eventually signed under a Korean label.
Young-hu Kim, co-founder of Xperimental Entertainment, an L.A.-basedproduction company that has worked with K-pop stars such as Tim, Fly to the Sky, Shinhwa and BoA, says that during this time, Korean sensations such as H.O.T. struck a chord with young Korean Americans, who weren’t used to seeing faces like theirs.
“Second-generation Korean Americans didn’t have any stars to look up to so they listened to Korean music and watched Korean shows,” Kim says. “They thought, ‘Maybe I can do that, too.’”
And they have. With their faces plastered on billboards and their songs topping charts, these young artists are riding the Seoul train to fame. Though success never comes easy. Many have had to overcome homesickness, language and cultural barriers, rigorous training schedules and struggles with identity.
On a brief stop in the U.S. to perform at KoreAm’s celebrity gala, Hwang is busy promoting his fourth album, “Love Is … ,” featuring wistful vocals about unrequited love and parted lovers.
“It’s craziness,” he says of his whirlwind journey. “It’s not my life I’m living. It’s the life of a celebrity.”
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The Audition
“Vocal ability, image and personality — usually in that order,” says Gary Boone. These are things he looks for in his quest for Korea’s Next Big Thing.
Boone is the president of Brothers Entertainment, a Washington, D.C.-based scouting company known for discovering mega-stars such as Yoo Seung Jun and Tony An of H.O.T. The 20-year-old company is a pioneer in exporting U.S. talent to Korea, starting with its 1991 discovery of Lee Hyun Woo, a singer and actor who grew up in Maryland. Once Boone finds young artists he feels have what it takes, he connects them with Korea’s top producers.
Over the past two decades, K-pop fans have embraced the style and attitude of American-bred artists, with the genre evolving as a transnational music hybrid. Audiences are quick to warm up to Korean Americans who may not be able to speak the language, but have the right look, enough talent and a keen marketing strategy behind them.
One of the country’s most beloved heartthrobs is Daniel Henney, an actor from Michigan who rose to stardom through the hit Korean dramas “My Name is Kim Sam-soon” and “Spring Waltz” and his 2007 film debut “Seducing Mr. Perfect.” Henney recently confessed to the Los Angeles Times that his Korean language skills are at the level of a 12 year old.
With boy bands dominating the music industry, Boone says Korean American males continue to be in high demand, as many companies will have already conceptualized a new group before plugging in the talent. They’ll have the songs written, the image created. They’re just looking for the stars.
There have been few Korean American women who’ve successfully crossed over. One reason for this, Boone explains, is that parents have been less likely to allow their daughters to move to Korea to pursue pop music.
In his search, Boone has held open auditions similar to the casting frenzies in Korea. Flocks of Korean idol wannabes would line up and wait for their numbers to be called. They’d then usually have less than a minute to sing a capella in front of note-taking executives and a video camera.
Though Boone says the people who came to those auditions never seemed to be what he was looking for. Today, he finds talent mostly through tips via e-mail and snail mail. He receives audition materials from about 100 hopefuls each week. Out of the pile, he might call back one or two.
That’s how Brian Joo got his start. Growing up in Abesecon, N.J., he would spend his afternoons mirroring the moves he saw on MTV. “I was a huge Michael and Janet Jackson fanatic,” he recalls. “My dream was to become one of their backup dancers.” His Korean friends at school also got him into K-pop artists such as H.O.T. and the ‘90s hip-hop duo Deux.
In high school, with music as his passion, he started a singing and dancing group with two buddies. They’d practice often, but the opportunities to perform seemed limited. For Joo, finding a way into the industry seemed hopeless.
“I thought that Asian people would never make it in the U.S.,” Joo says. “I never saw an Asian in movies or on TV except for Jackie Chan. There was too much stereotyping out there.”
One day, a friend saw a flyer for Brothers Entertainment, which urged amateur artists to send in their materials. Knowing of Joo’s frustrations, she decided to secretly sign him and another friend up. Posing as her pals, she filled out an application, slipping some photos and an audio recording into the envelope.
When Boone heard the tape, he thought it was “better than average.” He decided to give the boys a call.
They met up in a cramped hotel room at the Tropicana Casino & Resort in Atlantic City. There, accompanied by a cheap boom box, Joo showed off his moves and belted out a mix of English and Korean songs, from Savage Garden’s “Truly, Madly, Deeply” to Lee Seung Hwan’s “Chun Il Dong An (1,000 Days).” His friend performed some numbers as well.
Some time later, Joo got a call. (His friend didn’t.) Executives from SM Entertainment — the same folks who produced legendary groups such as H.O.T., S.E.S. and Shinhwa — wanted to meet him. They were looking to start a new group called Fly to the Sky. Could he fly to Korea to audition?
Hwang’s story is also of fate and circumstance. A high school choirboy and pastor’s son, Hwang would often sing Christian songs in front of his church congregation. One Sunday morning, a fellow from Korea was visiting his family who attended the church. Sitting in the pews, he was blown away by Hwang’s voice.
The man was a producer at JM Entertainment, a company that broke K-pop icons such as Yoon Sang and Lee Hyun-do, formerly of Deux. He introduced himself and asked Hwang to make an audition tape.
Hwang was stunned. He had never been to Korea nor did he speak the language. But he was always told he had a gift. He always thought his voice could be a way to serve God.
Using the sound equipment at his church, Hwang recorded himself singing “Nobody Knows” by Tony Rich Project onto a cassette tape. He stuck it into a package and sent it to Korea.
Days later, when he got the phone call, he was left with a decision to make. He prayed about it and discussed it with his parents, who said they’d support him either way.
“As stupid as I may sound, I needed to just try,” Hwang explains. “People may laugh at me, but I needed to get my feet wet. I can’t skip this chance just because I’m scared. I needed to take a step of faith.”
That’s when he stepped onto the plane.
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Making A Star
Hwang arrived at JM Entertainment studio in Seoul, where he was asked to sing for the company’s president, Jeong Jae-moon.
After belting out 98 Degrees’ “I Do,” Jeong sat expressionless and ordered him to leave.
Hwang had just met his new boss.
Hwang eventually signed a contract, and from then on, he began the intense process of becoming a star. Though he had help from a private tutor, learning how to pronounce the lyrics was the most difficult part. His first demo — a single track — took 24 hours to record.
“I was singing about love, so the accent was so important,” Hwang says. “I got a lot of criticism. They’d say things like, if you keep singing like that, you think you’ll ever be famous? … The American style of training is to use words of encouragement, saying things like, ‘You can do it.’ The Korean style is very negative. They’d always say, ‘You gotta fix this. You gotta fix that.’ It was a battle every day.”
Life outside the studio wasn’t much easier. Hwang, unfamiliar with Korean ways, felt isolated.
“I was in a depressed state,” he says. “At restaurants, I didn’t have the right etiquette and people would stare. It’s like, you go to Korea and realize you’re not wholly Korean, but you’re not wholly American, either. I was having an identity crisis. Everything was stressful.”
Little by little, Hwang’s image began to change as well. Producers wanted him to exude a chakhae (kind, sweet) demeanor. They told him to pay close attention to what he wore, how he carried himself, who he talked to. Soon, video cameras followed his every move for a new reality show on MTV Korea. The title: “Tim’s World.”
“I told myself I wasn’t going to lose myself,” Tim says. “What drove me was that I wanted to find the Lord.”
Joo’s road to stardom was perhaps even more intense. After signing with SM Entertainment, he had only six months to prepare with Fly to the Sky before it would make its major debut. In Korea, talent is often bred at an early age, as children as young as 11 are recruited from their homes and put into “star academies,” where they’re trained to sing, dance and model. Joo would be getting a crash course.
The moment he stepped off the airplane, he was thrown into a boot-camp-like setting. During that time, Joo remembers rehearsing at least 12 hours a day and being shut away from the outside world.
“They were strict about us going out,” he says. “They didn’t want artist to be pre-seen. Basically, they make a prison for you.”
It has been rumored that some production powerhouses have forced artists to go on liquid diets or get plastic surgery to enhance their features. In a recent survey printed by the Korea Herald, at least 77 out of 200 entertainers admitted to having had cosmetic surgery. Men in South Korea have increasingly been going under the knife for procedures such as nose jobs, ssanggeopul surgeries and facial whitening treatments.
Many have also said that even the most successful Korean artists are granted little or no control of their work.
While in Korea, Paul Kim, who has a soul background, says producers wanted to change his entire genre of music: “It was just rough. They wanted me to do pop and R&B, which I didn’t want to do. Like ‘N Sync stuff. I guess that’s what sells over there,” explains Kim who moved back to the U.S. after “it didn’t work out” in Korea.
Yoo Seung Jun, who lived in Orange County before becoming a Korean pop star in the ‘90s, says that as a young and naïve artist, one of the biggest struggles was getting paid as promised. “It was so obvious that they were taking advantage of me,” he says. “My old company had this issue with every artist signed under them. It kind of comes with the territory.”
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The High Life
Shortly after Hwang’s first album was released, his manager came in with some news. Tim was a hit. Sales were skyrocketing. His soft ballad, “Saranghamnida (I Love You),” was No. 1 on the charts.
Television sets across the country replayed the music video, which depicts the story of a shy store clerk who longs for Hwang’s heart, which has already been given to another. Standing alone with a pair of headphones, Hwang’s bangs sway softly across his forehead in the wind.
“[My manager] said, ‘For the rest of your life, you can live off this,’” says Hwang, who recalls hearing kids sing his song at local noraebangs. “I felt really blessed.”
Hwang developed a greater following through his appearances on variety shows, a standard strategy for K-pop up-and-comers hoping to get their name out. In interviews, he’d often stumble through his Korean, but Kim says girls thought that was cute. Now, Hwang admits he can’t walk around without his hat to disguise him.
At concerts broadcast on stations across Asia, Hwang is known to hold the microphone close to his lips as he sways from side to side. He gazes intensely into the distance, often breaking into a falsetto run somewhere during the course. Fans squeal. He ends his signature ballads with humble bows and hushed Gamsahamnidas.
“I’m so thankful,” Hwang says of his success. “Every time I see my fans, I don’t feel worthy. I feel blessed when people say they’re comforted, encouraged or healed by my music. This may have been my dream, but I didn’t think it could ever happen.”
After Fly to the Sky launched its first album, “Day by Day,” Joo and his partner Hwang Yoon-Suk gained celebrity-status throughout Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and China, appearing on TV, the radio and in magazines. “The fans were pretty cool,” Joo says. “What guy doesn’t want screaming girls following him?”
While continuing to work with Fly to the Sky, Joo also released a solo album, “The Brian,” which fused together pop, soul and jazz tracks.
“I’m high on life,” Joo says. “I can actually do what I want to do and have people love me for it. It’s awesome.”
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Back Again
Following the rise of hallyu, some Korean American K-pop stars have considered attempts to leap back to their U.S. roots through music or acting. They’ve seen their Korean native counterparts do so, with varying degrees of success.
Forbes.com recently named K-pop one of the Top 20 Trends Sweeping The Globe, writing that while the scene had originally been “a little saccharine for Western tastes,” that’s changing. K-pop phenomenon Rain, known as Bi in Korea, was dubbed “the next face of pop globalism” by Time magazine and has enjoyed sold out shows in New York and Las Vegas, although his official U.S. tour last year was cancelled. Still, there’s an evident K-pop fanbase here, which has spurred JYP Entertainment (founded by K-pop sensation Park Jin Young who enjoyed mild crossover success here as a producer) to bring over its latest protégés, The Wonder Girls, for a special U.S. tour. According to KBS World, the agency announced that stars such as R. Kelly, Outkast and Will Smith are set to attend. And over the last few years, the Korea Times has hosted a Korean music festival at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles that brings fans out in droves.
But while America might be open to new Asian faces, some question how well the songs will cross over.
“Artists like Rain have the look, the style, the moves, but I just haven’t heard that hit crossover song yet,” says Ted Chung, president of Snoop Dogg’s label, Doggy Style Records and chairman of Cashmere Agency, a marketing company focusing on urban lifestyle. “I don’t accept the fact that it’s a race issue. It’s a music issue. Michael Jackson faced the same obstacles of race when he tried to get the ‘Beat It’ music video on TV. America can be a fair playing ground if you’ve got the talent. If the song just feels right, it should definitely be able to work out. Good music speaks for itself.”
Chung says he would advise artists from Korea to collaborate with Asian Americans and non-Asians who have deeper connections in the U.S. music industry.
At the KoreAm gala, Hwang is the show’s finale. Dressed in a tuxedo, he looks more like a choir singer than a pop star. Holding the microphone, he apologizes for his English, though there’s no trace of a Korean accent. He says he hasn’t performed in front of an American audience in a while. To the crowd, his humble demeanor is curious. He sings “Saranghamnida” and a couple other ballads. After the show, partygoers described his performance as pleasant, but a bit dull.
Jaimie Chung, 20, of Northridge, Calif., attended a separate Los Angeles event featuring Tim. She says she listens to K-pop more than she listens to the radio, and has collected more than 50 CDs of her favorite Korean artists.
“I feel like I can understand them more,” Chung explains. “I’m Korean, they’re Korean. There’s something about that. I personally think they should stay in Korea. They’re better off there.”
Hwang’s latest album “Love Is … ” is a hybrid of sorts, with a selection of tracks written by U.S. artists such as Jamie Jones of the pop quartet All-4-One, evidence of the push in Korea for stars to branch out into the global market. Still, Kim says that for Hwang and many others, a full crossover move would be extremely risky, admitting that the U.S. music industry is on “a different scale.”
And as for Joo and Hwang, a U.S. move isn’t what they want right now, anyway. While Fly to the Sky will perform in Hawaii this month, Joo says he doesn’t have any concrete plans to come back for good.
“It might be something I’ll do down the line,” he says. “But it took me a while to feel comfortable in Korea and now I finally feel comfortable.” In this day and age, he says, music transcends borders, anyway. On his MySpace and Facebook pages, he receives messages written by fans from the U.S., New Zealand and Europe.
“I don’t think it matters where I live,” Joo says. “Music is just music to me. It’s just a language difference.”
Hwang says he’s embracing his time in Korea as well. Reflecting back on it all, he’s certain he chose the right path.
“I just want to take advantage of what I have,” Hwang says. “If God leads me to come back, I’ll come back, but for now, that’s not my vision. This Tim is who I am now. I’m half Korean, half American. America is my home, but Korea is my home, too.”
