...Hallyu began roughly 12 years ago when the rest of Asia discovered Korean soap operas. One of the breakthrough dramas was a series 'Winter Sonata' starring Choi Ji-woo & Bae Young-Joon. After that, more Korean dramas saw their way to foreign shores and Korean films and music started to follow suit. Korean marketing people started to see a Korea-centric trend. They dubbed this flow "The Korean Wave" or Hallyu....
28.4.10
2010 JKS Asia Tour in Singapore / Fan Account – Ally [4]
Ally's fan account-- Part 4
by Ally @soompi.com
At some point in time, the projector screens showed a video of Sukkie, hunting for presents for fans. Sukkie said in the video that he wanted to find things that showed traditional Korea, and he was looking for special items. He hammed it up for the camera by posing with some items, including a traditional wood-carved fan that he fanned himself with (“Ah, cold, cold!”). On his way back from all that shopping, Sukkie took some Polaroid photographs of himself: “I’m going to sign it and put it in the presents!” [Why hasn’t Polaroid capitalised on A.N. JELL and get them to make commercials to advertise Polaroid?]
There were only three presents, so fans had to play a game to decide which lucky fans would get the presents.
DJ Ken: “How much do you know about Jang Keun Suk? It’s true or false. True, you make a circle. False, you cross your arms. If you’re wrong, you sit down. Everybody who wants the presents, stand up!!! If you don’t want you can sit down!!!”
There were a lot of questions and we learned a bit more about Sukkie along the way.
He has an IQ of more than 130. He used to want to be a university professor, but then he went to school, and his dream changed to becoming an actor, he said. He was wearing vanilla-scented fragrance and he really loves the scent of vanilla. He has 2 laptops – one is Windows, and he plays games and uses Messenger (MSN?) on it. The other is an iMac which he uses to make videos (he said, for filming, movies). He personally made the video shown at the start of the Singapore fan meeting; you know, the one where it shows him arriving in Singapore’s Changi Airport and all the fans welcoming him. He really likes Hainanese chicken rice.
Sukkie: “Hainanese chicken rice… very good, very good.”
At the end, 4 people were left standing. So Sukkie decided they’d play a game of rock-paper-scissors and the first 3 to beat him would get the 3 presents. He was sorry, but the 4th person wouldn’t get anything.
When Sukkie brought out the 3 presents, he asked the 3 girls who won the game to decide who would get the biggest present. None of them said anything, so he gave the biggest present to the girl standing nearest him, because she was the tallest, he said. Then he gave the next biggest present to the second tallest girl. For the last girl, he gave her the smallest present and a big hug to make up for her getting the smallest present!
I think that when Sukkie next came out, it was very, very cool. He was just one person, but he was completely in performance mode – he’s a brilliant dancer, and came out showcasing some of the coolest, slickest, tightest moves ever. I don’t know the name of the song that he performed, and I’m sorry, but I was quite blown away by him. He wore a dressy white shirt, with black motif of some sort – a black scarf/tie/other accessory and black pants. He exuded sensuality, generated a whole lot of heat, displayed unbelievable amounts of energy and the quality of his performance was consistently excellent throughout.
The fans adored his performance, and when Sukkie went down into the front rows as part of his performance, he then brought back with him on stage, a lady who looked to be about sixty or so years of age. She’s Korean, I think, and he danced and shimmied with her. She was very game, dancing gracefully behind him and with him, and giggling when he made some particularly sexy, really slick dance moves.
One of the breaks between items was pretty long because Sukkie was preparing for the next item. Fans were shown video clips of him practising dance moves, and the video clips froze in certain frames, and the sounds didn’t seem to match the action at some parts. Anyway, fans were also shown video clips of his performances where he sang for fans, I think. The clips included him singing a cover of 2PM’s Heartbeat. He’s fabulous, a born entertainer if there was one!
It was great, except that the videos kept freezing in some frames, so fans were left hanging for a few seconds now and then until the videos moved again. It happened quite a few times throughout the entire fan meeting. Technical system acting up…
After the particularly bad bout of technical glitches, Sukkie apologised to fans for the glitches. You could tell he felt really very bad about it. Fans’ response, of course, was: “It’s okay! Never mind!”
Sukkie, looking straight at the central portion of the auditorium where the technical equipment and video cameras were, said with a merry laugh and glittering eyes: “Producer, I’ll kill you.” [Or maybe he said, I want to kill you…]
I think our boy’s a bit of a perfectionist. He wants to give his very best and he also wants his fans to have the very best. He understands that technical glitches happen, but then again, he really does not want to settle for second-best. I guess he would have gone to the technical people after the show to asked what happened and to ensure that it won’t happen again.
I remember Sukkie sang “GOOD BYE” from the You’re Beautiful soundtrack… hearing his voice, live, brought tears to my eyes. I didn’t understand a single word of the song, but the emotions that came through, of farewell, and pain… Hearing him sing it live wrung my heartstrings. There’s nothing like hearing him sing in person, that glorious sweep of his voice… it’s just, WOW. I’d pay just to hear him sing, live. More fan-meetings, please!
Sukkie bowed really deeply at the end, and thanked the fans. He spread his arms, wide, as he bowed, so it was really the end of the fan-meeting.
Following that, though, we had two encores. One started up by the fans, and I think in answer, he came out and sang “PROMISE”, the full version. Hope my memory serves me right here!
I distinctly remember the cheers and the whoops of joy and the screams that sounded when we heard the familiar beginning guitar chords of the music! The audience was singing along and Sukkie delightedly held out his mike now and then to the audience just so he could hear them sing and hear their voices resound through the auditorium. He even went amongst the front rows, skipping from the left side to the central, to the right-hand side – shielded by some overzealous security who to a certain extent stopped him from having closer contact with the fans. Sukkie can rap, by the way. He did pretty well on the rap part of this song, although I could also hear that Jung Yong Hwa's rapping had been left in the music. Sukkie rapped over it and did it really well.
Well, since fans thought there was only one encore, people started getting up to leave after “PROMISE”… and then DJ Ken called out to fans, to ask whether they wanted Sukkie back on stage! Of course we all did! DJ Ken had to say: “Eh, tell them [those people going out the exits] to come back! Come back!”
The final song was “As Ever/Still” – more shrieks of joy as the music began! Sukkie was pretty funny and he was just happily weaving his way around the front rows and back on stage, grinning broadly as he sang. At one point, during the bridge of the song (I think) he grabbed hold of this chap – was it his manager? – Sukkie then flung an arm around the chap to stop him from escaping, I bet! Sukkie then cheerfully poked the mike into the man’s face to get him to sing the rest of the song! Poor man was quite red in the face and faltered, unable to sing the lyrics –and Sukkie just burst into laughter. He laughed and laughed! Then Sukkie did it again, and this poor man was still not quite able to find his voice. Sukkie really likes teasing the chap!
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