JAY PARK HISTORY LESSON

Almost a month without a post!! eeek. Jessica has been moving across the globe, I have an excuse, i'm not sure what it is but I have one, but "please don't misunderstand" we are as kpop obsessed as ever. To make up for it please enjoy a lengthy educational post:

A LESSON IN JAY PARK HISTORY

For those of you who were 'out of town' for the past year in KPOPVILLE or for those K-beginners who are here drowning frantically in our sea of Big Bang lyrical references and need us to slow down the pace a little bit, let me fill you in on the Jay Park saga, and it is a saga indeed! In fact this topic could even get tagged with a little "controversial" (or one of my favourite tags at the omonatheydidnt community "dramabutton.com")

Let's jump to it. Park Jaebeom (aka Jay Park) is a Korean American born in 1987 who auditioned for Korean talent agency JYP as a rapper and b-boy. After some years of training (including participating in grueling trainee reality show and epic workout funfest "HOT BLOOD MEN") in 2008 Jaebeom was appointed as leader of a new 7 member boyband 2PM. A beautiful year went by from September to September, 2PM's popularity soared, Jay's popularity soared, the group were a success with smooth vocals, powerful raps, impressive dance moves and likable brotherly bond, they had variety show appearances, presenting jobs, reality shows, solo offshoots, it was all going so well...

Jay Park, middle & center.

Firstly, disclaimer time: Now we are about to hit drambutton.com and to any avid netizens lurking in the wings ready to pounce, this is my interpretation from various sources where I shall paraphrase a great deal and write in my usual convoluted, lighthearted, reference laden style. Hottests, Coldests, I mean no harm, please don't dig up this article in 5 years time and use it against me to exile me from my future fame and fortune in South Korea. Thank you please.

As some kind of sick and bitter anniversary gift to 2PM (i'm guessing in the vein of Morrissey saying he'd "like to wish you an unhappy birthday") some meddling netizens (2PM haters? Jay haters? general bored haters?) unearthed some evidence from Jay's myspace circa 2005 (when he'd been a struggling trainee at JYP) where he had said something along the lines of "Korea is gay" to a friend back home (I would assume a lightheart homesick jibe, and bad misuse of a description of sexuality as was the trend back then, at his then difficult lifestyle in a foreign culture), Korean netizens WENT NUTS! They saw this as a serious anti patriotic act and they wanted him out of 2PM and out of the country (or even more disturbingly 3000 petitioners demanded suicide... yikes). Jay apologised sincerely, JYP said there were no plans for him to leave, but then the next day Jay left of his own accord, indefinitely. π_π

Jay flew back to the States and the rabid netizens (who by now had so many more thousands of Koreas whipped up into an anti Jay Park frenzy) shook their fists and thought good riddance ... until some of them started to read the news of how Jay's remarks were out of context and mistranslated or just realised the reality of successfully completing a witch hunt and exiling a 22 year old pop star for something he may or may not have said on myspace 3 years ago, no doubt there must have been many who went through the dawning revelation of "I've made a huge mistake" (Arrested Development reference anyone?).

Awkward days/weeks/months followed, 2PM were pulled from appearances for a week, held a press conference where they showed their support (which some people still saw as hate or indifference for Jay) before continuing temporaily as a 6 member group, refilming their music video continuing on with Heartbeat promotions, ripping their shirts off (good work 2PM) and continuing to deliver all the k-pop joy we could handle, whilst Jay reflected, rejoined his b-boy crew and remained fairly quiet as loving supporters tried to coax him back to Korea with everything from overpowering his church message board to actually hiring one of those planes pulling a banner message along to fly over his neighborhood.

Gratuitous Jaebeom abs shot was deemed appropriate.

2PM released their album 1:59 (poignant?) thanking Jay and still leaving it ambiguous as to whether he would return, by this point the support for Jay had been growing so much that many had turned on JYP and the remaining 6 members and began boycotting 2PM for their "lack of support", in short a whole lot more name calling and drama drama went down this all grew to a head in February 2010 when JYP announced that Jay's contract was terminated and he would not be returning to the group (despite recent hints to the fans that he might be). At a press conference they revealed that while it had originally been planned for Jaebeom to return to the group in April, the situation became impossible after the discovery that Jay committed another mistake "worse than the Myspace incident" (this mistake remains mysteriously undisclosed) and Jay had come forwarded and admitted this fault himself and so it was decided by everyone involved that he should officially depart. Present at the press conference were the 6 members of 2PM, CEO of JYPE (and some other company reps) and then around a hundred fan representatives from the major 2PM online fan communities (only in Korea). Audio footage of the conference was spread online and translated, cut up, taken out of context, and analyised to death, everyone went bat shit crazy about it. More and more fans turned on 2PM for being unsupportive of their Leader, un-brotherly and rude, particularly certain members who came across badly at the conference, or were misinterpreted, mistranslated or even those who just did their job and went back to work on variety shows apparently "too soon".

2PM fans are called Hottests (because 2PM, its's the HOTTEST time of the day..!) but the anti fans soon became known at the "Coldests" and it was an all out war! Many online groups and fan cafes (fan clubs) were tearing each other and themselves apart, forcing members into choosing either Jay or 2PM and there was all kinds of bad maths metaphors going on like 7-1 = 0, 2PM-1 = 6PM, hate fueled forum and YouTube comments, death threats, rumor spreading, suicide petitions petitions, all the usual disturbing traits of extremist Korean netizen behavior *shakes head*. With an car crash like attraction I once read through an essay length list of supposed scandalous 2PM behavior which was "unleashed" by raging sasaeng fans (sasaeng fans are the super stalker fans who spend all their free time following the idols around, waiting outside their houses, trying to intercept them at training locations etc) which ranged from revealing pictures of underage drinking and former girlfriends to multiple accounts of rudeness, arrogance, idiocy, bullying, and sleaziness, in fact it was a great read! I'm sure at least one of the fan accounts in there must have been based on some truth, and i'm keeping my fingers crossed that its the now infamous Wooyoung Ice Cream story. I should mention that these people are not all shallow 14 year old girls with nothing better to do than waste their time freaking out over boyband inner turmoil online, the average 2PM fan is in her 20s (i'm typecast, although don't I come across worrying like a shallow 14 year old with nothing better to do...) and they have many fans in their 30s and 40s. I also made the mistake of reading a transcribed report from the press conference from hell where the highlight for me was a mom fan who got the mic and said something along the lines of "I have a son whose the same age as you, and the way you all behaved is disgusting, you treated Jaybeom like HUMAN TRASH!" woah mom, chill out!!

*at this point you were going to get the best macro of Wooyoung saying "whatever, just get me and ice cream bitch" but I wasted and hour looking for it and getting distracted by fuckyeahkpopmacros.tumblr and I should have just made it myself! I did find 100px tiny icon sized version here*

As the 2PM / Jay Park / KPOP world imploded, me and Team Rational sat by in the side lines watching the battle unfold, sobbing into our dainty hankerchiefs, they weren't tears for Jaebeom, they weren't tears for 2PM ... they were tears at the sheer insanity of the situation and the spewing hatred that was making an ugly dent in their perfect k-pop bubble. I'm trying to report the facts here but if you want my opinion then i'll tell you that my thought timeline went alot like this...

Jay Park said Korea was gay on myspace? lol, oops, oh seriously?? he is leaving? what? can they get him back? maybe he'll come back, oooh heartbeat is epic, I hope Jay is OK, I miss him, but Heartbeat, damn this is good, I don't think Jay is coming back, thats a shame, its nice that he's b-boying again, I think I should really get round to watching their reality show Wild Bunny, OMG I love them more than I ever knew, Jay was hilarious!! why can't Jay come back? why Korea why? π_π I'm ok with it, hold on you mean that I NEVER GET TO SEE THE FINAL EPISODE OF WILD BUNNY?!?!?! sigh, I hope they're all happy, press conference? Incident? mistake? again? what? WHAT? whats going on? has everyone lost their minds?! why are people hatin' on Taecyeon? WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS? I like Jay and I like 2PM and i'd like him to rejoin but the company that basically owns their lives says that Jay is out so i'd say its pretty much over, we should get over it and just keep supporting them all, but wait what was this mistake? curious, who on earth holds a press conference and says "he can't come back because of XXX but we can't tell you what XXX is"? is this still going on? I miss Jay, i'm fine with it though, look at him b-boying, look at him go! and hot damn 2PM have never let me down, I wonder if i'll ever find out what that mistake was before the day I die? I wonder if i'll ever attempt to wrote a blog about this situation without fear of some crazed Coldest hunting me down and bestowing me with some evil internet curse etc etc etc....

Things did eventually settle down, although every move by either party is over disturbingly over analysed (like that time when the Coldests interpreted the lyrics of Without U to be 2PM arrogantly happy to be rid of Jay, see Jess's earlier post). So some people still hate 2PM and love Jay, some still hate Jay and love 2PM, i'm some love both but pretend to only support one or the other, I'd like to think that eventually most came to rest on liking and supporting both and we'll all keep our fingers crossed for the day, one day, far from now, when they could collaborate on an end of years special (for old times sake) or just appear on a music show in the same room as each other and no anti fans would flip out over out it. We can but dream.

What happened next? what happened to Jay??? are you on the edge of your seat? Well first that was that fateful day in March when out of nowhere an official Jay Park YouTube channel appeared and kpop fans the world over wept in unison as Jay sang a cover of Nothing on You to us from his parents bathroom:

and cries of PRAISE JAYSUS were shouted loud and proud. The video was somekind of YouTube sensation, I guess to the un k-pop initiated it was just some cute buff Asian guy singing a cover but it got over a million views in a day, and this seemed get things rolling at camp Jay and more videos followed, b-boying, jokes and covers. Soon there was news of upcoming musical collaborations in America, more b-boying coverage, he got himself a legal guy and he was out of the bathroom. The fans were happy to see him back in the (smaller and less Korean spotlight) . then came the announcement that Jay and his b-boy crew with star in some new street dance / breakdance / dancestravaganza film TO BE FILMED IN KOREA! There were murmors from the antifans but nothing on the previous level of ker-azy, he arrived in Korea unscathed and then signed up with Sidus HQ with who he released a Korean version of Nothing on You which blew everything else of the chart, and now I think he's still filming his movie whilst working on some kind of future solo comeback redebut album, and that pretty much brings us up to speed.

Witness the short video version in all its slightly awkward yet still exciting glory:

So, newcomers you are probably grateful for that recap, where as my experienced audience of 2 or 3, you are probably thinking why the hell did you just write so much about this old news, its not even like he's one of my crushes (sure he's got skills, and its hot, cute and funny to boot but I can only ever reach an overwhelming level of "like" for him, and hes too short for me, shhh), well, to be honest the only reason I wrote all this stuff today was just that I wanted to post these new promo shots, but I felt like I needed to fill in the backstory and got a bit carried away...

Really though....

WHO THE HELL IS THIS MILDLY GOTHIC BEAUTY? was my initial thought, and then my gaze fell on those weird dreamy bat ears and my swoon count doubled. And hello to that beautiful slightly deformed looking hand, also enjoying the stray strands of hair sticking up at the back. I approve of this, even the sequins.

I have to admit I was worried about Sidus, I mean they did make that cringy MV and I guess you could argue against the first look... but my faith is defintely restored, all thanks to stylist Nuna, that's it girl, blazer and nautical stripes with a fringe, its ALWAYS the right way to go.

And then finally a picture where Jay actually looks like Jay! Perfect Jay! and we can all rejoice until the next cloud of Hottest/Coldest trouble hits town whilst we reply every fabulous moment of Jaebeom in action Korea style, the singing, the dancing, the shirt ripping, the fail Korean, the humour... aigo!

Netizens better not fuck this up becasue i'm waiting with baited breath for a dance on Star King at the very least, and if it involved Hyuna then even better! (if you're in a rush then 1.24 - 2mins ish, wait for Wooyoung's reaction, LOL)



(if you didnt watch it all then the other dancer is some Hyuna super fan dance machine who lost 50kgs for when he met her. I think i'd like to loose 50kgs before I met Hyuna too. girl crush.)

PRAISE JAYSUS

ps. i'll admit that those pictures made me step over that line of "like" that I wrote in the sand, maybe just a little, or a lot, time will tell.

pps. jeez I feel like i've been writing this all day and it wasnt even about SHINee?! If I can forgive myself I think I might be back in the swing of things.


- BUNNY