So, Rain (aka, “Bi”) has walked away from JYP Entertainment (you can read the Chosun Ilbo’s take on the matter here). It was an amicable parting, with Park Jin-young and Rain remaining on good terms (from what I am hearing from a very good source… not just PR spin). Rain is in Europe at the moment, and in the middle of a really busy tour, so I doubt we will be hearing much in the way of news any time soon.
Of course, Rain is good friends with Jang Dong-gun, so joining Jang’s management company, M Star Entertainment, is a possibility. But has his own personal support team to take care of business, so signing up with new management is not too terribly pressing. Oh who knows? And, more importantly, who cares?
The more significant part of the Rain story, imho, is what was not mentioned in the Chosun Ilbo story — that Rain is more interested in acting these days than singing. That is in part because Korea’s music industry is such a mess, you cannot make much money here anymore (except from product endorsements, and Rain already has plenty of those). And, as the Chosun story did mention, he has not exactly been lighting up the Korean charts for a while. But I think the major issue is that Rain just enjoys acting more, and would like to be a movie star.
(Sorry if the pictures disappoints, but I was not in the mood to look at anyone’s abs this morning).
UPDATE: Sorry I nearly missed this, but Rain was called out by Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report on Thursday. We even get to see Stephen Colbert singing in his own Korean music video. Summary of the show is here. Too funny.
It’ll be interesting to see how the local press handle this story.
eh – not well. Either the satire didn’t translate very well or Korea has become more anal than I thought ^_^ oh well, as a korean that speaks english, I still thought colbert was hilarious.