Writing Jang Geun-Suk back into the K-Pop Narrative

Consider this part three of my series—1) Hyun Jin-Young and 2) BigBang.

It is a truth almost universally ignored in English-language K-Pop discourse that women of “a certain age” have been instrumental in driving the popularity of Korean Wave content. 

I was thinking about this again as I’ve been working on my next BigBang episode because that episode covers a very pivotal time in the Japanese market from 2009 to 2012 and there is one figure who is critical to understanding the era but who has been completely wiped from the English K-Pop narrative. 

You’d never even know this guy existed if you entered the K-Pop sphere after 2017-2018 but he was at one time the most popular K-Pop Singer on Earth—Jang Geun-Suk.

The first time I encountered JGS was in the drama Hong Gil Dong (2008). Hong Gil-Dong was a period drama based on a Korean Robin Hood type figure, Hong Gil-Dong, with Kang Ji-Hwan* playing the titular character. 

In those days I had a drama-loving friend who lived quite close to me and she was a huge fan of Kang Ji-Hwan, who at the time was an extremely popular drama lead. This being in the days before streaming dramas were easily accessible on every platform known to mankind, I relied on her massive external hard drives and ability to navigate sites like Clubbox. So, when Hong Gil Dong started airing, we watched it together at her house. 

Hong Gil Dong was a fun enough drama but it was the arrival of the second male lead, an Emo Prince in exile played by a 20-year old actor with doe eyes and a deep voice, that would change not just the trajectory of the drama but of the Korean Wave itself—Jang Geun-Suk.

Now, I fully admit to being prone to Second Male Lead Syndrome but this was different. Jang Geun-Suk wasn’t just a scene stealer. He was born to be a star.

After stealing scenes and hearts in Hong Gil Dong, JGS got cast as the second male lead in Beethoven Virus later that year to the same effect.The man had a gravitational pull on female viewers that could not be denied. 

So, in his next drama, Jang Geun-Suk would be cast as the lead opposite rising star Park Shin-hye, with support from then-popular K-Pop idols Jung Yong-Hwa (from CN Blue) and Lee Hong-Gi (from F.T. Island)**

You’re Beautiful was a music-themed drama with a built-in pan-Asian appeal, pulling from both the success of Beethoven Virus and the Taiwanese-via-Japan megahit cross-dressing drama 花樣少年少女 (2006) which had starred members of popular boy group Fahrenheit. You’re Beautiful—about a young woman who cross dresses as a man to join an idol rock band called A.N.Jell and falls in love—leaned into the typical Korean drama love triangle elements, but added some spicy Japan-market focused BL-homoerotic elements and picked up on the trendy indie rock band aesthetic (CN Blue and F.T. Island were both newly debuted idol rock groups; at the same time as You’re Beautiful was in production across the East Sea/Sea of Japan, then-KAT-TUN member Akanishi Jin was starring in the film Bandage, a story about a rock band, which had previously also had a very popular radio drama adaptation in 2005.)

You’re Beautiful and the response to it is crucial to understanding the current state of global K-Pop (and Korean Wave) fandom. 

The drama aired on Korean network SBS from October-November 2009, concurrently with KBS’s big blockbuster spy thriller drama, Iris, which not only had BigBang’s T.O.P. in the cast but also had BigBang doing the theme song. 

Iris crushed You’re Beautiful in the domestic television ratings.

But You’re Beautiful wasn’t intended to be a domestic blockbuster; the drama’s audience was both fan girls at home and international Korean Wave drama fans like me.

When the drama aired in Japan a few months later in 2010, it was a runaway success with Korean Wave fans. The same cohort of women of a “certain age” who had made a superstar of Bae Yong Joon with Winter Sonata, now did the same thing with Jang Geun-Suk. 

In November 2010, Jang Geun-Suk did a sold out solo tour of small 3,000 or so seat venues. A year later, he’d be performing for 45,000 fans at Tokyo Dome. 

Jang Geun-Suk’s image wasn’t cool or trendy—it was Princely. This is important because the “Prince” type character has a very specific appeal to a very specific type of fan. These fans are women. And many (but not all) of them are of a “certain age”.

It is a truth not nearly acknowledged enough in English language writing on K-Pop and idols that these women of a certain age form a not insignificant part of the male idol fandom. Certainly the idol companies in Japan know this, which is why the older woman/younger man drama starring an up-and-coming young male idol is a staple on television.***

Here’s where we get to the meat of my argument and where I think most English language narratives get it wrong. The time period of Jang Geun-Suk’s rise in Japan and around Asia happened alongside the rise of Second Generation K-Pop idol groups in Japan and around Asia more generally. THESE WERE TWO DIFFERENT AND PARALLEL PHENOMENON. 

Second generation K-Pop when it crossed over—as noted in the Japanese press at the time—had an unexpectedly strong young female audience, a different audience than both domestic girl groups and, crucially, of previous Korean Wave content. Girls Generation, KARA, Brown Eyed Girls, T-ARA, 2NE1, etc. were “Girls Pop” but throw in SHINee and BigBang and 2PM in there too as crossover acts appealing to the same audiences. These were not the same fans who were attending Jang Geun-Suk’s Tokyo Dome show. 

Winter Sonata did not lead directly to “Genie” and “Mister;” Winter Sonata led to Jang Geun-Suk.

What I believe happened is that Jang Geun-Suk tapped into and built on the existing Hallyu Wave audience in Japan, specifically, but also around Asia. His dedicated audience of women of a “certain age” may have later crossed over into K-Pop group fandoms for acts like SHINee—who certainly had a princely thing going on—but the initial second generation crossover was a different and very youthful musical movement. K-Pop fans today like to claim that “K-Pop isn’t a genre” but at this time the second generation was very much exported as forward-looking and youthful pop music different from other things on the market. The performers and songs from this era still have a lot of widespread popular recognition and critical acclaim around Asia, as we’ve seen recently.

Meanwhile, You’re Beautiful was remade as 美男ですね (Ikemen, desu ne?) in Japan in 2011 as a soft launch for Johnny’s & Associates (now STARTO)’s newest boy group, Kis-My-Ft2. There is also a large cohort of women of a “certain age” who follow STARTO. 

When I say Jang Geun-Suk’s audience was primarily women of a “certain age” that is not meant to dismiss their buying power and audience power because it is massive.

Jang Geun-Suk made his major label debut in 2011 in Japan with “Let Me Cry” and it went right to number one for the week, beating Girls Generation's “Run Devil Run”. According to Oricon news, it was only the second time a male solo debut had managed it and the last artist to do so had been Johnny’s & Associates (now STARTO)’s Kondo Masahiko in 1980 with one of my all time favorite teen pop tracks: “Sneaker Blues.”  

This cohort should not be taken lightly; they do not mess around.

Jang Geun-Suk would get caught up in a few scandals that were unfortunate but sadly kind of typical for young stars coming up with that scarcity mindset that get early and huge success—tax evasion in 2015—and following a murky mandatory military enlistment in 2018, Jang Geun-Suk hasn’t really been heard from in the global fandom. 

But that audience didn’t evaporate; for better or worse they got folded into the emerging global K-Pop fandom.

I’d argue that the proper 王子様 Korean Wave chronology goes Winter Sonata (Bae Yong Joon) -> You’re Beautiful (Jang Geun-Suk) -> BTS.

Jang Geun-Suk and his career would make a great episode so maybe I’ll save a deep dive for that but his almost complete erasure from English-language K-Pop discussion is extremely telling about not only the ignorance on the broader impact of the Korean Wave from the alleged “experts” but also just the short memories and high turnover of fans since 2018.

That fan-compiled list going around about the “total sales” in Japan had Jang Geun-Suk in at #39 and he was only really active for a few years. He was a massive star but now he may as well be a ghost. 

Well, “I promise you” that around these parts, we still remember A.N.Jell.

* Kang Ji-Hwan would eventually get a suspended prison sentence for sexual assault; his early dramas are still quite good if you are the type of person who can still watch knowing that. I remember Capital Scandal being excellent.

** Although Jung Yong-Hwa got into some hot water over preferential admissions to university, he was cleared of all charges  and was not involved with anything related to Burning Sun, that was his (now former) bandmate Lee Jong-Hyun, who has since left CN Blue. 

Lee Hong-Gi, similarly, got into hot water but it was for appearing to support his (now former) bandmate Choi Jong-Hoon, who was the one sentenced to prison for rape and tied up with the Burning Sun scandal.

***To that end, Jang Geun-Suk would star in a Korean film adaptation of きみはペット a romantic manga about a career woman who finds a stray boy in a box and takes him in to live as her dog; it had previously had a popular drama adaptation starring Matsumoto Jun from Arashi in 2003.