CALL it "Korean American Idol."
Soo-Man Lee's search for the next big Korean star brings him to Los Angeles to watch young performers flip their hair, swivel their hips and do their best Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake impressions, almost entirely in English.
"The language doesn't matter. We can teach them that," Lee said. "What we need is people who understand American culture. That is what will make them stars in Asia."
Lee's view may seem counterintuitive, but it appears to work.
For the past several years, Lee's company -- he's president of Seoul-based S.M. Entertainment -- has held open-call auditions in 11 North American cities, including Los Angeles and Garden Grove, for performers who can sing, act or model their way to stardom in Asia.
So far, he's discovered almost half a dozen U.S.-born entertainers who have become celebrities in Korea, feeding that country's demand for stars who look like them but have Britney Spears' dance moves or Eminem's swagger. Korean youth may follow Hollywood movies, wear Gap jeans and download singles from iTunes, but "they just can't rap. There are just things that only Americans can do," explained Francis Hur, president of SkyLight Entertainment, a Los Angeles company that promotes Korean music.
So people like Brian Gintaek Joo, who was born in Absecon, N.J., but is a now a top R&B singer in Korea, and Tony An, who DJ'd in New York clubs before joining the influential hip-hop group H.O.T., can fill the cultural void while looking Korean enough to blend into Seoul.
The tryouts speak volumes about the effects of globalization on Asian culture.
Korea, once known as a tight-knit society that was suspicious of outsiders, now embraces performers who look Korean but often don't speak the language very well. And Asian American singers and dancers who dream of being the next Beyonce or Usher may have a better chance of reaching stardom in Korea -- even though it's a place where many of them would feel like outsiders.
"It's an acrobatic mental exercise of globalization of mind-bending proportions," said Timothy Tangherlini, a UCLA professor who specializes in Korean culture. "There's been a strange inversion, an almost fetishization of the foreign where before it was almost shunned. The street cred in Korea, the new types of voices and styles, are all coming from L.A. now."
Korean pop culture's reach
