SOURCE: SisaIN (100821); TRANSLATION: Judy@JAYPARK.NET
DO NOT TAKE OUT OF JAYPARK.NET. TO REQUEST A TRANSLATION, PLEASE TWEET US @JAYPARKNETWORK OR EMAIL US AT ADMIN@JAYPARK.NET.

Go Jae-yeol is a well-known and influential Korean journalist who writes for weekly magazine SisaIN. Many Jaywalkers may know him through his Twitter alias @dogsul and the recent messages he wrote in support of Jay. The August 21st issue of SisaIN includes an article on Jay and his fandom which Mr. Go himself has kindly sent to the Jay Park Network but has asked that our site not post up the scanned article.

He has also asked us to collect your thoughts on this article! Please send us your comments by tweeting us @jayparknetwork or emailing us at info@jaypark.net. We can all also look forward to Mr. Go interviewing Jay (with JayWalkers’ questions!) once he returns to Korea later this month.

The singer Jay Park, who had gotten into a controversy regarding disparaging comments on Korea, has recently made an impressive comeback.  He has topped the popular music charts and album profit charts despite the lack of participation in broadcasting activities.

BY GO JAE-YEOL (scoop@sisain.co.kr)

On August 10th, Jay Park’s fans received an open letter. “There have been so many things that happened but, thanks to your big love and support, I can’t even describe how happy I am to meet you all again.  I can’t put into words how thankful I am, and I don’t think I could’ve made it this far without you”, wrote Jay Park.

Last September, Jay Park went to the United States in the midst of “Controversy surrounding his disparaging comments on Korea” but came back to Korea on June 18th after nine months.  Although he was almost thrown out of the country at the time of his departure, he didn’t feel lonely on his way back.  More than 2,000 fans gathered at the airport, and his every move was publicized.  In contrast to the denouncing reports from last year, there were numerous reports covering his early comeback.

The record of his music and album sales is encouraging, too.  Whenever he has released his songs, it swept the top ranks of various music charts.  His single album has also sold quite well.  He got more than 110 thousand followers on Twitter within only two months, and the number of subscribers of his YouTube channel exceeds 120 thousand.  In the music industry, a new term the “Jay effect” was born.  It is extraordinary that he has gained this much success without being on air.

How was it possible for Jay Park, who had been “exiled” to his home in Seattle, U.S., to make this kind of miracle? What were the reasons why this passionate fandom came looking for him who had been without management and completely alienated from major media coverage after his discharge from JYP Entertainment?  What in the world happened after he had left Korea?

First of all, there were fans who have never abandoned him.  His fans who share the quote “Having faith is like having wings” are the fans armed with a strong “motherly love”.  These fans, mostly in their thirties and forties also call themselves ‘halmaemi’, and they have shown a mature fandom that acts as a protective layer for their young star rather than a fandom subordinate to their envious star.

The active play of “tough moms” armed with mother love

What’s more critical is that there was a network connecting those fans.  Interestingly, the network was extended not only domestically but also internationally. Social Network Services (SNS) such as TGIF (Twitter, Google, iPhone, Facebook) have been able to connect the fans in and outside Korea.  They’ve communicated with one another through SNS since the moment Jay Park had been “exiled” to the States until he made a comeback, and finally made possible his resurrection.  Pop culture commentator Kang Myung Seok phrased, “YouTube took a role of ‘Ohjakkyo’ between Jay Park and his fans.” [Translator’s comment: ‘Ohjakkyo’ is a mythical bridge that is only made once a year by crows and magpie so as to help two lovers Kyunwoo and Jiknyo meet each other.]

It is ironic that SNS helped his comeback.  SNS had pushed him into a dark tunnel, but it has also made him come back out of the tunnel.  The comment that caused problems had been made in his MySpace page in 2004 when he was still a trainee (when he was seventeen): “Korea is gay.” (Korean media misinterpreted this as ‘Korea is disgusting.’)   The interpretation of this sentence was unnecessarily exaggerated because of an ongoing hostility towards Korean American entertainers after Yoo Seung-Joon had broken his promise to fulfill his military service.

(Left) Fans waiting for Jay Park in the airport. They brought back Jay Park through the communication with international fans.

September 5th, 2009 is the day that Jay Park would never forget.  On that day, there were a staggering 700 articles uploaded on the internet related to his comment.  All of them were denouncing him.  There were even extreme claims in the Agora cyber petition that “he should commit suicide” and “his four limbs should get amputated.”  Fans also flinched.  His fan Yoon Soyoung said, “Since that time, fans began to lie low in the ‘ilko’ position.  The word ‘ilko’ is an abbreviation of ‘Ilbanin costume play’ (acting as a general public) meaning we pretended to be general public even though we were fans.  It was due to unreasonably stubborn criticism.”

And then, on February 25th of this year, Jay Park was killed for the second time.  His management company announced the permanent expulsion of Jay Park.  While doing that, they explained, “They had prepared Jay Park’s comeback to 2PM for March but Jay Park confessed that he had committed a big personal mistake on December 22nd, 2009.  The content of this problem is much worse than the problem that caused him to leave last September and can cause much more serious problems in society.”

This was the worst day for Jay Park, a third generation Korean American born in Edmonds, WA, and raised in Seattle, who took the leader position of the group 2PM after getting picked up by JYP Entertainment because of his outstanding b-boy skills.  This earnest young fellow, who had learned how to sing and rap as well as b-boying and gotten the nickname “administrator” because he had taken good care of his junior members,  turned into “international trash.”  Even the local American media began pointing their cameras to him living in exile in his hometown Seattle.

That was the beginning.  His fans a.k.a. “tough moms” fans rolled up their sleeves.  The place where they showed the united power was at Google’s YouTube site.  His fans held a war on comments on YouTube.  For the videos related to Jay Park, they eliminated negative comments (haters’ comments) from display by reporting them as spam, and they lead the cyber opinion war by adding good comments (with supportive messages).

First, it was important to recover his reputation.  Fans searched Jay’s MySpace account again to find his comment, “As a Korean, I want to learn about Korea” written in June, 2005. They also discovered his comment made in his Cyworld mini homepage in October, 2006, “I want to be called Park Jaebeom, not Jay.”  They planned a restoration while continuously reminding others of these facts.

To fight the public opinion war, they’ve performed various good deeds both publicly and privately.  They have carried out various donation projects; for example, they donated 18.7 million Won (approximately 18,700 USD) to Haiti earthquake victims and sponsored four children under Jay Park’s names.  The online contributions collected so far has exceeded 100 million Won (~ 100K USD) including 70 million Won (~ 70,000 USD) collected through Naver Happy Bean.  In addition, they’ve held more than 10 donation fundraising events.

While they carried out these activities, they found that international fans were doing something similar, too.  They met one another mainly on Jay’s YouTube channel at first, but later made more use of SNS such as Twitter or Facebook for better communication.  International fans familiar with SNS provided good tips which were eventually made into a manual for Korean fans.

When I made a request on Twitter for photos of Jay Park’s fans, fans all over the world sent me their pictures of their activities.

International fans communicated with each other to plan projects

The manual on how to use Twitter was created using a cloud computing program “Google Docs” that lets users log in from anywhere in the world and run collaborative projects.  In this manner, they have gradually acquired knowledge on each TGIF service one by one, and the fandom’s global network (Jaywalkers) has been established.  Whenever a language barrier was experienced, there was always the option of using Google Translate.

The establishment of a network led to the set up of a system for quick news delivery.  The system allowed fans to get Jay Park’s news even when it was still unpublicized.  U.S. fans who live near Jay Park made updates on his recent activities, and the news was translated into various languages by fans from many different countries.  The news also got posted in fan sites worldwide allowing the information to be shared among more fans.  From a girl in the rural region of Paraguay to a model who is also a former Miss Thailand, fans in more than 30 countries have acted together.

Utilizing TGIF, Jay Park’s news was able to travel everywhere in the world even without any media coverage, all made possible by the “organized power of proactive fans”.  Because they opened up communication, collaborative events could be organized.  When a Malaysian fan had suggested a supportive flash mob project, fans from all over the world responded.  They made videos showing support to Jay Park and uploaded them on YouTube.  The content varied. There were simple messages of support, remakes of the dance choreography from 2PM songs, or the time-stop flash mob at 1:59 p.m. expressing their frustration from his withdrawal.  Fans in the U.S. made a documentary in hopes of clearing his name, and a French fan made a plea to Koreans, “Jay Park is also a human.  Please, allow him to keep on doing his music.”  A distinct online ecosystem has been established through the code called “Jay Park.”

On September 28th, 2009, twenty days after he had returned to his hometown, an interesting event was held.  A “sky banner” with a supportive message for Jay Park was flown over the neighborhood where he lived.  This event was organized by Briar Francis (19) from Australia, and fans from 18 countries in total, including the U.S. and Korea, participated in the project.

The $2,500 expense for the “sky banner” project was covered by donations from fans.  Instead of using a message with direct expressions such as “Jaebeom, fighting!”, they chose to use a message with a bit of wit, “‘J. What time is it now?” and have it flown over Jay Park’s house for 2 hours after notifying him of the event with help from his acquaintances.

On April 25th of this year, which was Jay Park’s 23rd birthday, there was a huge online event for him.  Fans placed “#happy23jaypark’ on the Twitter’s trending topic list (an indicator of much-discussed issues in real time) by making tweets containing the designated word during a certain period of time. If you manage to get something on the trending topics list, the word can be viewed on the Twitter pages of all Twitter users around the world and potentially get promoted globally.  On that day, this word took second place pulling down the “Oscars” to a lower position on the list, and it was also reported by the British journal ‘The Independent”.  Even after this, Jay Park’s fans worldwide were able to utilize the Twitter trending topic list as if it was their own advertising space.  They have managed to create buzz on Jay Park’s upcoming projects whenever necessary.

Jay Park has also utilized Twitter and YouTube himself.  His YouTube channel created on February 24th has been subscribed to by more than 120 thousand users.  The number falls short of that of a very popular YouTube channel owned by the Jonas Brothers (~ 800 thousand subscribers), but it almost matches to the number of people subscribing the legendary band Metallica (130 thousand subscribers).  His cover on “Nothin’ on You” recorded in a bathroom was viewed by more than 2 million people within two days.  His Twitter account created on May 18th has more than 110 thousand followers. This value is among the highest in Korea.

Jay Park has now become a singer who has his own broadcasting system (YouTube), from which he can broadcast his videos, and his own transmission station (Twitter) to distribute them.  It’s similar to what is used by Tablo (Twitter followers 120 thousand, YouTube subscribers 20 thousand), the person who’s the most proficient at TGIF among Korean entertainers, and it is thought in the music industry that Jay Park has accomplished what singer Rain has achieved over a period of ten years.

The global network established over time had begun showing its merits when Jay Park returned to Korea on June 18th.  After his return to Korea, a Korean fan club “Underground” has taken the lead.  Lee Minah (32), who had previously translated information given by international fans into Korean, did a live tweeting of Jay Park’s arrival at the airport.  She said, “My tweets were instantly translated into different languages. I gained more than 1,000 followers by the time I came back home.”

With Jay Park’s return to Korea, some fans put an end to “ilko” and began to confess they’re proud fans of Jay Park.  Moon Chang-Yul (22), who went to the airport with the message “Jaebeom’s nam-fan (male fan)” written on his forehead, had cut his final exams to go to the airport.  He wanted to show that Jay Park has male fans, too.  He felt Jay Park might get blamed less if he did that. With Korean fans standing in the center of the fandom, the interests toward Korea and the Korean language have been increased.  Choi Soonjoo (40) said, “After his return to Korea, there were increased cases in which overseas fans include Korean words in their tweets such as ‘bum morning’ or ‘bum night’.  Their interests in Jay Park have extended into interests towards Korea, Korean culture, and Korean music.”  An administrative staffer of the Brazilian fan club for Drunken Tiger JK is also Jay Park fan; SNS has become the Silk Road for cultural exchange.

SNS as ‘Silk Road for cultural exchange’

After he came back to Korea, the “Jay Effect” has commenced full-scale operations. The song “Count on Me”, a remake of American pop star B.o.B.’s hit song “Nothin’ on You”, topped seven major Korean digital music charts, and ranked high in all categories related to music profits such as ringtones and album sales, etc.  These figures surpass those made by JYP entertainment’s singers, 2PM, Wonder Girls, and 2AM.  His follow-up songs, “I Want To Cry” and “Hype Nation” have also been big hits. [Translator’s note: I think Mr. Go meant to write “Doin’ Good”, not “Hype Nation”.]

International fans also took part in this.  Korean fans passed to them a manual on how to create accounts so that they can purchase music files from Korean music sites.  When it seemed impossible for them to create accounts, Korean fans made a purchase for international fans utilizing the PayPal (internet money exchange service) system.  Korean and international fans also worked together to report illegal streaming run by anti-fans.

On August 7th, Jay Park finally held a comeback stage at the “2010 Summer Week&T” festival.  Jay Park mentioned on that day, “It feels very good to be back on the stage after a long time.  I hadn’t had enough time to prepare for it so my performance might have not been so good. I’ll come back with a better performance next time.”  His next stage performances will be at the fan meets to be held on August 28th and 29th in Hwajeong Gymnasium at Korea University.

[EXTRA]

After posting our translation of his SisaIN article, Mr. Go gave JayPark.net a shout out in his blog! Translated message below.

I wrote an article “Jay Park’s digital fandom that has utilized TGIF for better communication”… It has already been translated into English and uploaded online. (It will be uploaded in two parts and this is the first part that has been uploaded.)

It’s up at jaypark.net, but I’ll upload it to “Dogsul Dot Com”, too.

The picture shown below is the collection of photos of Jay Park’s fans that I gathered on Twitter.

Picture omitted.

They also sent in the questions they want to ask Jay Park, and I’ll do an interview using these questions.  (I’ll post the original Korean version of the article when the article gets uploaded in SisaIN homepage.)