How Rain Introduced K-Pop to the West

Rain at 18 years-old in an undated photo from Rain’s Instagram.

Anticipation was building across Koreatown’s 32nd street as word spread that Rain would perform for two nights at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

"There is definitely a sense of Rain-mania washing across the 32nd Street land here in Manhattan," observed Minya Oh, a D.J. from New York's Hot 97 radio station, in an interview with the New York Times. 

New York’s Koreatown is small. The neighborhood comprises just one street at the intersection of 32nd Street and 6th Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. But in 2006, when promoters announced that Rain would perform at Madison Square Garden, New York’s Korean population was in the process of doubling to 20,000 residents.

Rain wasn’t a household name in North America, but he sold out both nights at the Garden. His popularity, particularly amongst Asian Americans, reflected a "multidirectional flow of cultural goods around the world” that scholar Henry Jenkins hailed as "new pop cosmopolitanism.”  

Rain’s performance in New York was not his first performance in the U.S., but it would be his most significant. This concert would make or break his entrance into the American music industry, and hopefully begin a cultural exchange envisioned by Jinyoung Park, the CEO of Rain’s label JYP Entertainment.

Rain was candid in interviews that he wanted to be the first Asian pop star to break through in North America. He was, as The New York Times hailed him, “the ambassador” for Asia. 

"The United States is the dominant music market," he told the Times. "I would really like to see an Asian make it there. I would like that Asian to be me.”

Park considered Rain’s performance at The Theater at Madison Square Garden as an “introduction” to the music industry. Rain was working on an English album, and Park estimated that Rain would be proficient in English, plus well-known enough, to debut in America by October. 

Yet by October, plans for the English album were shelved, and JYP Entertainment staff chose to focus solely on Asia. 

In 2009, the scholar Hyunjoon Shin wrote about Rain’s failed attempt to become the first Asian popstar to succeed in America. “At least until this moment, Korean pop had not achieved significant success in the US market,” he stated. Rain’s attempt, by his estimation, was the most high-profile campaign to bring K-Pop stateside. The campaign’s failure reflected the challenges the industry would face over the next ten years as it retooled itself for a Western market.

Guiding Shin’s research was a question that I’m still grappling with today. 

“What happens,” he asked, “When pop culture from the non-periphery tries to intrude into the center?” 

In September 2005, just a few months prior to Rain’s performance in New York, Jimmy Jeung, Rain’s manager, told Time Asia, “We’re targeting the global market. Rain’s too big for Asia.”  

This belief was spearheaded by Park who was making a dogged attempt to debut Rain in the West. “Only after achieving success in the best [biggest] stage, that is, the American market, can Rain consolidate his position as Asia’s number one,” Park argued to a local newspaper. “It is essential to enter into the American market to conquer the Asian market with its huge population.” 

Park was confident that Rain would be accepted because of his talents. In interviews, he stated that Rain’s music was “sensitive and delicate” and his choreography was “more crisp” than American pop stars. 

Park studied American pop stars for the majority of his career. He debuted in 1994 with “Blue City”, an album that spawned one massive hit “Please Don’t Leave”, a song that he still breaks out in retrospective performances. Park performed in see-through vinyl costumes and described himself as a "crazy, lunatic hip-hop artist from the Ivy League" of South Korea. 

But Park was a better businessman than pop star. In 1998, after receiving backing from wealthy investors, he opened a training academy to create K-Pop idols, and then JYP Entertainment. When he found Rain [then known by his birth name Jung Ji-hoon], the teen was hungry for success.

Rain was christened with his stage name because when Park looked into the boy’s eyes, he saw sadness. "I was told that when I'm dancing I give off the feeling of a rainy day," Rain said.

Park remembers Rain’s “hunger” most from when he met the teen. Rain was living in a one-bedroom apartment in Seoul with his dying mother when he signed to JYP. Rain told several stories over the years of their abject poverty, of sharing a space with cockroaches  and eating crumbs to survive. He landed at JYP’s doorstep after 18 failed auditions. Following four hours of a grueling audition, Rain was signed. 

"As soon as I signed Rain, he asked me to help his mother and explained the situation," Park recalled. "I was like, 'Yo, get in the car.' We went to his house, and I saw his mom lying there on this cold floor. We got a big surgery done on her. But then she insisted on no more treatment. She wanted me to spend my money on her son. He would tell her, 'Yo, Mom, J.Y.P. has enough money to support both of us.' She passed away a year before he debuted."

Rain debuted in 2002 with “Bad Guy”, a track that Park produced. Rain was an anomaly in South Korea at the time as a soloist. Next to BoA, the most popular K-Pop acts were groups like H.O.T. or Shinhwa. Rain stood apart from the other groups not just in size, but also because he could portray sexuality and innocence, often in the span of one performance. 

Rain was a superstar once “It's Raining” hit two years later. The album sold 1 million copies in a year and won him the Main Prize at the Golden Disc Awards. The following year, Rain announced his first tour “Rainy Day”, which eventually transformed into a world tour before landing in New York. 

But Park had been laying the groundwork for Rain’s U.S. debut long prior to his arrival. Shin reported that Park had planned his breakthrough as early as 2003, and as Park began to write and produce songs for Black American musicians such as Omarion, LIl Kim, and Tyrese, he would also introduce them to Rain’s music. In 2005, around the same time that Rain performed at an Asian cultural festival in Los Angeles, he also performed at the MTV Music Video Awards, one of the most popular and important stages for young artists. 

By early February, Rain was at MTV’s Total Request Live in Times Square to promote his performance at the Garden. Outside fans flanked the studio’s buildings with signs and self-made shirts. But in the television studio, I wondered what MTV producers and TRL hosts made of the South Korean. He was performing “It’s Raining”, a song that to untrained ears sounds paradoxically strangely sexual and wholesome. 

“I’m so excited,” he said with a laugh as he was interviewed with Park. “I’m so excited to have a concert at Madison Square Garden and to be in New York.” He nodded his head. “I love,” he repeated himself as he tried to remember the phrase, “I love you!” 

It wasn’t just North American media that had come to see this spectacle, though. At a press conference before the performance, Korean media, too, were present. Rain was dressed like a young professional in jeans, a tan floral print tie, cream dress shirt, and matching brown jacket. His English language skills, which he said he’d been practicing day and night, were minimal. This often led to stateside media to dismiss him as a caricature, as we will see later with the reviews of Rian’s concert. But when he spoke Korean, like in an interview for SBS Showbiz, Rain’s charms as an artist who was both cool and gloomy were visible. 

The sold out concerts brought over 11,000 fans to see Rain. This was a point that Park was extremely proud of. “My heart is thumping. Famous big-time songwriters and producers come looking for Rain every night,” a breathless Park told The Chosun Libo in a phone call from New York. “The interest in the music industry here shows that Rain has gone way beyond what we could have imagined.”

Back home, South Koreans hoped that Rain’s concert would translate into a boom for the burgeoning Hallyu Wave. “If we convert the future value of just the three singers Rain, Seven and BoA, they mean at least about W2 trillion for the economy,” Go Jung-min of the Samsung Economic Research Institute projected to The Chosun Libo. “These are the figures when we just add up the tangible profits from concerts, album releases and endorsement or commercial deals.”

Rain’s performance at the Garden was different from other “Rainy Day” tour stops. 

He performed tracks from “It’s Raining” and dedicated a song to his late mother. At one point, he told the audience, “I’m lonely and I need a girlfriend.” The girl he brought on stage was given a bouquet and teddy bear – the kind of fan service K-Pop is known for, before it was even given a name. 

But this performance also featured Park, who was not present at other concerts. Likely because Rain wasn’t fluent English, Park, whose English is flawless, took the stage frequently to serve as a hype man and MC between outfit changes. He even performed some of his own songs. 

In a move to showcase his clout, Park brought special guests for Rain’s performance: Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, teen pop star JoJo and Omarion from the Black boy group B2K. Omarion looked bewildered, but Combs appeared honored to be included. 

“I just have to come see this for myself. I have so much respect for the Asian American movement going on right,” he said. “I have so much respect for my Asian American brothers and sisters. I’m a fan of the culture” 

Park beamed onstage standing next to the superstar. “We want to connect Asia and the United States. I think we can bring something nice to the United States and I think definitely I can bring back some great stuff with me,” he said and tapped Combs on the shoulder, “to Asia.”

But critics were unimpressed. Jon Paralleles of the New York Times assailed the show in a review that the Shin alleged, due to his unique access to Rain’s team, damaged JYP Entertainment’s belief that Rain could succeed in the U.S.

“Seeing him onstage was like watching old MTV videos dubbed into Korean,” Parale dismissed. Parale’s review descended into micro-aggression when he wrote: 

“Slender and wiry, Rain, known in Korean as Bi (pronounced "bee"), also acts in soap operas. He's a product of the globalization that pumps American products through worldwide media channels. People who fear mass-market threats to local styles need look no further for an example. If there's anything beyond the lyrics that's particularly Korean about Rain's songs, it's not obvious.” 

Parale’s review reflected a broader shrug from the American music industry. Jim Faber, of the New York Daily News, dismissed Rain’s music as “soft and dewy” and felt that “he’ll have to toughen his style”  to succeed in the U.S. Billboard also asserted that there is nothing “Korean” about Rain’s music. 

The reviews were damning, but there was one report that would predict the future of K-Pop, and music as a whole. Seventeen years later, I think it is the most important assertion to come from Rain’s time in the West. 

Following Rain’s concerts in New York, he was honored by Time as one of the 100 Most Influential People of 2006. “Pop culture no longer moves simply in a single direction, from the West to the rest of the world,” Brian Walsh wrote. “Instead, it's a global swirl, no more constrained by borders than the weather. Rain, after all, falls on everyone.” 

"The United States is the dominant music market," Rain told the NY Times. "I would really like to see an Asian make it there. I would like that Asian to be me.” Cr: Rain’s Instagram.

In the years since Rain’s New York debut, JYP Entertainment has finally broken into the American market, bending the music industry to its will. Stray Kids, the most prominent group to debut under JYP, recently notched their third number one album on the Billboard Hot 100, while TWICE, one of the company’s most popular girl groups, is embarking on their first stadium tour. 

But while TWICE is continuing their first stadium tour in the U.S. this week, Rain hasn’t returned to the States except for one performance in 2009. In August, though, that will change: Rain will return to headline KCON in Los Angeles. 

At 42, Rain is no longer an ingénue and is less likely to win over new fans. But Rain’s returning with the wisdom of over twenty years spent in the K-Pop industry. He’s a legend whose music is covered by groups like Stray Kids and BTS, who were the first to finally break into the mainstream. 

Rain would not be the first idol to succeed here, but he would be one of many who built the foundation for what K-Pop has become. In the years following his attempt, the soloist BoA, the first Korean to succeed in Japan, a second JYP act named the Wonder Girls, and many other Koreans idols would hedge their bets here. All would return home a little more shell-shocked and discouraged than when they arrived. 

Time was running out for Rain by 2007. He would soon be leaving for a mandatory military enlistment and in the years that followed, he would be pushed out from the center of K-Pop, too.

At the Singapore stop for “Rain’s Coming”, Rain admitted he had doubts about how far he could go. Unlike the staff at JYP Entertainment, Rain admittedly never believed he would succeed in the United States. "He thinks he's not good at all," Park told the Times before Rain’s performance. "He's always worried. He thinks he's not blessed or talented. He thinks people are being fooled, that it's an illusion. He wants to catch that illusion.” 

Whether Rain believes he was able to do so has never been revealed. Instead, he focused on Asia. He built a family, and opened his own label. For the most part, his American dreams were forgotten. By the time he hit Singapore, Rain was likely already past them. 

“I am not sure whether I can succeed in this world,” Rain said somberly near the end of his show. “But I will try my best.”