Thanks to my distrust of weather forecasts, I found myself shivering in Seoul last week. Though various weather sites predicted lows of 1-degree Celsius, I still insisted on dressing up like it was spring, foregoing heavy socks and tights in favor of loafers and cotton leggings.
Whether you switch on your TV or your radio, you can’t escape the way Koreans are Koreanizing the world. Koreanovelas are now a mainstay on Philippine television. And who hasn’t heard “Gangnam Style” of Korean pop musician Psy? K-Pop is practically coming out of our ears, and has become as omnipresent as that most international of Korean brands—Samsung.
Late Friday afternoon, the members of 2PM greeted the Filipino media with prim smiles and waves, the occasional giddy shrieks echoing outside Manila Hotel’s Sampaguita room. In front of the cameras, the “beastly idols” of K-pop cut quite dashing figures in white three-piece suits that hid their notoriously toned torsos. But off-cam, the twentysomething gentlemen were more like playful young pups, just as cute, and maybe twice as naughty.
It’s 2 p.m. in sunny Bangkok. Just inches away, Thai-American K-pop idol Nichkhun is slouched comfortably in his seat, lips curved into that closed-mouth smile of his. He has just finished shooting his ad campaign for Bench at the ultrahip Chamni’s Eye studio in Suan Luang district, and we only have a few minutes to chat before he goes to rehearse for a solo show downtown.
Bench recently signed up and brought in two members of South Korea’s pop boy band Super Junior to endorse the brand.
If you are into Korean pop culture and follow every K-Pop boy and girl band, you need to see this quirky, artsy, hole-in-the-wall coffee place in one of the known business districts.
As of last count, Korean actor Lee Min Ho has 60 pairs of shoes and a huge number of coats in his closet. He may need some of those shoes soon, but the coats are probably useless when he visits the Philippines before the year ends, as one of Bench’s newest Korean endorsers.
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