If you live in Japan right now, you've probably seen this guy's face on about a million commericals and posters, yet to the average unknowing foreigner you wouldn't think this dude's anything special, right? His name is Bae Yong-joon, poorly katakanized to Pe Yon-Jun「ぺ・ヨンジュン」 and is the media darling of Japan. He's a South Korean actor who stars in the hit imported TV drama 'Winter Sonata' and has become the worshipped idol of millions of middle-aged Japanese housewives who watch his drama every week, buy up anything with his face on it, and is the sole reason for Japan's new-found fascination with neighbouring and inferiority-complexed S.Korea. Japanese people have added the '-sama' ending to his name which is only given to people who are glorified like gods, hence he's often referred as 'Yong-sama'. This sort of thing happened with David Beckham during the worldcup, where everyone and their brother were copying his mohawk cut, but I don't think it compares at all to this Yong-sama juggernaut. I'm just sickened by turning on the morning news everyday and seeing his vacant smiling face and hearing all the news about him. I saw today that Yong-sama came to Japan a few days ago and thousands of housewives came to get a glimpse of him, and a few of the housewives got crushed in the crowd. Apparently Yong-sama in a press conference later on, heard about the injured fans and got a little 'veclempt' as he shed a little tear, and this is the biggest news in Japan this year. Everyone's forgotten about the Niigata earthquake victims from just a few weeks ago, I guess they're all ok now...

I'm all for the friendly relations between S.Korea and Japan though, since I've lived in both countries (Korea for about a year and Japan for more than 2 now) and I know that there's definitely issues from the Korean standpoint that needs resolving that the Japanese have forever been ignoring, so ANY sort of activity going on between the two countries can only be positive. Koreans have been looked down upon by Japanese people for so long and if Yong-sama is their only ambassador, then so be it. I just hope that this Korean fascination just doesn't end as a fascination and that Mr. Yong-joon doesn't just disappear in 6 months without even bringing up at least one issue, although who am I kidding, he's just a (so-called) actor, who is selling out here for the yens. I'd sure like to hear what the Korean people think right now about this, they must be in an uproar.