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Artist News Top Stories
Korean pop phenomenon breaks career for military service
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 12 October 2011
South Korean pop singer Rain, once dubbed the “Justin Timberlake of Asia” (when that meant “really big pop star” and not “sometime actor trying to rescue a dying social network”) has stepped back from his music career to go and do two years military service. Hundreds of tearful fans, some from Japan and China, watched as the singer gave a military salute before disappearing into an army base in Uijeongbu, a city north of Seoul.
All able-bodied men in South Korea are obliged to do two years of military service, and while some athletes can get out of it, in the main entertainers are not exempt. Some celebrities have tried to circumvent the system in recent years, though suffered a considerable public back lash for doing so, meaning most now accept some army time as an inevitability. Instead, they generally try to spin it into positive publicity, of them “doing their bit” for the country. As a result, some have managed to come back from two years out of the spotlight and to continue their careers where they left off, though such an absence will, presumably, have an impact on their popularity abroad.
Rain, whose real name is Jung Ji-hoon and who, at 29, will be older than many of his counterparts starting their military service this week, told his fans: “Thank you for the ten years of love”.
