Bae Yong Joon 배용준

[jeunn]

Moments said:

Hi Jeunn & DamSu, yeah, I did read abt that particular articles too, and chose to ignore those groundless comments as it's not worth our time. Our beloved man has too many interests and his own businesses to care of. Is not surprising if he chose to retire from showbiz and decided to continue developing newcomers. But but I will miss him terribly

[jeunn]

Галина Малая said:Wrote you, you can make if Bae step aside from the actor's career. And now I understand what all the same I look forward to his new work. Let me forgive namdonsen Bae, but such it is illogical Russian Nun ... 

[jeunn]

dr25 said: Morning!

A kind Soopy started this thread as a tribute for late Legend PD-nim. I thought you may care to leave something there.
http://forums.soompi.com/discussion/2019643/0/#Form_Comment

P.S I don't know if you remember me but I came here before. Sorry for not being able to fulfill my promise of a photoshopped version of BYJ & Lee drinking coffee together. I never developed the needed skills to do it.

Stay blessed, see ya around

[Guest iluvugudbye]

ikaind said: Hello, meyta! I'm from Indonesia, too..dari Bandung. I also like him. I always visit his thread here every day and you should know if Dam Su as a paparazzi because she always updates about BYJ (sorry Dam Su) We also met at Lee Ji Ah's thread because we love this couple8->

[Guest meytamaria]

Dam-Su

said:

Hey Meyta. :-h so far, we haven't seen any photo of our MAN's family until now. wuri Yong Joon is a very private person. he doesn't share much about his family. but it was said before that wuri Yong Joon looks like his mom. from there, you can now already imagine what she looks like. >- >-

[Guest iluvugudbye]

meytamaria said: Hi Dam-Su... That's OK then. I think I'm the only one here who haven't seen them. Hahaa... Yes, I do understand why wuri Yong Joon (btw, what's the meaning of wuri?) doesn't want to share much about his family.  It's his private life.  So let it be...  Ooh, he looks like his mom?  That's why sometimes he looks so beautiful, especially with his long hair.  :x
Oh yeah, yesterday I've been reading much article about April Snow in the early postings.  And then I decided to see it again last night.  Wuoooo.... In Soo is so handsome.  You know, last night I finally have a better understanding about the story of the film and the role of In Soo.  Previously, I kinda had a feeling of reject about the role of In Soo.  For me it's not my Yong Joon.  Yeah, that was such a naive feeling of me since it was just a role he played.  Hahaha... And then I feel relieved again when I read an article and he said that as Yong Joon, he would never do such thing as In Soo did.  Yeahhh, that's my Yong Joon =D>.

Same thing when I watched Untold Scandal at the first time. OMG, I got shock, really shock @-), especially for the several bed scenes.  Is this really Yong Joon?  For the rest of the film I could not have a better understanding about the story.  And then when I watched again for the second time (after a I watched a video of Yong Joon being interviewed about this film and the reason why he chose to play that role eventhough his manager has already rejected it for the reason that the role didn't match with Yong Joon image), I finally feel a lot better.  And Yong Joon as Cho Woon is really handsome there.  I like watching him wearing those ancient Korean costume.
Here I go again, talking to much.... )  Please forgive me Have a nice day Bae sisters... Love you all so much! 

[Guest meytamaria]

Please help, there are many links and pictures from the early postings that no longer exist.  

[willenette]

class="cb b15"Kdrama Birthdays: Mark Your August Calendar

(skipped unrelated.....)

It's time to start thinking of fun ways to celebrate your favorite kdrama actors who have birthdays in August. Here's a list of those celebrities about to turn one year older.

August 29: Bae Yong Joon is considered one of the first kkoniman (flower boy handsome) idols. It was his performance in "Winter Sonata" that helped set the Hallyu wave in motion. The award-winning 40-year-old actor can also be seen in "Dream High."

Did we miss anyone? Let us know.

source : KDRamaStars

[Guest iluvugudbye]

Got these from BYJ Gallery shared by sis Arayo. much thanks for sharing...  ^^ ^^ ^^

[sCAN] 여성 주간지 8/13호 Woman Weekly






관의 옆에서 눈물을 글썽이고, 7시간 쭉 직립 부동으로 ......

On the side of the tube's tearful, and 7 hours straight upright ... ...
I only used google translate to get the gist. i hope this article will get translated to english. but from what i understood, it seems it's saying that wuri Yong Joon (?) stayed beside PD Kim's coffin with tearful eyes standing for 7 hours straight.

Note: corrections are welcome. thanks. ^^

[Guest meytamaria]

Dam-Su said:Got these from BYJ Gallery shared by sis Arayo. much thanks for sharing...  ^^ ^^ ^^

[Guest iluvugudbye]

meytamaria said: Dear Sis Dam-Su...Thanks for sharing this to us.  How lucky we are to have you here ^^What? @-) Standing for 7 hours straight with tearful eyes?  I can feel how sad he is  (

[ikaind]

[willenette]

***Can't wait for Bae Yong Joon's next project.....................I miss him!

[gabrielaRO]

I  wish I could do something for him,but I can*t.So sorry.

[Guest iluvugudbye]

This is an excerpt of the article from BYJ Gallery shared by sis Arayo (much thanks for sharing. ^^ ^^ ^^ ) which i posted about wuri Yong Joon @ PD Kim's wake. this is not 100% accurate translation coz i only used google translate to get the gist of it. any corrections are welcome. but from what i understood, it seems actor Song Min Hyung (59) revealed that wuri Yong Joon was wearing a corset(?) during the wake(?). he was worried about our MAN and told him not to overdo it (the standing perhaps) and take a rest. However, our MAN said this: "My father is already gone, how can I rest." and continued to stand for 7 hours straight.

im not sure how true that "wearing a corset" statement is. but if it's true.... that makes me worried. anyway, here's an excerpt of the article in Korean.
------------------
그는 헤르니아로 허리를 아프게하고 있어서,

코르셋을 한 채로 참여하고 있었습니다.
그러니까, 쭉 서고 있을 수 있는 상태가 아니었을 것인 것입니다.


내가 걱정해서 「무리하지 않고, 쉬세요」라고 해도,

용준은 「아버님이 돌아가셨는데, 어째서 내가 쉴 수 있습니까」라고

7시간의 사이, 직립 부동이었습니다.
-------------------

Bae Yong Joon sightings:

these infos were shared by sis Barbie on her blog. again, i used google translate to get the gist. not a 100% accurate translation.

July 24: he was wearing black hat, glasses and all black outfit. a Bae fan/s who was/were there told him: "Take care and be happy." he answered, "Yes." and shook her/their hand/s.

July 27: he was spotted again wearing red checkered shirt, dark green hat and black pants. wuri Yong Joon sat on his Mercedes Benz and went home. there were 4 Bae fans present at that time.

July 29: he went to the salon, wearing glasses, light purple shirt and beige pants. he kindly and gently greeted the fan/s.

-------------------------
From: iloveyon blog

7月24日 水曜日
in Seoul

黒い帽子から下まで黒尽くめの姿で黒ぶちのめがね。
家族が’いつもお元気でお幸せになってほしいです’ということを韓国語で頑張って話しかけたら

’はい’と答えてくれて 握手までしてくれたと。
お元気そうな姿で何より！
-------------------------------------------
7月27日 土曜日
in Seoul

いチェック模様のシャツに濃い緑色の帽子、黒いズボン。

お迎えに来たベンツの助手席に乗って帰ったと。

家族は4人。＾＾

ドリカムツアーより
-------------------------------------------
From: tour company

2013年07月29日 18時53分 発行


こんにちは、ドリカムツアーです！

本日☆さんは美容室にいらっしゃいました。　 髪の毛を格好よくされて、サングラス、
薄い紫のシャツにベージュのパンツと言うお姿で優しく親切に挨拶をしてくださいました。

[Guest Moments1430291949]

Hi Hi to all our baesisters. :-h

Hey DamSu, as usual, thank you so much for sharing wuri Yong Joon's news here. It really make my heart ache reading the news of our man standing for 7 hrs at PD Kim's wake. The feeling of lost and sadness to have lost someone so close to him....

It also got me worried in reading he was wearing a corset at the wake? His old injuries have resurfaced again?? ( Perhaps and hopefully he is getting better now with the recent sightings. Cheers! [-O< [-O<

[Jane]

G'day  Dam-Su and every Baesister here

[gabrielaRO]

I can*t see him like this,it hurt so much,if I could do something for him....so sorry,and for PD the same too.

[Guest iluvugudbye]

Moments said: Hi Hi to all our baesisters.

Hey DamSu, as usual, thank you so much for sharing wuri Yong Joon's news here. It really make my heart ache reading the news of our man standing for 7 hrs at PD Kim's wake. The feeling of lost and sadness to have lost someone so close to him....

It also got me worried in reading he was wearing a corset at the wake? His old injuries have resurfaced again?? Perhaps and hopefully he is getting better now with the recent sightings. Cheers!

[Guest iluvugudbye]

here's another old article about wuri Yong Joon. i like how the author described our MAN in here. :)

Bae Yong Joon: The image of South Korea

source: Stella Guan blog



[skipped]

Face value

Rather than digging deeply into the economic and political influences that had to be in place in order for the Wave to take shape, I would like to take a look at a far more obvious, far more immediate quality apparent in recent Korean entertainment: Its aesthetics. More specifically, I want to examine the image more responsible than any other for selling Korean culture to nations around the world: the face of Bae Yong-joon.

In 1955, the French critic Roland Barthes wrote "The Face of Garbo," an essay that would became a touchstone for all studies of movie star images that followed. In a transformation straight out of a Hollywood movie script, Greta Gustaffson, an unassuming young woman from Sweden, became Greta Garbo, the Divine, an icon of beauty and desire, and a symbol of the magnetism of motion pictures.

Although other stars achieved notable success in the years that followed, none inspired the same hypnotic fascination that Garbo did. Barthes suggests that this is because Garbo appeared at a particular moment when the cinema still held a kind of religious or mystical quality. Garbo became a symbol of the magic of the movies.

However, despite her legendary popularity, Garbo's reign was brief, lasting less than two decades. By the late 1930s, she had gone into self-imposed exile, choosing anonymity over being forced to grow old in the public eye. At the same time, the technological advances that brought with them the introduction of sound and color to motion pictures changed films forever, replacing the ecstatic, devotional quality of the silent film experience with a more action-driven mode of spectatorship, making it all but impossible for a star to represent the kind of abstract idea that Garbo once did.

Some might find it surprising that a latter-day counterpart to Garbo would ever emerge at all, let alone, from anywhere other than Hollywood, and not from the cinema, but from television, but this is exactly what has happened in Korea. However, whereas Garbo's face was the symbol of an era in which cinema, an art created by the marriage of technology and industrialization, eased the shift from the traditional to modern, Bae Yong-joon's face represents a movement in the opposite direction, a longing, nostalgic glance back at a bygone era from one in which entertainment has become little more than empty repetition and in which every action, every emotion is telegraphed to the viewer.

If Garbo, for Barthes, represented an "idea," then the face of Bae Yong-joon is something even more basic: It is a medium -- the canvas onto which the idea may be represented. Like Garbo, he is at once unique and universal. His features, his actions, like Garbo's, blur the distinction between the masculine and the feminine, between the human and the divine. And like Garbo's, Bae's onscreen presence is not so much a performance as it is an attitude, like the posture of a figure immortalized in a work of art.

From actor to essence

Bae has become the personification of a love always desired, eternally sought after, but never experienced. His name no longer refers merely to a person, the actor, but conjures up an essence that is both separate from the characters he has played, and inextricably bound up with them, too. Here again, Bae resembles no one so much as Garbo, whose name became synonymous with an air of mystery, and whose attraction, as Barthes suggests, emerged from the interplay between her own face and its idealization as crafted by makeup artists and cinematographers.

Garbo, in her many roles, always remained Garbo; the public never lost sight of the performer-as-star, not because of a lack of talent or conviction, but rather because her overriding charisma insistently revealed the star behind the performance. Indeed, Garbo is not so much remembered for acting, for performing, as she is for being Garbo, for what early film critics referred to as "posing."

Like Garbo, Bae captivates audiences not with his performances, but rather, with his face, his image. Devotees, overcome by a near-religious fervor, flock in droves to see, to adore him; they make pilgrimages to attend his public appearances as they would to witness some miraculous apparition. His meetings with his public -- his "family," as he calls them -- are met with breathless reverence. According to one newspaper report, one Japanese woman gasped after finally seeing her idol in the flesh, "No I can die happy."

Interestingly enough, Bae's popularity is not, like that of Kwon Sang-woo or Song Seung-hun, based on his image as a sex symbol. In fact, many Japanese fans were disappointed after seeing his performance as the lascivious Jo-won in E. J-Yong's "Untold Scandal." For these fans, as is the case with many others, Bae Yong-joon, or Yonsama (a title of honor, much like Garbo's own title, "the Divine"), as he is known in Japan, represents a different kind of masculine ideal.

Bae has claimed time and again to be neither a particularly good actor nor unusually handsome. He modestly attributes his popularity to the power of the programs and films in which he appears, readily sharing the limelight with his co-stars and directors. This humility, this tendency toward self-effacement, further adds to the public's confusion over just who the striking young man with unruly hair, soulful eyes, and easy smile really is, and serves to further cement the bond that connects them to their idol.

In other words, because Bae's public persona is built around not words and actions, but attitudes and poses, his image remains somehow unfinished. It beomes, then, the work of fans to fill in the gaps, to create stories and fantasies of their own to complete the picture, just as it takes the Choi Ji-woo character to put the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle in place in "Winter Sonata."

Indeed, the public's perception of Bae is precisely that of an image, not an actor or a performer. Although Bae is far too critical of himself in claiming to be neither uniquely talented or exceptionally handsome -- no one could have achieved the kind of success that he has without considerable talent and good looks -- his observations do hold true in some sense: The reason fans are so drawn to him is clearly because, on some level, his overwhelming public persona is one based on the fact that, because they play such an active role in constructing the persona of Bae Yong-joon, they feel as if they actually know and understand him.

From persona to product

By all accounts, little is known of Bae's private life. This fact separates him from most of today's celebrities (certainly the American ones) who thrive on media attention. His image is conspicuously absent from scandal sheets, but can be found virtually everywhere else.

His likeness graces everything from socks to refrigerator magnets; from crystal plates to teddy bears -- objects sold to Koreans and to tourists alike. His image was immortalized on a series of Japanese and Korean postage stamps, issued, coincidentally, at a moment of tense political crisis between the two nations.

His face has launched at least a thousand ships and probably just as many airplanes, as fans from across Asia have traveled to Korea to visit the sites of favorite scenes television programs and movies to experience again, this time as active participants, the excitement they once felt as viewers.

Dating services that specialize in introducing Japanese women to Korean men have sprung up on the internet, and plastic surgeons report a significant growth in popularity of Korean stars as models for facial reconstruction. "Winter Sonata" has inspired an astonishing number of fan-authored fiction books in Japan, and has created close-knit communities amongst individuals who might never have known of one another's existence otherwise.

In fact, a magnet featuring Bae's photo graces the refrigerator of my own mother, who is the proud owner of all sorts of "Winter Sonata" -- and Bae Yong-joon -- related memorabilia, thanks to the tireless efforts of my friend Mac. Mom swears that she is Bae's No. 1 fan in the United States, although I think the competition for that title might be more aggressive than she realizes.

Both universal and unique

Korean dramas take as their themes common experiences such as unrequited love, economic hardship, and familial discord. These simple stories, with their focus on struggles between good and evil characters, are like fairy tales for adults, and thus, can appeal to audiences across socio-cultural divides. Because of their temporal structures, they hearken back to an earlier time, both in the lives of the characters (they often begin in the past) and in those of viewers (their "once upon a time" structure places the viewer in the position of a child, listening intently to a story).

As the narrative develops over a period of time, viewers become increasingly involved, eventually arriving at a point at which they may even see the frequent flashbacks that punctuate these works as not merely those of the characters, but, in fact, recollections of their own, given that they have several days or weeks watching the show, and as such, they are "remembering" this material too. The boundary between personal experience and viewing experience begins to erode away.

More significant than any of these considerations, though, at least for foreign viewers, is Korea's own status as "forgotten" nation. In his work on the subject, cultural critic Aaron Han Joon Magnan-Park argues after a long history of being overlooked by the rest of the world, Korea has finally achieved the means (the Korean Wave) by which to go from being a "forgotten" nation to an "unforgettable" nation, and making "the Koreanization of world culture possible."

Magnan-Park's observations are particularly valuable for understanding the appeal of the Korean drama: Because viewers outside of Korea, including those in Japan, know so little about the country's culture, Korea, the nation and the setting of the drama, is both an "everywhere" -- a space defined not by geography, but by time -- and at the same time, a locale with fascinatingly different customs and behavior.

Korea, then, is both a real place -- a country that triumphantly emerged from the jaws of financial and political crisis to become one of the most important economic and artistic presences of the 21st century -- and a fictional site, populated by beautiful, polite people and filled with intrigue and excitement. Fans flock to the real Korea in search of the fictional one, but are evidently never disappointed in discovering this difference.

Here, again, it is important to recognize that the true power of the Korean Wave rests not only in its potential for economic exploitation -- that it is not a merely commercial venture. From a more distant perspective one may clearly see all of the exciting possibilities for cultural education and exchange that the Wave has provided -- capable of enticing legions of fans to learn more about the history, culture, cuisine, and language of the country they have only recently "discovered" through the magic of television.

What image, then, could better represent not only this phenomenon, but also the nation itself, than the face of Bae Yong-joon, which, like the Korean settings of his dramas, blends a reassuring familiarity and singular attractiveness? Bae's face, at once impassive and yet filled with the potential for emotion, both eternal and ethereal, has emblazoned itself on the minds of his adoring public and sparked a greater interest in Korean culture than anyone has ever seen before.

Korea has become the dream factory that Hollywood once was, and although the Korean Wave may one day fade from memory, its effects will remain. Korea is no longer, and will never again be a forgotten nation, and one of its most lasting images will most certainly be that of Bae Yong-joon.

By Robert L. Cagle