なぜ韓国人は、嫌われるのか？

Choi min-shik is a name to watch. So too, Jeon Ji-Hyun, pop singer turned actress, and star of last year's successful "Il Mare", who plays the lead in the current recordbreaker "Wild Beauty". "Silence of the Lambs" director Jonathan Demme's next picture, "The Truth About Charlie", a remake of 1963's thriller "Charade" with Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant, sees Joong-Hoon Park playing alongside Thandie Newton, Mark Wahlberg and Tim Robbins. If that wasn't enough to qualify Korea as the hottest of Asian hotties, the word is that for Corey Yuen's new project with Columbia-can't-get-enough-of-China-Pictures, popular Korean TV sitcom actor Seong Seung heun will play a lead role as Taiwanese actress Shu Qi's boyfriend.

And in a surprising announcement on the TV front, Hong Kong director Wong Kar- wai's company Jet Tone, is about to co-produce 100 episodes of drama with SBS (Seoul Broadcasting Services), featuring Korean and mainland Chinese talent. It's said that Kar-wai may even direct a couple of episodes himself. Kar-wai has been location scouting in Korea, on and off, for his latest effort 2047, but then Kar-wai does everything on and off in as much of Asia as he feels the need to. Negotiations have been ongoing for over a year to lure Japanese idol Takuya Kimura back to his project and the plan was, and still might be, to shoot with him in Korea. Last November, on the night of the Beijing premier of "In The Mood for Love", Kar-wai told me, "Korean faces are the ones to export right now, there's a lot of talent there." Kar wai is a firm fan of Korea's creative wares, and believes it's only a matter of time before one of their directors signs on for a U.S. project.

Kang Jegyu ("Shiri"), has already been approached, but thinks the timing is not quite right. He feels it necessary to keep the momentum going in Korea before he leaps across the pond. And Kar wai thinks it's not talent that's held the Korean stallion from going international more quickly, but more a question of what's in, or rather, what isn't, in a name. "You know, I think it's quite simple," he says with a grin. "The problem for Korean actors/directors is that nobody in the rest of Asia can remember their names. They're very hard to remember and they all sound quite alike." Surely increasing exposure will change that in the way it did with certain Chinese directors. "Perhaps," says Kar wai, "but they should really just get a name like Johnny, or Jimmy, just throw a western name in there and that would help everyone." Who knows, this time next year Jeon Ji-hyun may be J.Hy to the rest of the world.