Earlier this year international action star Jackie Chan had been making some unusual appearances in the South Korean media. First, on the red carpet for Police Story 2013 he blurted out “I’m half Korean!” Although it was later revealed to be a metaphorical sentiment lost in translation, the statement ruffled some feathers back in China.
Later that month, Chan appeared on a South Korean variety show where he confessed to having a love affair with a Korean woman for eight years in his younger days of working as a stuntman. So why is Jackie Chan showing so much love for Korea these days?
Let’s just say if I asked you to name five things that aren’t Jackie Chan and you said K-pop, you’d be wrong.
It was revealed on 10 March that over the past few years Jackie Chan and associates have been hard at work constructing this new group. Chan himself is said to have been very hands-on in all aspects from member selection, training, and album production.
A spokesperson from the upcoming group revealed, “The work towards a formal debut is complete. All the passion and sweat that has been put in over the years has gone into making this a debut that will leave a strong impression in the minds of fans.”
The group’s name is JJCC which I really hope stands for “Jackie Jackie Chan Chan.” It is said to consist of five men in their 20s, four of them South Korean and one Chinese. All men are over 180cm (5’11”).
In recent years K-pop has been aggressively targeting an international audience resulting in growing success for the genre. This is clearly a potentially lucrative investment for the 56-year-old martial artist who’s got to be looking for paydays that no longer involve rolling down mountains in a giant plastic ball or getting run over by a hovercraft.
We’ll have to wait and see if Chan’s latest venture pays off when JJCC hits the scene later this month.
Source: Sanspo (Japanese)
Top Image: Wikipedia – Gage Skidmore
Video: YouTube – thejackiechanfansite
▼ If you think he has no place in pop music, then you don’t know Jack…ie.
