How Thai rapper Nickhun of 2PM became a K-Pop star

K-Pop is one of those cultural things that I’ve come to categorize as an acquired taste — one that millions of fans around the world have already assimilated, amassed and, on occasion, assaulted during public appearances. When I was given the opportunity by Bench to interview Nickhun Horvejkul of the Korean boy band, 2PM, it was finally my opportunity to figure this phenomenon out by spending 10 minutes staring into the face of K-Pop. And what did I find? The face of K-Pop was, as it turned out, Thai. Not even a drop of Korean blood.

Nickhun (as he is known mononymously, kind of like Madonna) appeared to be as bewildered as I was. “I think about it all the time: How did I get here? How did I learn Korean? How did I adapt to this environment and all these things?” he said when I asked him if it was strange to be plucked out of complete obscurity as an 18-year-old and brought to a completely foreign country in order to become a superstar celebrity. “It feels good, it feels great to be able to go out to another country and be accepted in their society and by the people, you know? And to actually be able to represent who I am — I’m Thai — to be able to represent my land in a foreign country... I think I’m just, overall, really lucky to be me and to be able to have fans all over the world.”

If you’ve ever wondered what your life would be like if some industry big-shot took a look at you and said the magic words: “I’m going to make you famous,” Nickhun’s story is the extreme version of that fantasy. Scouted by Park Jin-young, a producer at JYP Entertainment and 2PM’s current managers, when he was 18 at the Los Angeles Korean Music Festival with some friends, Nickhun’s rise to fame almost didn’t happen because, save for Korean barbecue, he knew nothing about Korean culture. “I had no idea about Korea. I didn’t know any singers, I didn’t know what JYP was and when I was scouted, I was really skeptical about it because I don’t really speak Korean, I didn’t know anybody there. I thought, ‘It’s gonna be a waste of time for me to go there and start a new life.’”

On top of that, he admits that he had no talent whatsoever. “I was so embarrassed because they showed me my audition tape and I was like, ‘Turn this off. This is so embarrassing!’ I was a shy boy. I never wanted to be a singer or an entertainer of any sort, so I couldn’t do anything. I was useless!”

In spite of Google’s usual reliability, I couldn’t find that audition tape. Not that it matters. As raw as he was Park Jin-young, a Korean singer himself, saw something in Nickhun. “At first, he wasn’t gonna pick me because I didn’t have any talent but then he looked at me again and he thought, ‘Maybe he could make it,’” Nickhun explained. “And now I’m here.”

And it seems as though he’s come quite far after the K-Pop gods gave him their blessing. To date, not only has he learned how to fluently speak Korean, he’s also learned Japanese and Chinese, in addition to speaking English and Thai. Not only has he learned to sing, rap, dance and act, he’s also gone into songwriting as well. A few months after his image recovered from a DUI incident in early 2011, to thank his fans for their loyalty, he wrote the song Let It Rain and performed it at a concert in Shanghai.

“I never thought I could write a song until I was trying to find a way to thank my fans for sticking with me through good times and hard times. I was thinking, ‘Maybe I should write them a song and sing it for them at the concert.’”

With looks that hit the boy-next-door look right on the nose, an easy smile and those earnest eyes that seem to say “I will never hurt you,” it’s no wonder that Bench tapped him to become their latest endorser. Right after shooting his campaign for the retail giant, he confessed, “To be honest, I’ve never heard of this brand before, so I’ve never seen the clothes before until today. I’m really loving it. It’s actually what I would wear. It’s really my style. My stylist is really all like, ‘Oh, this is totally you! You wear it all the time!’ I’m kind of straightforward and I just like to keep it simple. So I think that Bench is really the style for me because like I said, this is something that I would wear on a regular basis.”

See what I mean by earnest?

And as his thousands of fans in the Philippines have found out by now, not only will he be gracing them with his presence with billboards along EDSA — he’ll be with 2PM when they perform here in March, though this isn’t his first visit to our country. In 2010, the Korean broadcasting network MBC tapped him to be part of their show, Sunday Sunday Night Danbi, which entailed celebrities visiting underprivileged areas to do charity work. During Nickhun’s stint, he was sent to Payatas where he helped build a school and a playground.

“I would love to (go back). I seriously would love to, but I think the schedule is pretty tight. So I don’t think I’m gonna have time to go. But I mean, I’m just glad that I’m gonna get to go back to the Philippines because it’s been so long and our fans there have been waiting for so long. I feel sorry that I kept them waiting for this long, but we’re finally gonna be there. We’re finally gonna put on a really good show for the fans. We’re gonna go all out to make them happy and make it as memorable as we can and we’ll come back again, probably next year.”