Cult
At 6ft 3in, the 28-year-old multi-award-winning South Korean actor and K-pop star Rowoon — real name Kim Seok-woo — towers over most. That includes many of his co-stars, who stand on boxes for close-ups. Described as “perfect boyfriend material” by fans and media alike, he's renowned for his legion of dedicated followers, who have shown up religiously at live performances of idol group SF9. The band's name is an acronym of Sensational Feeling Nine, after its nine members, and Rowoon is lead vocalist and the ‘visual’: a controversial but universal label in K-pop, defined by most as the member who best fits South Korea's notoriously rigid beauty standards. When it comes to being genetically predisposed to seduce millions, the K-pop idol (a term used for all members of K-pop groups) ticks every box. Rowoon is manly without any red-flag machismo: take him off topic in conversation and a rapid-fire banter ensues — when he laughs, it's with his whole body and a resounding clap of his hands. He's also reassuringly down to earth — at a public appearance in Japan in June, he ventured out into the pouring rain to sign autographs for fans and, rather sweetly, brought his own pen and paper in case anyone didn't have their own.
If by some chance your only exposure to the stratospheric western rise of South Korean culture in recent years has been Parasite and Squid Games, or the artists Blackpink and BTS, you're just — which translates as ‘Korean wave’ — to encompass the unprecedented success of Korean entertainment.
