By April Choi
Korea Times Intern
Pop star Rain is now the target of much scrutiny after his abruptly aborted world tour.
Already well established in the Korean community as part of the hallyu or the Korean Wave movement with numerous fans in Asia, he is currently trying to break into the U.S. market. Click Entertainment, the local promotion company for his canceled Hawaii concert, is currently suing Rain and his Korean promoters, JYP Entertainment, Star M Entertainment and Revolution Entertainment, for racketeering and fraud. Click Entertainment is seeking costs for more than $1 million damages including the $500,000 deposit paid to Revolution and the costs of producing the concert, renting the Aloha Stadium, arranging for equipment and issuing and selling tickets.
To explain their side of the story, Star M Entertainment held a press conference Wednesday. Lee In-kwang, the president of Star M Entertainment, which was in charge of Rain's world tour, said that the L.A. Staples Center concert went wrong because of numerous faults with the stage. He explained that the reason for the cancellation and postponing of the U.S. concerts was due to a combination of the local promoters violating their contract, breach of faith, and legal issues with Rain's name. Lee however acknowledged Star M Entertainment's fault in hiring the wrong local promoters, nevertheless he called the local promoters to account. Lee said, ``the reason for canceling the North American concerts was the local promoters' lack of preparation and contract violations.’’
Rain's ``Rain's Coming’’ world tour opened on Dec. 15, 2006 at Jamsil Stadium in Seoul and was scheduled for the following countries: Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, United States and Canada. His tour was noted for having talented producers and stage designers (Jamie King and Roy Bennett) who have worked on tours of other famous artists such as Madonna and U2. However, it was a decided failure in America, with the majority of concerts being canceled most notably his LA one which was canceled two hours before scheduled time.
Rain is currently filming his Hollywood debut film, ``Speed Racer’’ in Germany.