[musings/rumor] kya! Onew and Jung Ah! wait, but what is that in Onew’s hand..

Last night, a thunderstorm blew into SHINee World– rumors of a possible Onew-Jung Ah (After School) couple. Here are the facts, and following are the photos:

• Onew and Jung Ah were photographed exiting a restaurant and sitting inside a car together.
• both agencies deny this relationship. From Pledis: “The two are close as senior and junior. They’ve had meals together for a long time and we′ve known the two are close.” From SM: “This is an old rumor and it’s not the truth. We’ve known the two to be close friends.”
• Onew has cited Jung Ah as his ideal type in 2010.
• They tweet each other on Twitter.

 

Here are the rumors:

• they’ve been dating for a year already.
• Jung Ah has visited Onew’s dressing room during the SHINee World tour and later they were spotted holding hands, wearing couple bracelets.
• they were on a date in Apgujeong recently without any disguise; they usually have quick dates in Jung Ah’s car.
• Onew and Jung Ah had previously been spotted ‘linking arms’ at a movie theater.

My personal take on the rumors– with the Jonghyun-SSK scandal, it is quite safe to say that all the SHINee members know they are under watch 24/7 in public, and I doubt Onew would do something as stupid as having dates in public without disguising himself. If I remember correctly, a patch of After School members had visited SHINee to support them in their solo concert; so, Jung Ah may have visited Onew’s dressing room, but the story is incomplete. Were they alone? Was it a long visit? Or was it one of those “congratulations”, bow many times, and leave? Moreover, apparently the holding hands scandal was caused by a user on Twitter who wanted to stir up drama.

Whether they are actually dating or not, I actually do believe that they have gone on at least one date. Especially since Jonghyun confessed that SSK was his ideal type, and then later was revealed to actually be dating her– Jung Ah is no Emma Watson, so I do not think Onew would have any trouble securing a meeting with her and possibly going out on a date with her. Of course, the more salient question is, are they dating now? Perhaps. If they are, I doubt they are meeting regularly now, because Dream Girl promotions are taking up the bulk of Onew’s time.

However, what actually surprised me the most is that Onew seems to still have serious acne. It is naive of me to think money can cure everything, but really, money can cure most acne. Perhaps it is easier and cheaper to put on makeup than invest in intensive care for Onew’s skin. It pains me when I see that he still looks like that underneath the concealer, because acne-friendly or not, concealer still inhibits the pores’ ability to breathe and prevents acne from healing properly and as fast as possible.

The second thing that irked me was Onew’s smoking. Given the prevalence of smoking in South Korea among men is 50%, I am not surprised that Onew is another statistic. Yet, there is something personally disgusting to me about smoking, even though many studies have shown electronic cigarettes do not have the smell or the heavy dose of carcinogens that conventional cigarettes have. Onew is a singer by trade, and smoking away his signature smooth voice signals a lapse of responsibility to me. Perhaps he only occasionally partakes, perhaps. Who knows? All I know is that to me, smoking is disgusting. Please note that this is not a judgment on Onew, saying that he is a bad person because he smokes. Some people prefer the dark and mysterious type, and in the same way, some people prefer non-smokers.

While it is refreshing to see a more human side of idols, Onew has been slipping up too much lately. To this end, I hope everything is all right with Lee Jinki; that rumors of his continuing depression are false. I have no doubt S.M. will deal strictly with Onew this time around, from flipping off Jonghyun, a ‘major’ dating scandal, not putting on makeup adequately when in public, and smoking an electronic cigarette. If I was Lee Sooman, I would have not second qualms about disciplining Onew proportionately, because the image is a huge part of kpop. kpop is all about the complete package, and if one element is ruined, the other parts are in jeopardy, and the other parts include the other SHINee members. Though these are all Onew’s own actions, the other members will still be negatively impacted by his actions. Though Onew has done nothing wrong, his lack of discretion has an impact beyond himself, so I hope he can learn this lesson well and continue being the smiling face that we have come to support.

–

BONUS SHINee members with acne: 

[kpop/finance] examining the P/E ratio of S.M. Entertainment Co, YG Entertainment Inc, and JYP Entertainment Corp

As an ilam resolution for 2013, I decided to learn more about the finances of some of the largest Korean entertainment agencies, (listed in order of size) S.M., YG, and JYP, which are all publicly listed on the KOSDAQ. For this post, let us look at the P/E ratios of these companies.

yes, let’s get to it! P/E ratios for everyone!

Just a bit of terminology before we delve into the fun stuff:

• a dividend is money paid out to stockholders from a company’s earnings. From what I know, none of the three Korean companies pay dividends.
• earnings per share (EPS) is a measure of a firm’s profitability, calculated by first subtracting dividends paid from net income, and dividing by the number of company stocks total.
• price-earnings ratio (P/E) is calculated by taking the current price of the stock and dividing it by EPS. Essentially, P/E is a measure of how much investors are willing to pay per unit of earnings. For example, Amazon’s P/E ratio is 3,085.12, meaning that investors are willing to fork over $3,805.12 for $1 in earnings from Amazon. The higher the P/E ratio, generally, the higher expectations for the company in the future. New companies which are volatile and have suspicious-looking revenue but have good promise will also sport high P/E, like Facebook, with 267.34. Companies with high growth rates will also have high P/E. However, remember that P/E should only be compared within similar industries in the same countries. Different accounting styles in different countries can result in different P/E; American P/E are traditionally higher than European P/E.
• trailing twelve months (TTM) is an abbreviation which indicates the timeframe of measurements like EPS and P/E.

With all that good terminology under our belts, we can start looking at the respective P/E.

S.M. Entertainment Co P/E (TTM): 452.52
YG Entertainment Inc P/E (TTM): 38.66
JYP Entertainment Corp P/E (TTM): n/a

General P/E for Entertainment – Diversified: 28.40

Wait, why is there no P/E for JYP? For the past twelve months, JYP has been posting -156.00KRW EPS (TTM); essentially, people who have bought JYP stocks have been losing money for the past year; for every share, they have lost around 156KRW, where KRW is South Korea’s currency. What this means for JYP is that it is in very big doo-doo, and has probably been losing money in 2012; we can investigate this hunch when we look at JYP’s income and cash flow statements. When the EPS (the denominator) is negative, it is convention to not report the P/E.

Ignoring JYP, let us examine S.M. and YG. S.M. and YG are clearly above the industry average of 28.40, YG alone is above by a staggering 50%. This signals that the market clearly expects S.M. and YG to have huge headliners in the years to come. Moreover, the world economy is slowly growing, and so consumers– especially those in North America and Europe– who have made cutbacks to their spending in entertainment will increase their spending in 2013. This raises the entire entertainment industry’s P/E.

However, S.M.’s P/E is much higher than YG, suggesting that analysts feel that

[kpop] SHINee: 2012 in review

It has been a busy year for SHINee. Because of this year–more than any other–it has become clear that SM intends SHINee to take the helm of the boy bands after TVXQ.

ALBUM: Sherlock / Read the review of Sherlock. 

Released online on 19 March 2012, and promoted for just under a month, Sherlock is the fourth extended play album SHINee has released to date. With a crazily choreographed dance by Tony Testa, SHINee promoted the singles Sherlock (Clue+Note) and Stranger. The lives in which SHINee did sing live were generally well-received, except for a few bumbling lines here and there by Minho, and even in the lives they did not sing live, their dancing was pristine. A solid, but short, comeback in Korea.

CONCERT TOURS: First Japan Area Tour, SHINee World II, SMTown Live World Tour III

Nothing much to say, really, sold-out shows all over the world; SHINee is busy filling their coffers.

see below for a discussion of JongTae, see Key covering Lady Gaga, Taemin not playing piano again

DRAMA: You’re Beautiful [Minho]

I never wrote anything about this drama on ilam, because (as everyone knows) my bias is mostly Jonghyun, so I rarely pay attention to other members’ solo activities, like Minho acting in You’re Beautiful. However, since I did love watching the Japanese verison, Hana Kimi, I watched the first few episodes of You’re Beautiful. I concluded that Minho has gotten better in acting, and his range of emotions has increased from two to four. Maybe even five. However, Sulli and the other actors were actually passable; I would have continued watching if not for the asinine writing. The funniest parts of Hana Kimi were perverted into emo touchy-feely moments in You’re Beautiful, so I ultimately decided to abandon watching.

GAYO DAEJUNS [end of year performances]: see this post for a complete review

SINGLES: Dazzling Girl, 1000 Years, MAXSTEP [Taemin], Spectrum [Taemin & Minho] / Read the reviews of Dazzling Girl, 1000 Years.

Released on 10 October 2012, Dazzling Girl was SHINee’s first original Japanese single, an upbeat dance track that quickly went down the drain after the first few listens–it also was not too popular in Japan, peaking at no. 2 in the Daily Singles Oricon chart, eventually earning gold certification.

Later this year, 12 December 2012 saw the release of 1000 Years, another original Japanese single by SHINee. This thoughtful single, while not too novel or epic–more like a hand-me-down from TVXQ–was the first real indication about how serious SHINee is about creating material in Japan. Nonetheless, 1000 Years has not been that successful either, peaking at no. 2 in the Daily Singles Oricon.

MAXSTEP by Younique and Spectrum by SM The Performance are, simply put, disasters in dubstep. I never paid much attention to MAXSTEP, as it was marketed as a song promoting Hyundai–a song like that will never be good, like 2NE1′s quasi-debut, Lollipop. As for Spectrum, I discussed it in depth in this post reviewing SHINee’s 2012 end-of-year performances.

SCANDALS: SHINee members receive SM stock, JongTae, Sulli and Taemin couple rings, jujugal closing, Onew’s depression / isolation / beating up Jonghyun, Taemin having lots of foreign sex

The first ‘scandal’ is not exactly scandalous, but I do remember there being quite a bit of uproar when on March 26, 2012, SHINee and their labelmates received shares of SM Entertainment. Each member of SHINee received 340 shares each, which at the time, was valued at $13,600, which is quite a measly value compared to what each SHINee member should bring in each year. Moreover, after payment of the fees to issue stock in the original IPO, a sunk cost, SM really does not lose money either from this transaction because at the core, they are just issuing pieces of paper. Moreover, however the artists choose to treat their shares, either by keeping them or selling them, SM does not lose money either. It is a win-win for SM. All in all, this was more of a symbolic gesture, SM still trying to cover its behind even all these years after TVXQ’s split, and trying to foster a more collaborative community in its company, giving its artists the illusion that they too, can contribute. But 340 shares? Stop kidding me. Out of 20.4 million shares of SM Entertainment outstanding, SHINee collectively owns only 0.000083% of the company.

SHINee fangirls have been waiting for ever this ever since Jonghyun bared his muscled back in Lucifer–Jonghyun parades his muscled chest, every inch as glorious as Minho’s, and then does a steamy performance with Taemin to boot. Nosebleeds abound. The Taemint fandom gathers up a storm.

Of course, a few sharp-eyed Shawols eye Taemin during Sherlock live performances and bring up the unlikely rumor, yet again, that Taemin and Sulli are dating.

Adding to controversial rumors of Taemin dating, the Shawol boat was rocked when jujugal, a well-known Taemint who did many translations and ran her own popular blog, suddenly closed down. Later along the road, many Onew fan sites started closing their borders to outsiders as well. The reason? Malicious Onew-biased fans started accusing the other members of SHINee of isolating Onew, using evidence gathered from the Onew fan sites.

Running along these lines, rumors of Onew’s depression and uncontrollable breakdown which resulted in the beating up of Jonghyun started to spread, along with a rather hilarious one that Taemin loves having lots of sex when abroad. I partially addressed these rumors on formspring: [1], [2]. The conclusion to all these rumors, as ever, there may be a drop of truth–Onew may very well be struggling with fatigue, Taemin may be dating someone–but the extremes to which they are imagined are definitely not true. SHINee are all normal human beings, and we can all give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not as pigheaded as rumors make them out to be.

VARIETY: Taemin on Immortal Song / Read reviews on debut, ep. 2, ep. 3, 4, 5, ep. 6, 7, 8

We should have all seen it coming–with Taemin’s solo activity on Immortal Song kicking off the year–we should have known that 2012 would be Year of Taemin.

Taemin had a solid but unsatisfying run on Immortal Song, slowly improving throughout. However, it really is in the group activities later in 2012 that shows Taemin’s rapid progress as a singer.

[kpop] best rookie groups 2012

This very biased selection is based on quality of members–mostly dance and singing, but looks are considered as well, debut track(s), and live performances.

EXO was easily the most anticipated group to debut this year. Though not of epic proportions, their tracks are slickly produced and the groups are well-balanced with many talented individuals in each. At any rate, their debut was more solid than f(x), Super Junior, and even, SNSD. If SM plays their cards right, 2013 could be a very large year for EXO.

NU-EST played their cards extremely well, despite holding a few weak cards. A well-written debut song, one of the first to capitalize on the ‘new’ europop invasion, and including one very intriguing member, Ren. Dancing and lives are unspectacular though, and the shock of a pretty face will not last forever.

Regarding true singing talent, Lunafly and Busker Busker, in this respect, are both promising.

I hesitate to include BAP, but I see way too many BAP fans around me to think of them as a minor rookie group. They did have a nice, unified concept in debut; but alas, their track to me was stuck in the 2005, way too brassy and heavy, trying out a 2PM concept that barely fit.

A.cian‘s whole debut album is a beautifully crafted imitation of europop. That’s about it. Due to the constantly changing nature of kpop, I doubt they will release a europop album like this next time– if there is a next time.

Like A.cian, Cross Gene delivered an amazingly crafted imitation of europop for their debut. The facts that they have Japanese, Chinese, and Korean members and released simultaneously in Japanese and Korean are very nice bonuses. Another great bonus? Their live singing is A-OK (but please hire another choreographer).

Rounding out the last of the europop imitators, we have A-JAX. Someone fetch them a new stylist.

[handwritten/kpop] thoughts on SHINee disbandment.

First let me dispel any rumors that come of this post– SHINee is NOT disbanding. Yet, given the track record SM has with disbandment and my being a huge SHINee fan, this topic is fascinating to think about. Please note that everything I wrote or drew is for poking fun and making light, not to be mean or offensive.

I recently found my original legal notepad version, which I intended to scan. However, I also recently received an iPad 3, so I decided to try writing out the post on a beautiful notebook app I downloaded, Paper. Warning: my handwriting is atrocious, because the iPad, its apps, and accompanying styli, still suck tremendously for handwritten notes.