This is the fourth in a series about foreign entertainers who are becoming more popular in Korean entertainment. ― Ed.


The first thing that stands out about British MC and freestyler Jake Pains is not his loud clothes or bleach blonde hair. It’s his infectious energy and love for Korea.

After almost three years in the country, he said he still walks out his door and thinks, “Whoa! I’m in Korea?!”

He said he came after finishing university because he wanted to explore Asia. He originally meant to stay for six months before moving on to Japan, but then something about Korea got under his skin and he stayed.

He studied film and literature in his hometown near Liverpool, but it was Asian film that got to him.

“I was always into Asian film. But I really got into Korean movies and so I thought, ‘I love Korean movies so anything, any country that can make a product that I like so much and (is) so diverse, I’ll come and experience Korea,’” he said.

He said that he knew he wanted to stay after one day in Korea, even though he was in a small city miles away from Seoul, something he hadn’t expected. With all the opportunities that opened up during his time here, he said he would be “an idiot not to stay.”

But while he and his friends may have joked about him having a career in entertainment here, it certainly wasn’t anything he expected.

“And then when I came here ... I just wanted to absorb the culture. I had really no illusions of grandeur,” he said. “I thought it would be cool. But I didn’t think this would end up happening.”

Now the hip-hop artist is a host and writer for Mnet America’s show “Jjang,” which interviews K-pop artists and introduces a bit of Korean culture. He also continues to perform as an emcee at clubs in Gangnam, how he first got noticed by the entertainment world.

Pains said he first got into the scene when he was invited by spoken word artist Carys “Matic” Jones to perform at a poetry slam. The two have a mutual friend in England and unbeknownst to him, that friend contacted Carys and told her to get in contact with Pains.

So she did. And she invited him to a poetry night, which turned out to be a competition. Jake won.

He went on from there to win a bigger poetry slam competition and began performing hip-hop on his own, and that’s when the DJs started calling.

He started with a duo called French Knickers, who are now independent DJs. He said it was his “learning curve,” but after that Korean DJs started calling. And he ended up coming up to Seoul every weekend to perform.

He said he prefers performing at the big clubs for Korean crowds because of their passion for music.

“I feel like the crowds at a foreign hip-hop event, they kind of make me feel despondent because it’s not a big turnout. And people aren’t really there because of the music as much as they are there just to support friends. Whereas if you’re in a club and there’s like a thousand people to like 15,000 nowadays, it’s like everyone is going crazy for the music,” he said.

While he came here as an English teacher, and continued to teach because he wanted to stay, he said getting offered the job with Mnet was a welcomed change. He said after teaching for two years, he felt like he was in a rut, as if he was performing the same show to the same people day after day.

“Being a teacher was still kind of nerve-wracking. Because you are shaping the minds of these kids,” he said. “I didn’t feel, ‘Oh I’m going to stop,’ because I liked living in Korea and I loved everything about the country, I just felt, is there something else? And then this opportunity came along. And it was kind of a blessing definitely for me. I feel like this is definitely more who I am.”

And Pains has proven that there is nothing he won’t do as a TV host, even going as far as getting botox on the show. He and his co-hosts talked about how many K-pop stars today go through often painful cosmetic surgeries and procedures. He said he went in for the show, but came out thinking he might like to do it again.

He said there are only two things so far that have made him nervous, something that might seem out of place with the obviously gregarious host. One is performing in front of small crowds. The other was hosting the Style Icon Awards.

He was given three names to say in Korean during the rehearsal, about 30 minutes before going live, and he said he knew he was going to mess them up. It didn’t help that the producer was covering the first character of the first name on the prompt card.

“I just kind of murmured the first name. And then I was like, ‘Oh what’s this feeling?’ I was like, ‘This is proper, wow I’m really nervous now.’ And I feel so worried. That never happens,” he said. “So part of it I’m like, ‘Oh my God,’ and the other part of me is like, ‘Whoa this is cool.’ It’s like when you’re on a rollercoaster.”

But despite that, Pains says he enjoys the comfortable atmosphere his show, “Jjang” has, saying it helps the team work together. And his own personal philosophy while on the show, albeit maybe not the producers’, is to do whatever he can to make his interviewees laugh, even if it means getting K-pop group Infinite to do his version of the scorpion dance or asking Miss A if they ever needed men to help them open jars or kill spiders.

“Even on our TV show ‘Jjang,’ that show is all made by people who just have a great time together. Everyone is just enjoying working together,” he said.

By Emma Kalka (ekalka@heraldcorp.com)