“清纯美人” 允儿 诞生坚实的 ”性感腹肌“

Jay Park & Girls’ Generation rank in Top 5 on Billboard World Album chart

Jay Park recently unveiled his first full length Korean album ‘New Breed‘ and made his comeback performance earlier today on Mnet’s M! Countdown with “Know Your Name“.

The album has been performing well on the charts in Korea, and now has placed 4th on Billboard’sWorld Album Chart!

Additionally, Girls’ Generation hit album “The Boys” placed 5th this week and this is their 4th overall appearance on the chart.

Congratulations to both Jay Park & Girls’ Generation.

Yuri & Lee Jae Hoon start filming ‘Fashion King’ in NYC

On February 16th, actor Lee Jae Hoon and Girls’ Generation‘s Yuri filmed their first scene together for ‘Fashion King‘ in New York City.

Though the two were nervous before they began their shoot as they listened to PD Lee Myung Woo‘s instructions, they shed their inner doubts as soon as the director shouted, “Action“!

Lee Jae Hoon arrived in New York on the night of February 15th and didn’t get to sleep as he had to be on set by 7:00 a.m. the next day.

Lee Jae Hoon revealed, “While flying to New York, I felt exciting about filming. Because of the time difference and my nervousness, I couldn’t sleep. Even though I’m tired, I want to work hard so I can sleep easily tonight with a content mind. I will take the initiative to make the whole drama great, as it is not a drama involving only myself.”

‘Fashion King’ will air its pilot episode on March 12th.

Oricon Japan announces the Kpop groups that achieved high album sales

Oricon Japan has announced the album sales of kpop groups in Japan. On the 16th of February, Oricon Japan revealed the information on how much album sales popular groups from Korea have made over the past year. 

SNSD and KARA have made the most album sales recorded and have been the forefront of Kpop in Japan last year. SNSD made a total of 29 billion Yen with their Japanese album “Girls Generations” and KARA followed with 20 billion yen album sales with their Japanese album “Super Girl”. 

Last year was a good year for Korean groups in Japan as they experienced an increase in album sales compared to 2009. From 3.0% they rose to 6.0% in 2010 and rose to 7.8% increase in sales in 2011. The top sellers comes from SM-JYP-YG Entertainment the big 3 agencies and other groups such as T-ara, Supernova and U-kiss that are not from the big 3 also made huge success in Japan. 

Girls' Generation leads penetration of Kpop into Japanese market

According to Oricon on February 17th, the year 2011 is the year where Korean artists recorded the highest number of sales in the Japanese music market. Although the overall sales of music singles, albums, DVDs, Blu-ray Discs in Japan has been on the downward trend in the past five consecutive years, the sales of these ‘soft’ music products by Korean artists have hit its highest in history, bringing in revenue of 24.47 billion Yen in 2011.

Last year, Girls’ Generation’s 1st Japanese album ‘Girls’ Generation’ recorded sales revenue of 2.96 billion Yen while Kara’s album ‘Super Girl’ brought in 2.08 billion Yen. In total, the sales revenue of albums by Korean artists in Japan demonstrated an increase of 22.3% compared to the previous year. There has been increase in sales revenue for three consecutive years ever since the review on this area was initiated in 2008.

In addition to that, the annual Japanese market possession ratio of Korean artists has also gone up from 6.0% to 7.8%. With Girls’ Generation and Kara’s advancement to Japan, the market possession ratio has gone up 4.8% since 2009 (3.0%) and the overall sales revenue has gone up 2.3 times from 10.59 billion Yen in 2009.

In the album category in 2011, ‘Girls’ Generation’ recorded an annual sales of 642,000 copies and Kara’s ‘Super Girl’ with 451,000 copies, placing these two albums within the top 10 best selling albums in Japan last year.

Jessica Talks About Her First Attempt in Acting

Jessica expressed positive feelings on her first time acting in a drama.

Girls’ Generation’s Jessica is playing the role of Kang Jonghee in the KBS 2TV Wednesday/Thursday drama, “Wild Romance”. Although Jessica has starred in a musical before, this would be her first attempt in acting.

The Jessica we saw through the interview was a person who was nervous but overflowing with willpower. On the subject of new challenges, Jessica stated, “I am having fun with it. I wish there was more time, so I’m sad.” Jessica also said, “It is true that my appearance on ‘Wild Romance’ was decided in a rush. I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare because there was also a lot of overseas schedules for Girls’ Generation. I feel a bit sad that I couldn’t focus on just the drama. However, I’m really happy that I could experience something new.”

Girls’ Generation is currently active not only in Korea, but also in Asia, as well as the United States and Europe. Despite all the activities they had, it did not change during the filming of “Wild Romance”. Jessica even had to return to Korea first, alone, after completing schedules overseas. Jessica, who usually sleeps a lot, had to continue on acting with barely any sleep. Jessica said, “I could not get a lot of sleep. I was worried I would look tired in the drama. It is true that I was physically exhausted.” She laughed and added, “However, there were a lot of things that I learned through this drama.”

In the drama, Jessica had to cry in many scenes. This is difficult for a first drama attempt. On this, Jessica stated, “Emotional scenes were actually the most fun for me. I like myself focusing and immersing myself in an emotion.”

Recently, Jessica was “dumped” by the male lead in the drama, Park Mooyeol, who is played by Lee Dongwook. When asked about how it felt to be “dumped”, her cheeky personality showed and Jessica laughed.

Jessica also reminisced on her kiss scene with Lee Dongwook.

Through a recent interview with NewsEn, Jessica talked about her kiss scene with Lee Dongwook that garnered much attention not too long ago. Jessica recalled, “I acted out a kiss scene elsewhere before. But at that time I ‘acted’ like I did, so I was really nervous about this one.”

She laughed and said, “Before we started filming, I was told, ‘You really have to do this kiss scene,’ and I got nervous.” Jessica seemed shy about it and also added, “I shot the kiss scene comfortably by just going along with Lee Dongwook sunbae’s lead.”

When asked, “Were there any NGs?” she answered, “There were NGs… There were lesser NGs than I thought. But, there were a lot of cut scenes, so we had to shoot a lot.”