Star of Asia Rain sets up Asian fan club

Korean Sports News [06.01.09]
Lee Zhai Yuan reports

Asia unites under the name of "Rain"!

Star of Asia, Rain, will set up a fan club with the strength of 200,000 fans. Fans from Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, Hongkong, Thailand etc Asian countries will be able to join the official fanclub.Rain's agency, JYP Entertainment will be making preparations for this Asia fanclub alongside the Cloud 4 fans recruitment drive in September.

At the moment, Ran has two official fanclubs; namely "Cloud" in Korea, and "Cloud Japan" in Japan. The first three recruitment drive have acummulated 3,500 official fans. The fanclub is now open for it's fourth cloud recruitment drive, which is estimated to increase cloud-count to more than 10,000. "Cloud Japan, ont he other hand, has 4,000 members at present.

The total number of fans in "Cloud" and "Cloud Japan" add up to less than 20,000. However, many fans outside these two countries are hoping to join the club as official members. It is said that a fan site in China has more than 100,000 members, while 40,000 Taiwanese fans came together to sign a petition, which was sent to JYPE's office, for Rain's concert to be held in Taiwan last fall.

Rain also enjoys international VIP's treatment whenever he goes to Hongkong and Thailand. He is considered a superstar in these areas. However, fans belonging to non-official fanclubs in these countries organises their own activites.

JYP Entertainment has decided to gather all these non-official fanclubs, scattered throughout Asia, and have them united into one official Asian fanclub, so that fans in these countries can enjoy the same privileges that members of "Cloud" and "Cloud Japan" enjoy. Last year, only "Cloud" and "Cloud Japan" members were able to enjoy the previleges of pre-ordering tickets and special sitting arrangements in the Rainy Day concerts which were held in Korea, Japan, Hongkong, China and Taiwan. Unfortunately, other fans could not enjoy these privileges.

It is estimated that Rain has more than 200,000 fans in different parts of Asia. It is rare for any artistes in Asia to have a united fanclub like that. Members of Rain Asia can expect to enjoy fair treatment in terms of ticketing and special sitting privileges, as well as chances to attend Rain's birthday celebration gatherings and all other fanclub activities, eliminating preferential treatments to some fans only.

JYP Entertainment expressed that in future, fans of Rain, regardless of whether they are Koreans or people from any other part of Asia will come together to form this Asia Fanclub, which they are now in the midst of setting up.

Rain will be in Japan from the 21st to 25th of January to promote his first Japanese single "Sad Tango", follow by New York for his Rainy Day Concert at Madison Square on 2 February.

Credit: 비withRain// jinlees@soompi
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