J.Y. Park
J.Y. Park quickly learned that he’s the only person who can write his story. The K-pop artist-producer-executive already tried letting someone else assemble what he had planned to be more than two decades’ worth of memoirs to document the highs and lows of his personal, professional and spiritual life, but the manuscript let him down.
“At first, I was thinking about having a writer write it so I sat down and did a bunch of interviews,” he shares during a lengthy nighttime phone interview from Seoul. “But I was shocked when I got it back because it didn’t feel like I even spoke in it. I realized I have a very specific way of explaining things, and expressing certain feelings and stories. Being in front of a camera for 26 years, my fans even know how I talk. I erased everything and I typed every single letter in this book.”
Years later, the 48-year-old’s autobiography Live for What? was released on August 11 that—for as much as the written word can—represents his tendency to emphasize certain words with the occasional vocal squeak, but the core of a multi-hyphen mogul: one who is the founder of one of K-pop’s biggest and most influential labels (his namesake JYP Entertainment is publicly traded company on the Korea Exchange and houses beloved acts like 2PM, GOT7, TWICE and more), an artist in his own right (whose latest single delivered his biggest chart hit in a years), and born-again Christian who leads weekly Bible classes outside of work that he balances alongside his growing family, basketball practice, and a weekly visit to an LP bar.
“I think my life was a journey to write this book,” he says. “My life is now to let people read this book and the rest of my life is to live my life in the best way I can so people want to read this book.”
A day after the Live for What? book was released in Korea, Park’s latest single “When We Disco” dropped—a project that came together remarkably quick and organically in comparison to his memoir when an old Euro-disco track from his high-school days played on TV and a former signee on his label sent him a text.
“I was so nostalgic,” he says with an excitement in voice like one does when talking about their favorite music, this being the German dance-pop duo Modern Talking’s single “Brother Louie” which performed respectably in the UK and France in the ‘80s. “I was writing these lyrics, these nostalgic lyrics and at that moment Sunmi sent me a song that we used to listen to when we were touring with the Jonas Brothers.”
Sunmi is currently one of Korea’s reigning super divas who originally began as a member of JYP Entertainment’s first female troupe Wonder Girls launched in 2007 that helped make initial inroads for K-pop worldwide with their viral hit “Nobody” landing inside the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and scored them opportunities like high-profile tours. Despite Sunmi exiting JYPE in 2017, the team-up not only made for a unique founder-and-former-artist pairing but one that shows that departed employees can remain on good terms with their former labels.
“I always wanted to create a successful company, that is true, but to a limit—that’s not more important than my friends,” he says before explaining that Wonder Girls, as well as his former male acts Rain and g.o.d, are particularly special to him because he was the one training them in singing and dancing before his company adopted teachers and trainers. “I really always wanted them to be happy and I wanted to teach as much as I can so when they leave me, they can carry on their career and figure out things in their life.”
The natural connection for “When We Disco” proved to to be a success with fans too with 10 million views on its YouTube video secured in less than five days, a personal best for Park, while the track rose to be his biggest hit both in Korea and on the Billboard charts in five years.
These two major instances from J.Y. Park’s August 2020—one that’s been tough and drawn out, while the other seemingly incredibly natural—represent a larger aspect of his success story that continues today: some of this came as a long lesson for the exec but what has stayed central to his story, and what continues to prove, is what comes to him naturally.
J.Y. Park & Sunmi
As he shares in Live for What?, everything changed when Mr. JYP set sights on the American music industry.
Describes as “the first failure” in his life, Park’s plans to have Wonder Girls break America—as well as two other acts he said were in the midst of signing their own U.S. record deals—fell through when the financial crisis hit the U.S., and the rest of the world, hard brought on by 2008 bankruptcy of financial investors Lehman Brothers.
“For years I invested my time and the money I had earned,” he says. “Everything collapsed and I didn’t know how to accept it because it was not my fault. If the songs were released and they failed, I would have accepted that. Like, ‘Look, I tried my best, my bad, what did I do wrong?’ But the Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy? C’mon, that’s not my fault. I didn’t know how to digest it.”
In 2009, he had divorced his first wife after 10 years of marriage. “I had to figure out life—I didn’t know why I should live, what to live for. Everything before my first marriage was perfect: you become successful in your career, you meet this perfect, gorgeous lover and you get married. Everything was perfect! Then I realized there was something missing and I didn’t realize what it was.”
To fill the “void in my heart,” J.Y. said he turned to partying, dating, and clubbing—“but I never did anything illegal,” he’s sure to add—but found neither the married life nor bachelor lifestyle made him feel whole.
After searching through all the major religions—Buddhism, Islam, Scientology, local Korean religions—Park found his faith in the actual text of the Bible and the “solid truth inside that book.” He adds, “Finally, it was done: why I was born, where do I go after I die, basically figuring out my life in terms of the start and the end. And if you can figure out the start and the end, then everything falls into place.”
Relatively speaking, a moral code that has been easier for Park to accept and share from the get-go is reinforcing and keeping strong the values that he created when he launched the company in 1997 with the tagline “Leader in Entertainment.” For the executive, being a leader goes beyond profitability, looks or talent.
“In my book I say the key element in me deciding to pick an artist is ‘Is that person a genuine, pure person that I can love?’” he says of his vision. “When you love an artist, it's not work anymore. If you don't like that artist, you can't spend all night working for them, you know? Even last Christmas Eve and New Years, I was with Rain and his wife. We're still best buddies.”
While Park isn’t as involved with the training process like he was when Rain debuted in 2002, he stands by his claim that “he will not work for a person who's not decent, honest, that doesn't have a good heart.”
That hardline approach has been seen in the company terminating several artist contracts, some in the swings of the career. When Park is asked about some of the company’s more mysterious departures, he lets out a sigh.
“We are known to release artists, yeah,” before attempting to explain it in business terms that can be applied to several industries and even his close K-pop competitors. “I would try to first define what the company is: I created the company, I help run the company, what is this thing called ‘company?’ It's a community of people linked together by something. If that something is financial interest, you are a financially committed community. The problem is, if another company offers you more money, you're automatically going to go to that company. I don't want that. My only thought is that we should be linked by values. I want my company to become a value-linked community.”
He continues, “We have the longest education system among entertainment companies. They totally understand our values of what we stand for. If an employee or artist crosses the line, it will hurt our values and you have to leave. Even though I don't want them to leave, even though I love them, I have to let them go—or else our values will collapse. I'm not letting someone go because I hate them—everybody make mistakes, we do stupid things—but if we pardon them, the next guy will do it again. I have to do it to keep our values alive. But it hurts. It hurts letting go of any employee or any artist we have. That also doesn’t mean that every artist who left our company has done something wrong. Some had other issues or other reasons to leave.”
That last note points to why JYPE is tightlipped about some of the company’s controversial exits and speaks to a decency typically not seen in biz.
“We want them to be successful outside of our company,” he says. “If they really did do something wrong, we will never say it—that's our policy. We truly want them to succeed when they leave. If we publicly reveal what they did when they leave, that will hurt them. That's not what we want.”
Park is also aware of when fans feel that his company is not living up to the expectations of the superstars under his label.
“We definitely take the [complaints from fans] seriously, but sometimes it's really painful for us when we cannot explain why something happened,” he shares.
“If we did something wrong on the business-side, we'll just apologize. We never try to hide ourselves out of a problem, that's not us. Some labels do hear certain accusations and just move on, but we don't do that. But when we do that is when it was not our fault: sometimes we can't share the reasons because we are trying to protect the artists or maybe it's somebody's fault that we can't mention like a partner. But this is how I approach it: We will reveal it after a certain period of time. We think about how much we love, how much we care for someone like GOT7, at the end of the day there can be misunderstandings in the short term. But in the long term, only the truth comes to light. I think a lot of people are frustrated—and lots of time there are reasons to be frustrated—but if you saw JYP 2.0 video clip, I was trying to build a system that's organic and flexible enough to withstand any variable.”
Park says that trust in the larger company vision and goals must be felt and extended to the musicians as well.
“The artist has to believe the company is a decent company with a good heart—that's the only way we can arrive to any kind of conclusion,” he says when issues about album releases or promotions arise between the powers at large. “It’s very possible the artist and the company's vision does not align. We can talk, but if they only sees the company as looking out for money then it’s so hard to reach any agreement. But if you believe we are genuine, there’s a huge chance we can reach an agreement. An artist will know if you're a good company and a good person.”
As the final stage of his JYP 2.0 plan to export K-pop in other languages and mix it within other cultures, the label’s most recent, and most ambitious projects, are coming together better than anticipated.
The company’s first Japanese girl group NiziU was created via a hit singing-competition show that was shown in Japan helping land them a chart-topping album and single in the country with what was meant to be a pre-release buzz EP ahead of a full-fledged debut this fall. (“I fully believed it would take two to three years to reach the level that it reached already,” Park says) While their quickly rising Chinese boy band Boy Story took a different route by making their way into the market without TV. (”We actually did film their auditions, but it wasn't easy to air and if we aired their auditions it might have hurt them—so we debuted Boy Story as a Chinese group with a small connection to Korea”) While the two are unique to the larger company roster, Park wants to make clear that they are still JYP family through and through. “A lot of people are not sure, but all of them are signed to our company just like TWICE and 2PM are signed to our company, they're all our artists. I think people are just confused because there's no Koreans. [Laughs]”
There’s much more coming from J.Y. Park (including English and Japanese versions of Live for What?), JYP Entertainment’s larger global expansion (there are talks for a girl-group competition show based in America similar to those that created TWICE and NiziU), and the beloved lineup of JYPE acts (stay tuned for more). But something that isn’t changing anytime soon is Park and his company’s commitment to a strong and true image.
“The last thing I want to do is disappoint our fans and make them feel like they've been betrayed,” he says, adding that the commitment to a company showing its best self begins with its famous figurehead founder. “I don't ever want to run into an incident where they see me act a certain way and say, ‘I was fooled by that image.’”
