"Fans" don't spend millions - "maniacs" spend millions

Even Tata Young, a major star in the Thai music business, stalked Kim Woo-bin all the way to the departure gate at Suvarnabhumi Airport just to get one last fleeting glimpse. Thais who travel to Seoul will queue for hours outside the show-biz firms so that they can have their gifts delivered directly to their idols. 

But you know what? Thais sound downright normal in their behaviour compared to certain Chinese fans. Most Chinese could only look on in amazement (or envy, or fury) as wealthy fellow citizens bought up a condominium unit in Seoul just so they could live next door to Korean actor Kim Soo-hyun. 

The Korea Herald recently reported that two fortysomething Chinese women, together with the legal representative of a Chinese mogul, snatched up the apartment next to the actor’s at the posh Galleria Foret in eastern Seongdong-gu district. Units there start at the equivalent of US$500,000 (Bt16 million), the paper said with an audible gasp. 

“The so-called ‘Cheon Song-yi house’ that neighbours Kim’s apartment jumped up to $4.4 million,” a realty agent told the Herald, “but the owner has no intention of selling for now.” 

Well the owner might as well hold out for more. This dragon’s got some spending money and should be good for a wild ride! All others wishing to place a bid, please form an orderly line. Tata, you coming?

 

 

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Dedicated dad

Even by the time they married in March, Smith “Oak” Arayasakul and Panisara “Opal” Phimpru of TV fame had planned to have a baby. They recebtly returned from their honeymoon in Switzerland – a country Opal had long dreamed of visiting – and Oak got straight back to work, putting in a personal appearance at a BioLife marketing event. 

Reporters might have come right out and asked whether “he” was pregnant yet, but instead the question was framed as whether he’d have to do more such commercial work so he could afford the cost of raising a child. Oak said frankly that he hadn’t even given it much thought at first, but he’s just met businessman Bank Panyawong, whose wife is TV host Suthita “Nina” Panyawong, and Bank had shown Oak how much it was costing him to put his son Patrick through school. 

“I was surprised – I had no idea it was that expensive!” Oak said. “In my time it was only a few thousand baht, but now it’s over Bt100,000!” So he’s consulting his other “bank” and making plans for the baby he and Opal do indeed still expect to have – fairly soon. “We’re not using any form of birth control,” he announced without a blush, “so I think maybe next year Opal will be pregnant – but she has a lot of work this year.”