ENHYPEN’s Jake Opens Up About The Important Habit He Had To Learn After Moving To South Korea
ENHYPEN‘s Jungwon and Jake recently sat down for an interview with ESQUIRE Korea, where they opened up about everything from their vlogs to their performances.
For one of his questions, Jake once again opened up about how he decided to audition to become a K-Pop idol. He explained that he wasn’t very familiar with K-Pop until he saw one of BTS‘s performances in America.
I was really surprised to hear that a Korean boyband performed on the Billboard stage for the first time. So I looked it up. That’s when I found out about K-Pop.
— Jake
Similar to many K-Pop fans, once Jake learned about K-Pop, he quickly became “obsessed with it.”
I’ve gotten obsessed with it since then.
— Jake
And from there, he decided to pursue his newfound dream of becoming a K-Pop idol.
That’s how I started dreaming of becoming a singer.
— Jake
Jake, who grew up in Australia, had to adapt to Korean culture once he achieved his dream. For instance, in a previous interview with Weverse Magazine, Jake shared his tips for improving in Korean.
When I watch videos on my phone to set things up or whatever, I do it in English since there’s a lot of things I don’t understand in Korean, but when I talk, I always use Korean.
— Jake
Although he admitted that it’s incredibly confusing when he has to alternate between the two languages.
But it’s still a little difficult when I have to listen to Korean and then talk in English, I think. If someone asks me a question in Korean, I start thinking in Korean, so it gets confusing to change it into English.
— Jake
In the interview with ESQUIRE Korea, Jake also shared that he had to adapt to how idols bow to each other as a polite sign of respect when they meet. As Stray Kids‘ Bang Chan recently talked about, the greeting is a meaningful sign of respect.
It’s a simple gesture, but there’s a big difference when you say ‘Hi’ or if you don’t say ‘Hi’… if you get what I mean. It depends on how you say that ‘Hi,’ It makes the other person feel a certain way. The tone of the greet, the way you greet is really important.
— Bang Chan
So Jake did his best to learn the unfamiliar greeting.
It was hard to get used to bowing when saying hello or goodbye.
— Jake
For Jake, the difficulty came with his “need to make eye contact when talking with people.”
Because I need to make eye contact when talking to people. But I still have to bow so I did it in a really weird way at first.
— Jake
But as Jake became increasingly familiar with bowing, it became an automatic habit.
But now I think that it’s actualy become my habit.
— Jake
Check out the full video below:
