Kim Yoon-jin, an actress from the ABC series "Lost", recently told Whoopi Goldberg and Sherri Shepherd on the CTV daytime talk show "The View" that being a star in Korea is different from Hollywood, because you are not stalked by paparazzi here. Kim Hyeon-joo, another hallyu actress, confessed her bitter experience during a media tour to Hong Kong, when local paparazzi for a magazine sneaked into her hotel room and took pictures of discarded junk in her trash can.
Significantly, though, the paparazzi situation has alerted entertainment management companies in Korea. Local tabloids increasingly take paparazzi pictures of celebrities' private lives or print photos off the stars' personal blogs without their consent.
"It causes an extra burden on female celebrities, because the Korean public can be very cruel and conservative", says Lee Jeong-hun, an agent at Yedang Entertainment representing the Korean actress Han Ji-hye.
"A single photo is enough to dampen a career", Lee says.
Star couples are mouthwatering prey for local paparazzi, in an industry where celebrities often try to keep their romantic lives secret.
A typical case was the news of the actor couple Ji Seong and Lee Bo-yeong, who were caught on camera by a sports and entertainment journalist working for a news Web site. The picture showed Lee getting out of Ji's black Mercedes on a Seoul street late at night.
Earlier this year, the Web site also ran snap shots of model-actor Hyeon Yeong and her singer boyfriend, Kim Jong-min, meeting in the parking lot of Kim's apartment block.
The rise of paparazzi photographs is a relatively recent phenomenon here. Snapshots of local celebrities circulate on blogs and Internet gossip sites, but they are mostly pictures taken by fans with camera phones or digital cameras.
Experts say there are two main reasons why the paparazzi are relatively absent in Korea. One is the weak market for commercial photography. No matter what the content is Korean publishers are not willing to pay the amounts many paparazzi demand.
The conservative tastes of local audiences also hinder editors and producers here from jeopardizing standards of moral decency by delving into the stars' private lives.
"To a certain extent, the Korean public is interested in who's dating who and what their past life was like", says Yun Gyeong-cheol, a freelance reporter and an entertainment producer at OBS Gyeongin Television, a local broadcaster. "But they don't really to want to know the details. The majority don't care where the stars hang out or what they do in private".
Instead of star paparazzi, the idea of stalking pictures is a more common way of saving cash here.
When the local Environmental Ministry introduced a new recycling law in 2003 that asked all stores to charge 20 won ($.02) for each plastic bag, a substantial number of citizen paparazzi here, who were chasing rewards for reporting lawbreakers, videotaped stores and handed over the evidence to local police.
In entertainment, the idea of paparazzi is used increasingly on cable networks for programs on celebrities' lifestyles. Critics, though, say the real problem of these shows is lazy reporting rather than the actual intrusion, because the outcome of celebrity stalking is often unsuccessful in many of these shows. But the producers broadcast the reports anyway.
"The professional paparazzi deserve credit for the work they've done", says Yun, a producer at OBS. "I am more concerned about the idea of ridiculing the audience when there is no content. The audiences are not going to waste time watching some fuzzy images of feet and hands of the reporters' sources on screen".
A dispute also rises about whether staff photographers, who mostly take candid shots of celebrities for the local media, should be considered undercover reporters or paparazzi. They are usually freelancers selling prints to different publishers.
"You could see this as a primitive sign for paparazzi in Korea", says Jeong Jin-yong, a photo editor at Ilgan Sports, a local daily newspaper for sports and entertainment.
"But many are still testing the public reaction", Jeong adds.
Even then, celebrities are not completely free from the public eye as star-audience communication here increasingly walks a narrow boundary between the private and the public through blogs or user-created content.
"In Korea, the entire citizenry is paparazzi", says No Ji-wook of Lobe Entertainment, who manages singer Son Ho-young.
A picture of Sohn and his alleged actress girlfriend Kim Ji-woo holding hands in a Tokyo subway station was recently caught on camera phone by one of Son's fans.
"There is no logical way to stop them. Professional paparazzi are one thing, but random people and fans on the streets taking photos of celebrities anytime, anywhere are another matter".
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