This is the 77th instalment in a biweekly series profiling major Hong Kong pop culture figures of recent decades.
If your radar picked up even a blip of K-pop in the mid-2010s, you probably encountered Jackson Wang Ka-yee long before you realised he was a Hong Kong native.
To overseas fans, he was first known as the magnetic, mischievous rapper of Got7, a boy band that debuted under JYP Entertainment in 2014 and quickly amassed a loyal international following.
Among the seven members, Wang was unmistakable – a whirlwind of chaotic energy on Korean variety shows and a multilingual charmer who could crack jokes in Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean and English.
He has since earned a reputation as a prominent K-pop idol who has helped pave the way for pop celebrity exports worldwide, regularly smashing chart records and founding his own fashion label, Team Wang Design.
Trading sabre for stage
Born in Kowloon Tong in Hong Kong in 1994, Wang was raised in a family of elite athletes – his father was an Olympian fencer, and his mother was a national-level gymnast.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.scmp.com ’
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