Written by ILLUBLUE @ LOVEKIMHYUNJOONG.COM
A truly touching fan encounter occurred during this flight.
A friend of mine who has been to all his FM stops had a whole series of misfortunes occur during the stop in Chengdu. Amidst all the issues she already had, she also bought some autographed photos that were said to be official and sold as such in Chengdu though other friends subsequently raised doubts about the authenticity of these. She had thought at the time that perhaps he had signed them in a hurry therefore they didn’t quite look as they normally did
Anyway, she got into the plane, and found that her seat was in front of HJ’s by some rows. Seeing an empty seat next to a fan that was better placed, she asked politely if she would mind her sitting there. And was refused. At that point, her original seat had been taken by another passenger so she was forced to sit a row ahead of HJ, though not directly in front. She said she felt so awkward and embarrassed by this stage (HJ having witnessed the exchange) that she didn’t know what to do, and what was worse, she was sat in a position where HJ could see her! To cover her embarrassment she took out her autographed photos and asked the manager if these were truly autographed by HJ. After some discussion among themselves, she was asked where she had got them as they had certainly not been autographed by HJ. She told them they had been sold as official autographs at Chengdu. She then felt even more foolish for having fallen for this scam, i suspect she just wanted the earth to swallow her up then! I guess HJ must have felt really sorry for her after everything, so the manager came back and asked if she had anything she wanted him to sign. Having carried her limited editions across several continents for him to sign, this was the one time when unfortunately she didn’t have them with her. I should explain that she has seen him more than 100 times, but is not the kind of fan who would go up to him to ask for an autograph. She’s just happy being there where he is, without intruding into his space. Anyway, after some searching she came up with her Uzoosin iphone case. Unfortunately she didnt have a pen on her. And nobody around seemed to have one. At this point, she fell into despair again and just gave up. So near and yet so far! She noted at one point that HJ had got up presumably to go to the loo, although he took a long time, and so she just decided to go to sleep. I guess the days of sleepless nights just caught up with her at this point. (she has been a great source of help to many fans in getting tickets etc but really this involved so much work, together with several issues that had arisen, that she had barely had any sleep). And she woke up to find that her phone which she had left at the side and been autographed! Wasn’t that sweet! He probably went off in search of a pen (maybe from Mr Jeong?), got hold of her phone, signed it and replaced it. When she turned to mouth a “kamsahamnida” to him he couldn’t meet her eyes and looked away embarrassed
At times like these am reminded of why so many of us really like HJ… He has such a warm heart! I’m sure he saw her, forlorn and sad, and just decided to make her happy
Generally his manager tends to refuse autographs on the plane, from what I’ve heard, and in this case she didn’t even ask him for it!
Just wanted to put this down on her behalf as I don’t know she would ever write an account and it was too touching not to be shared ! (she agreed to me writing tho!)
And happy to have a nice ending to such an upsetting period
Thank you for sharing this heartwarming experience.