Won Bin’s bucket hat spotted during his travels to China on September 14th has been one of the most talked about fashion faux pas recently. Many demonstrated negative reaction towards his fashion sense, however, I don’t think he looks that bad. Yes, it was a poor hat choice, but he still looks amazingly hot wearing something as ugly as the hat in the picture. Perhaps he was just having a bad hat day.
However, due to Wonbin’s questionable choice of headgear, the real reason why he was at the airport was getting buried by the press. Won Bin went to China for the release of his recent movie, “The Man From Nowhere” (아저씨) there. The reason why this piece is more significant is that there are only about 50 foreign films released in China each year. Because Hollywood films are chosen before considering any other films, Korean films barely make it out to China. Therefore, the fact that Won Bin’s new movie will be hitting the theaters on September 16th in China, is a huge win. The film was also released in Japan the day after, on September 17th.
Although this movie is getting a lot of love in Asia, with more than 6 million tickets sold in Korea and many more to come from China and Japan, the movie didn’t do so well in the states when it was released last October. Perhaps it wasn’t marketed well enough, perhaps the American audience wasn’t ready for the film, or perhaps it was because Won Bin didn’t commit a faux pas when going through customs.
Either way, the moral of the story is that Won Bin’s faux pas was not as significant as his movie release in China.
