SRK's Korean fanclub

Knights find a Korean fan club

Calcutta may be tempted to switch sides at the Eden Gardens this Saturday, but Shah Rukh Khan and his Kolkata Knight Riders can count on Korea for unstinting support.

For the 14,000 members of the Korea Indian Film Association, SRK is "god" and the success of his cricket team their salvation. Never mind that their knowledge of cricket is restricted to how Aamir Khan, a.k.a. Bhuvan, swung his bat in Lagaan and Rani Mukherjee, alias Veer Pratap Singh, did a switch hit inDil Bole Hadippa!

"Most (South) Koreans don't know about cricket, their favourite sports are soccer and baseball. But some of us do because we have seen Lagaan and Dil Bole Hadippa! We have learnt the rules of cricket through these movies," says club president Kwanghyun Jung, who calls himself Rahul after the quintessential lover boy played by Shah Rukh in several blockbusters.

Although the club doesn't restrict itself to SRK films, he is clearly its biggest icon. "Most of our members are women, and they fall in love with SRK. They like his dance and acting. When he cries, almost all of us cry with him," says Jung, one of the few men in the group.

Jung's email to Metro starts with "Please feel free to call me Rahul, naam to suna hoga", drawing on the Shah Rukh line from Dil Toh Pagal Hai that was later parodied in his home production Om Shanti Om.

Such is the SRK phenomenon in South Korea that most members have an Indian name inspired by their favourite character played by him or a co-actor. So 29-year-old Kim Min Young is Paro, who recalls watching Devdas during a study trip to China and how it changed her worldview. "The film, dubbed in Chinese, was being shown on TV as world cinema," she says.

Kim especially loved the song sequences and was hooked on Hindi films for good. "In China, you get every kind of film — pirated," she says, explaining how she procured DVDs of Asoka and Veer-Zaara.

Jung was introduced to SRK during a trip to India in 1997. "I could not understand Hindi, but I could get the drift of the story (Yes Boss). On my return to Korea, I realised I liked the film only because of SRK saab," recalls the 38-year-old social networking consultant.

Since then, he has seen almost all Shah Rukh films, including Saathiya and Luck by Chance where he only had cameos.

The club was launched after Jung discovered there were Bolly fans like him across the country. "Many Koreans visiting India had been watching Hindi movies on VCDs….But the small screen, lack of subtitles and bad picture quality reduced the enjoyment. So we teamed up to watch Hindi movies together on big screens," he says.

That led to the birth of the online community Bollywood Lovers. "Our first screening wasMohabbatein. There were only 50 of us in 2001. Now Koifa is an NGO with 14,000 members, staying in or near Seoul," informs Jung.

The club, whose official T-shirt has pictures of SRK, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Preity Zinta, holds a Bollywood Always Film Festival almost every month, screening one or two films. Members contact producers like Yash Raj Films and UTV Motion Pictures to get permission for screenings and hire a venue with a DVD or Blu-ray player.

All shows are free. "Koifa is run with donations. We don't want money, we just want to watch Indian films," Jung states.

The die-hard SRK fan that he is, Jung has learnt "tora tora (little) Hindi". The king of Bolly romance played Cupid in Jung's marriage too. "We met and fell in love because of Bollywood," he says.

So has it ever occurred to King Khan's Korean fan club to come to Calcutta to watch a KKR match — and their favourite Bolly star — at the Eden Gardens? "If there is a chance to meet or see SRK saab from a distance with our own eyes, then we can do anything. We will all go," writes Jung.

"We support not only his cricket team KKR, but also everything he endorses," adds Kim, one of the earliest members of the club.

Proof of KKR's Korean support base is available on the club's Facebook pagewww.facebook.com/KOIFAs, which has pictures of SRK celebrating his team's victories.

When Gautam Gambhir and Co take guard against Sourav Ganguly's Pune Warriors India this weekend, trust Jung and Co to scream in faraway Seoul: "Chak De! KKR,Chak De! SRK."