In Photos: The astonishing rise of K-pop idol Jay Park

The road to stardom has not been an easy one for Korean-American entertainer Jay Park. Today, he’s a K-pop idol and hip-hop mogul. Park, 36, is recognised as one of South Korea's most prominent entertainers.

He released a string of hits, founded two of the country's largest hip-hop labels, launched his own beverage brand and was the first Asian-American to sign with Jay-Z's Roc Nation.

He told AFP in an interview that success didn’t come easy. His first shot at fame — debuting as the leader of a K-pop band — resulted in a scandal that led him to flee Seoul for his native Seattle. "I faced a lot of backlash," Park told AFP, adding he was once "kind of blacklisted from the industry".

The backlash emerged with a few comments Park posted online — then in his late teens — assailing the intense idol training regime, the K-pop industry and South Korea itself. The Korean media went berserk. The pushback against Park was intense. This forced him to quit 2PM, a seven-member boy band under major label JYP Entertainment. Above: Jay Park, with SOYEON - South Korean rapper, singer and Rapper BIG Naughty

He went back to Seattle, and found himself working at a used tyre shop. However, this didn’t prevent him from doing what he loved best, eventually posting a cover of “Nothin' on You" — a B.O.B and Bruno Mars song - on his YouTube channel. "I just wanted to show my fans that I'm doing well, and also I wanted to show people what type of music I'm into, what type of artist I am. So I just put up a cover and it just kind of blew up," he said.

Viral video: This took him back to the limelight as the video went viral, with more than two million views a day, and marked "a new start" for Park. With that is a change in his musical style. Quite inadvertently, his move from pop to rap helped transform South Korea's nascent hip-hop scene. Nothing was planned or carefully executed design, but simply an attempt to move past restrictive labels, he said. "If I say I'm a rapper, then I can only rap. But I like to rap, I like to dance, I like to sing," he told AFP. Park said he would be "always grateful to the hip-hop culture" for helping him relaunch his career.

Struggle for survival: Its an unconventional story: going from K-pop failure to launch a musical career — and hitting remarkable success — after turning his back on big agencies around which the industry is structured it is rare. "It didn't happen overnight. Obviously it took a lot of work," Park told AFP of his musical comeback. Above: Jay Park and Yoo Si-ah, better known by her stage name YooA is a South Korean singer, and is a member of the girl group Oh My Girl under WM Entertainment.

Improving industry: Park is currently attempting to improve the industry — or at least his small portion of it. Two of the most renowned hip-hop labels in South Korea were already formed by him. And with the founding of a third label with the intention of creating a boy band, his career has finally gone full circle. But Park is going about it his way: he says he thinks real connections and 
“freestyling together” are the keys to success This is contrast to the meticulous training and obsessive levels of control pioneered by the major agencies.

Park will serve as a mentor to his new trainees, something he says he yearned for when he first entered the field at the age of 18. "I'm not bitter over anything. I don't hate anybody. I don't dislike anybody. I don't have time for that. I don't have time for thinking about stuff in the past," he was quoted as saying. "I can't change the past, so what I can change is the future, so that's what I work on."