Han Geng: how China’s first K-pop star went from Super Junior to the silver screen and beyond
- Han was signed by SM Entertainment in 2002 and joined Super Junior, debuting in 2005 in South Korea and playing China in 2008
- After taking SM Entertainment to court to terminate his contract, Han embarked on a solo singing career and got into the film business

Although he is no longer the biggest music sensation in China, no one would deny that Han Geng, who turns 36 on Sunday, has earned a place in Chinese pop culture history. That’s because Han was the first singer from the country to make it big in a K-pop band.
China got its first taste of South Korean pop music in the late 1990s. The first K-pop bands, as they became known, were formed by SM Entertainment – H.O.T. (1996) and Shinhwa (1998), and the first girl group, S. E. S (1997) – which attracted fan bases in China.
Han, who had mastered traditional Chinese dance, ballet and martial arts, became a part of this new trend in 2002 after singing up for SM Entertainment’s H.O.T. China Audition the previous year.
The company’s founder, Lee Soo-man, had ambitions to build an empire based on K-pop and had gone in search of good-looking and talented youngsters. Han was one of the few candidates who stood out among the 3,000 hopefuls, and was given a trainee place in the K-pop idol-making machine.
