Wit

FINALLY! About @eaJPark KTP sus. This might disappoint some of you a little, bcs it’s nowhere near as wild as the theories about him secretly having a KTP Jogja, or moving here, or buying a house in the city. But honestly, I think… it’s something a bit deeper than that. So here’s what actually happened: After the GBK show, we were given a chance to join Jae’s send-off. Before he came out, security reminded us again and again not to touch him, not to get too close, not to do anything that would make their job harder. And of course, we understood. Just being able to stand there, wave from a close distance, and make sure he saw us—because he said to me genuinely that he wanted to say thank you to all the team—that already felt like more than enough. But the moment he stepped out, limping a little from his injured foot… he didn’t hesitate. He walked straight toward us, slipped past the line of security, and shook our hands one by one! All EIGHTEEN of us. He was the one who moved toward every one of us, not the other way around! And that’s when the “KTP Jogja” joke secretly started forming in my mind. Because this kind of gesture: warm, soft-spoken, grounded kindness, is so deeply tied to Jogja culture. It’s something we grow up seeing here: when you enter or leave a room, you greet and shook every person. You acknowledge everyone. It’s not a rule, it’s a rhythm. A way of being. Why am I so sure this gesture is tied to Jogja (and many city around it)? Because once, when I was in a big Indonesian city, I entered a room and greeted then shooked everyone the way we do here. People immediately said, “You must be from Jogja, right?” Saying this not because one city is better or worse than another. It’s just culture. A habit of warmth. That many acknowledge. So seeing Jae, an American, instinctively do that...it stunned me. It felt like watching someone who had lived in Jogja for years. Which is why, jokingly, my brain went, “Yeah okay, this man definitely already has a KTP Jogja.” And it didn’t stop there! After greeting all of us, even though he was clearly in pain, he walked to the fence, leaned over the railing, and started greeting every fan who had waited for hours after the show. We even overheard one of the staff quietly asking him, “How far do you plan to go?” And he answered, so simply, “All the way. I’ll greet every one of them until the end of the fence.” And he actually did it. For almost thirty minutes. While the entire crew and the band sat inside the van laughing at how impossibly earnest this man is. But for me, the bigger point is this: A person’s character—kindness, sincerity, humility, gentleness—those things don’t need a specific culture to exist. They aren’t tied to where someone was born or what language they speak. They show up in the tiny things: the way someone reaches out their hand, the way they look people in the eye, the way they make time even when their body is telling them to rest. Gestures like that travel beyond nationality, beyond stereotypes, beyond the labels we give to places and people. They reveal who someone is when no one is asking them to perform. And in that moment with Jae–no tv cameras, no crowd pressure, no spotlight—what we saw was pure character. Unfiltered. Honest. A kind of warmth that feels familiar, like the kindness you grow up with at home, even if the person standing in front of you comes from thousands of miles away. It reminded us that sometimes THE HEART RECOGNIZES SINCERITY long before the mind tries to explain it. We’ve met artists before. Many of them aren’t as big as he is. But the size of his sincerity… we’ve never seen anything like that. THAT BIG. And fun fact—he said in an interview that Indonesia is one of the top three countries he’d consider living in if he ever moved from the US. So who knows? Maybe the KTP Jogja agenda will become real one day. ✌️😸