Being Roy Kim is either remarkable or unremarkable, depending on the day, because Roy Kim is famous only in certain places. In South Korea, his face has appeared on billboards advertising Cass beer, and his fans, who call themselves Royroses, frequently propose marriage via Twitter. In Washington, D.C., he is an anonymous student, albeit an unusually handsome one, with perfect skin. On a recent spring day, he walked east into Georgetown the neighborhood from Georgetown the university, where he is a sophomore. He entered a café, ordered a coffee, drank it, and left, all without attracting attention. “In Seoul, or even in, like, Koreatown in L.A., this wouldn’t really be possible,” he said.

Kim, who is twenty-three, is a Korean musician, and Korean-language pop—K-pop—is a global sensation. But, Kim explained, “What I do isn’t exactly K-pop. It’s more like K-folk. I play guitar. I don’t dance. I write all my own songs.” He is closer to John Mayer than to Justin Bieber. The press has covered his dating life so doggedly that he is now unattached, or so he insists. “The fans want you to be single,” he said. “They might say the opposite, but they don’t mean it. American fans are different. John Mayer can date whoever he wants, and his fans go, ‘Whatever, I just like his music.’ Korean fans have to like the whole person.”

He wore a Rolex, a black sweater, black slacks, and black loafers paired, Michael Jackson style, with white socks. After the café, he stopped by his dorm for a costume change: jeans, sneakers, a backward Hoyas cap, a spritz of cologne. He met up with a friend, another Georgetown student, named Beom Jun Kim, and they sat on a bench in a courtyard, smoking Korean cigarettes. A few weeks earlier, during spring break, the two of them went to Peru. “His fans were following us everywhere,” Beom Jun said.

“They weren’t even Korean!” Roy said. “I guess I shared on my Instagram that I was in Lima, but I had no idea—”

“They waited outside our hotel for ten hours,” Beom Jun said. “We went to get ice cream, they went to get ice cream.”

“I’m lucky to be in my position, and I’m not complaining, but sometimes you do wish you could go back to the way it was,” Roy said.

“He always gives me such a nice wave.” Facebook

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Roy was raised in Seoul and educated at a boarding school in North Carolina. “After summer or winter break, your American friends would be telling you about their vacation—‘I went skiing,’ ‘I went to the beach.’ The Korean kids, we just went home and did SAT prep,” he said. “I wanted to do one thing in my life for fun.”

After graduation, he took a gap year and auditioned for “Superstar K,” the Korean equivalent of “American Idol.” When he initially asked his parents for permission to compete, his father, a civil engineer and a former chief executive at a prominent liquor company, refused to grant it. “He was worried that music is not a stable career,” Kim said. “He and my mother went into a room for twenty minutes, and I don’t know what they talked about, but when they came out he signed the form.” Out of thousands who tried out, Roy made it to the show.

The contestants lived in a compound for eleven weeks. “The producers took away our phones,” he said. “They didn’t let us sleep, really. We just ate salad and sang.” In the final round, competing with a band called DickPunks, Kim performed a power ballad he’d written, earned a near-perfect score from the judges, and won. He released a chart-topping single and spent two months touring the country. That fall, to placate his father, he went to Georgetown, to get a business degree.

Roy and Beom Jun walked toward M Street, debating where to stop for lunch. “This is the big question, most days—where to eat,” Roy said. “My life here gets pretty boring.” He has a few classes each week; the rest of the time he mostly stays in his dorm room, drinking or noodling on his guitar. He recently decided to switch majors, to sociology. “It helps me understand behavior patterns and decode human nature,” he said. “It’s helpful for writing lyrics, actually.”

He stopped at Dean & DeLuca and ordered another coffee. “My fans call me the Vacation Singer,” he said. “There’s no other artist who has a schedule like mine—performing in Korea half the year, gone the other half. At the last show before I go back for another semester, I tell my fans, ‘Don’t wait for me. Do your own thing. Don’t cry.’ ” He took off his cap, smoothed his hair, and sipped his coffee. “They do cry. And I understand their cries. But I tell them, ‘You only have to wait a few months. I’ll be back!’ ” ♦