From the "Too Much Free Time on Their Hands" department

South Korean pop singer Rain (at left with "Star") was ranked the second most influential figure in the global entertainment industry, according to a poll by Time.

Rain followed director Ang Lee, winner of this year's Academy Award for Best Director for "Brokeback Mountain," who received 34 percent of public support.

The 23-year-old heartthrob often labeled as the Korean Justin Timberlake, garnered 28 percent of public support in an annual poll conducted by the weekly magazine. No word from Time on whether that equates to three rabid Netizens in a basement PC-bang or four.

UPDATE (4/29/2007):
Oh, dear G-d, it's happening again! Time Magazine has again put Mr. Rain on the list of candidates for their Top-100 issue, and fans of Rain have again voted (early and often?) to thrust him up to the dizzying upper echelons of popularity on that list.

As of today, April 29, 2007, Mr. Rain is at #2 with 385,467 votes, just behind Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert and his 235,147 votes (apparently Time's ballots are tallied in Florida).

Now, one might reasonably guess that nationalistic Korean fans may be behind this wild popularity among Time readers (especially if one reads nothing but the Marmot's Hole comment section), but if you take a look at Time's comments section, it would appear that most of Rain's superfan base is made up of people who are not in Korea (and I'm not referring just to Korean-Americans). They are names of people from places around Asia.

Okay, so he's popular across the continent. Still not sure that makes him influential, and one can still ask, "Is he worthy?"