Hello! Project which is responsible for creating the Japanese megagroup Morning Musume has it's eyes now set on Korea with an audition. A tipster named rikku emailed us a half dozen times about it:

H!P (Hello! Project) will be hosting a Korean Audition Show to be aired on Mnet, looking for new members this Spring (some of which can possibly end up in Morning Musume, who is also performing at the AX convention in LA in July!) Morning Musume also had a concert on June 1 in Korea at the Olympic Hall in Seoul too (Jessica, Tiffany, Taeyeon, and Sooyoung of Girls' Generation / SNSD attended the concert. Sooyoung was actually a part of H!P's parent company when she lived in Japan. H!P originally planned to launch this audition for last year after they held their concert but negotiations with Mnet fell through. They did go through with a Taiwanese audition tv show from which a new all-Taiwanese group, Ice cream Musume, was formed and is promoting both in Taiwan and in Japan. Berryz Koubou (a group in H!P) performed at the 2008 ASF and won an award for Asia Newcomer along with SHINee. The leader of Berryz Koubou (Saki Shimizu) and the leader of C-ute (another H!P group, named Maimi Yajima) are heading to Korea on March 9 to start the auditions. and they're an open audition which means ANYONE can apply.