Asia Song Festival 2011
Every year South Korea holds the Asian Song Festival where pop stars from around Asia come and perform all in one night. Usually this event is held in Seoul but since Daegu is on some mad push to become a well known city they moved it down here for 2011, sort of wrapping up all the hype the athletics championship brought to town.
I am not in any way, shape, or form a fan of Korean pop music, or any of the artists who came to perform at this show BUT it was free and the DMOE offered EPIK teachers free “VIP” tickets on the floor level of Daegu Stadium. Clearly this was an opportunity to immerse myself in the world of my students’ fandom I couldn’t pass up. Armed with backpacks full of soju to get us through this absurdly long set of performances we were ready to compete; loud obnoxious foreigners versus loud, obnoxious, and CRAZED kpop fans.
Our seats were pretty good, off the the middle-side of the stadium floor. However, as the night went on it started to rain and as I’ve learned, Koreans freak out in the rain. A couple of drops leave my coteachers running for shelter in fear of impending pneumonia. Tons of people left or moved while tons of people started rushing to take their spots. We played the “sorry, I don’t speak Korean but I SWEAR my seat is right there… in the front row…” card real quick and ended up in a fun game of come-and-get-me, sneaking up to the front repeatedly. Our view improved quite a bit and I even made it to the front for 2 of the major acts, Super Juior and SNSD (the one group I actually knew).
The event was HUGE. There were apparently 40,000 guests in attendance and the actual fans were impressive. The balcony seats were packed the the Beast (B2ST) fan club managed to organize their section to light up the groups name across the top balcony. We had a great time in our section that was allotted to foreigners. I find it really funny how often Korean events create separate sections specifically for foreigners. I think part of it is that they want to attract foreigners to their cultural events, but they also don’t want us disrupting or diluting the Korean-ness of the event. Who knows.
Probably my last Asia Song Fest/KPop concert, but definitely something to remember!
