Day 42: MBC Plus x Genie Music Awards

So the concert that I’m going to today is an award show called MBC Plus x Genie Music Awards. It's an annual show where they give out tons of different awards and also have some k-pop groups and solo artists perform. BTS was one of the performers so I got tickets (I bought them a week or so ago). I woke up early the day of so I could straighten my hair and I was on a subway to Incheon before noon. The subway took 50 minutes and I had to make 3 transfers. Then I had to transfer to a bus to get to the Namdong Gymnasium where the show was being held. I grabbed a waffle from a stand in the subway in between transfers because I was starting to get really hungry.

my route

The bus was filled with fan girls! The major k-pop groups performing at the awards show were Twice, Wanna One and BTS. All of them are very popular and have huge fan bases so the concert sold out quickly. There were lots of people on the bus with BT21 items or BT21 shopping bags which was fun to see.

When I got to the venue I took a while to find the ticket booth, I even had to ask one of the people at the information tents first and then I accidentally went in the wrong line, but I eventually got my ticket. Everyone gets a ticket and then a wrist band. I think the gold colour was for people who had standing tickets (I had standing) and the silver was for people with seated tickets. After I got my wristband I went in search of a place to eat. It was 2 pm by this point and I was super hungry. There were little stands by the venue as well as a snack and food booth that the concert organizers had set up. I wanted to sit somewhere to eat though so I looked up places nearby and found a kimbap restaurant about a half an hour walk away.

The walk was super pretty. It was mostly along a walking path that had trees on both sides of it but it also took me through a small part of the city.

I ate my kimbap and stopped by a convenience store to grab a water and some gummies to snack on while I waited for the show to start. Then I walked back to the venue and tried to find a spot along the red carpet. Music award shows typically have a live red carpet event where celebrities and idols show up one by one in cars, walk on the red carpet to pose for photos, and then do short interviews (I don't typically watch award shows online, Korean or American, so I'm not sure if this is a typical American set up too). The red carpet didn’t start for another hour and a half, but it was already packed with fans. There were so many fan sites with huge cameras and really tall ladders! They were lined up in rows all along the rope area by the photo zone. It was so crazy to see how tall some of the ladders were! I would not feel comfortable standing on one of those with pushing fan girls on the ground below.

I walked to the start of the carpet where people were going to be showing up in their cars. It was less crowded there because a lot of the people get out of the car and walk to the photo area without stopping so I think it’s harder to get pictures from this spot. There was still a layer of people in front of me though. I was 2 hours early and I didn't even want to think about how early some of these people must have had to show up in order to get good spots.

It was a super long wait! People kept moving around and pushing each other and it was so boring to just stand there. I debated just going in to the venue, but I also wanted to experience a red carpet at least once plus I still would have been waiting inside anyways.

The interviewers kept practicing and at one point they were asking questions in English since Charlie Puth is one of the guests and performers at the award show. He is doing his own stage but also a collaboration stage with BTS that has been super hyped up.

When it was finally starting to get close to 5 (when the red carpet would start) I turned around and was shocked to see how many people were behind me. I had been looking in front the whole time and I hadn't even noticed that many more people had arrived. It was completely packed behind me and everyone had a phone or camera out.

At 5 pm the red carpet started. No one knew what order people were arriving in so it was a surprise every time someone got out of the car. I later realized that they were 'loading' people into the cars a little way past the entrance so if I watched there I could see who would be next. There was a big round-a-bout by the red carpet and part of it passed by the main concert building. The celebrities and artists were inside the buildings. There was one car and two vans that did loops around the round-a-bout, picking up and dropping off different people each time.

I saw several groups I really liked and a lot of celebrities whose names I had absolutely no clue about. I saw G(I)-dle (a rookie girl group who has released a ton of awesome songs so far), Stray Kids (a group who also produces their own music and has a great rap line called 3racha with amazing mixtapes), Day6 (a band that I like), ChungAh (a female solo artist that I like), and Heize (who is another super awesome female solo artist). I was a little worried about how long the red carpet was taking. By 6:30 BTS still hadn't shown up and the show was starting at 7. I had a standing ticket which meant I didn't have an assigned seat. My view and my place on the floor depended on how early I got into the venue. I really wanted to go and get a good spot but I also wanted to see BTS so I kept arguing with myself the whole time. By 6:45 I had kind of accepted that I would have a crappy view for the show.

Finally Twice showed up! It seemed that they kept the biggest artists for last (Twice, Wanna One, Charlie Puth, and BTS). I think they may have done this so that they kept fans on the red carpet for other artists. I know that I planned to leave right after I saw BTS and I'm sure many other people were feeling the same way. During parts of the live they zoomed out to show the crowd and it wouldn't have looked great if everyone left part way through. Up until Wanna One and BTS arrived the crowd had been pretty good. There were tons of cameras and people were super close but it wasn't too bad. However, the second these two groups showed up everyone started to push and shove and stick cameras in front of other people's faces so they could get better pictures. Not particularly enjoyable haha.

Another thing that really bothered me was how rude the crowd got when their favourite artists weren't the ones getting out of the car. I agree that the wait was long, but there were people that would sigh super loud every time someone that wasn't BTS or Wanna One got out of the car. People weren't even bothering to act polite or hide their impatience. Overall, I was thoroughly unimpressed with how many of the people watching the red carpet acted.

But anyways, BTS finally arrived on the red carpet (they were the very last people and it was about 5 to 7 at this point). I still can't get over how good they look in real life. Tae came out of the car first and did peace signs to the camera and then everyone else filed out. I think Jin accidentally stepped backwards or something and ended up bumping into Jimin, which was funny. I was trying to film them but also trying to look at them and everyone was shoving each other and it was super chaotic! The second they walked past the area where I was I set off running to try and get into the venue. It was almost 7 and I decided I could watch their red carpet interview online later. I had a number on my ticket that was supposed to be where I was standing but no one seemed to be following that so I tried to find an area that wasn't too crowded in the venue.

This concert was very different from ones that I had been to in Canada. Everyone had huge cameras and stools in the standing area, which made it almost impossible to see the stage. Most of the time they weren't even watching the performances because they were trying to take pictures of the idols sitting by the stage. Tickets weren't cheap but people weren't even watching the show that they paid for, I was confused. Aside from fans being crappy the show itself was super cool. They started out with a bunch of awards and had different people presenting them. There was a video for most of the awards that would show the nominees and then they would announce the winner. There were huge screens on both sides of the stage, which made it really easy to watch artists go up to receive their awards (I couldn't see that well from where I was standing plus the cameras were in the way so I mostly watched on the screen). I looked over occasionally and stood on my tippy toes to try and see BTS since they were sitting on the lowest two levels of the bleachers. I mostly just saw Jimin's blonde head and I think I saw Namjoon at one point, but not clearly.

The performances were awesome. There were fireworks and other special effects that made them super fun to watch! My favourite performance (other than BTS) was one done by three solo artists. I was absolutely blown away by their vocals and actually felt a little teary listening to it. I later found out that one of the solo artists was a singer called Ben that I really liked, but didn't know what she looked like.

This is the video (my favourite song started just after the 2 minute mark):

Jungkook and Charlie Puth did a collaboration stage of Charlie Puth's "We Don't Talk Anymore", which was amazing! Jungkook has been a huge fan of him for a super long time and he did a cover a while ago for song. They talked in English together for a minute or two after the performance and Jungkook said it was a dream come true to be able to perform this song with him together so I was happy for him! After that, all of BTS performed their song Fake Love with Charlie Puth. This performance ended up causing a bunch of drama after the awards show and people later found out that the concert people had played the wrong track so BTS had to improvise while they were doing a live performance. It was still cool but I wish they had been able to perform what they had been preparing, plus people just cause so much unnecessary drama when stuff like this happens. It must've been very stressful for all of them.

BTS won a ridiculous number of awards. They just kept coming up on stage and I got to see their reactions on the big screen so many times, which was really fun and entertaining. Day6 won an award for best band performance and Stray Kids were absolutely adorable when it was announced. Stray Kids are from the same entertainment company and several of the members are known to be huge fans of Day6. A bunch of them jumped up and started dancing/celebrating when Day6 won which was so cute! They also danced to Twice's "Dance the Night Away" when it was announced as a nominee.

Wanna One

Twice's performances were fun and I also enjoyed Wanna One's. The last performance of the night was BTS again. They performed a few different songs and then ended off with their latest title track "Idol" (which is an awesome song with a crazy music video so everyone should go check it out).

Then the 4 Daesang award winners were announced. Daesangs are considered the biggest awards at an award show and are a huge deal to win. BTS won 2 of the 4 and I was very excited when they were announced! Overall they ended up with 7 awards that night (one for each member haha) plus 4 more that were announced online later. It was so cool to see BTS perform live again and to be able to watch them receive all these awards. The cheers were super loud and it was such a proud and awesome moment.

Honestly the majority of the fans there sucked though. Their reactions when other people won or were performing were rude and I was not happy with them but I just tried to tune them out after awhile and enjoy the performances by myself. I am so thankful to have been able to experience this while I am here and I am a little envious that Korean fans get to go to stuff like this all the time. I have bought tickets for two more award shows that I get to go see before I go back home and I am super excited to see how those turn out and to watch BTS perform again. In the future I want to try and buy seated tickets though so I can actually see the stage (too late now but if I ever come back to Korea I will know to do this).

The second and fifth picture is BTS' leader Namjoon with the oldest member Jin. The third picture has a few members of Wanna One on the big screen. The fourth picture is Tae and the last picture is BTS being crazy children. Throughout the performances the camera would go to artists in the audience to show their reactions so this is where a lot of the pictures are from.

My two pictures of where the artists were sitting. In the first you can see Jimin's head kind of glowing white and in the second there are three members of BTS in the bottom corner. I didn't bother trying to get anymore pictures because I wanted to watch the show, but this is good reference for how far away I was.

Once the show ended it was a crazy stampede to try and get out of the gym. There was a bus that was a 20 minute walk away that would take me back to a subway station in Seoul. I tried to walk there quickly so I could get there before the wave of people came. The bus was still packed though and I ended up just giving up and sitting on the floor. I was so tired from standing at this point that I didn't care.

It took an hour and a bit to finally get back to the place I was staying. Instead of going straight home though, I got off a stop early to grab a snack. Jimin had posted a picture the day before of him eating fish cakes from a stand on Itaewon street and I figured now was as good a time as any to try it for the first time. It felt a little weird to go to the same place but it was also fun to be at a place where I knew he had been so I just accepted that I have my weird fan moments too. Plus I'm actually in the same country as them now so I can do stuff like this.

I have been having a lot of trouble with the finger print scanner for the door so I was worried that I wouldn't be able to get in but I was able to open the door after just a few tries.

Martin was still up by the time I got back. I'm not sure if he stayed up to make sure I got back ok or if he had to work but it was fun to tell him about the concert when I got home. Kate had told me yesterday to be safe when I went to the concert and it felt a bit like being back home with my parents, which was nice. Martin was watching Twice on a TV show when I got back and he tried to teach me who they all were. I eventually said goodnight and tried to fall asleep but ended up watching youtube videos of the performances from that night since I couldn't see them that well when I was there.

BTS with their 50 bajillion awards (from their twitter)

Hope everyone is doing well,

Emily

(November 6, 2018)