Day 91: SBS

Today is the day of the SBS Gayo Daejeon music festival! The music festival was held at the Gocheok Sky Dome, which is where BTS typically holds their yearly Festa fan event. I bought a ticket a few months ago when I purchased my award show tickets, but this ticket were fortunately seated rather than standing. Since it was a seated ticket I didn't have to go early to line up and get a good spot.

I have learned over the past few weeks that some fan sites will give away photo cards or other small gifts before the concert. In order to get the gifts all I had to do was follow and retweet a specific tweet. They release the location they will be waiting at on the day of the concert and people can meet them there. One of the fan sites said she would be giving away items starting at 1 pm so I decided to go to the concert venue around that time. I arrived around 1 and went down to the river to find the fan sites. There were huge line ups of fans all along one side of the river and I had no idea what it was for, I just hoped I didn't need to be there as well. The fan sites were on the other side of the water so I walked over a little rock bridge to find them.

It was so cool to see all the fan sites and the people selling k-pop goods. There was a large open area by the river that was filled with people who had laid out blankets and covered them in k-pop goods that people could buy. I went to the fan sites first and then looked at all the merchandise. I had to show the fan site that I was following them and also some kind of verification that I was a fan of the group in order to get whatever they were giving away. One of my friends said that people typically bring their army bomb (the BTS light stick) as verification. My army bomb was sitting on my shelf at home in Canada so that wasn't an option. I brought one of the albums that I had purchased a month ago instead and that worked! It was so fun to collect the items from the fan sites. One of them had created photo cards like the ones people get at photo booths. There were two packs of them and each pack had a card for BTS as well as cards for each member.

After I got all my freebies from the fan sites I walked over to the people selling merchandise. I really wanted one of the slogans that I had seen fans holding at award shows in Korea. Slogans are a banner with the name of your favourite member on one side in reflective material and a picture of them or something else on the other side. I tried to look at all the 'stalls' before buying anything, but that method didn't work for long. I found one 'stall' where people were selling handmade sparkly stickers of each BTS member's signature. I bought an entire set (one for each member) even though I have absolutely no use for them haha. I did find one place selling the nice cloth slogans I wanted so I bought one of those as well. I was just about to leave when I came across a place selling smaller slogans. I think they were 3000 won for 2 or something around that price. I decided it would be fun to buy one for each member and one for the whole group. They will look cool on my wall at home or I can give them away to other fans in Canada.

I wandered back up to the venue after I had purchased too many items. I still had half an hour before I could start lining up for my ticket so I walked inside and sat near the food court to wait in the warmth. When the time came to get my ticket I walked back upstairs and found the line for the company I booked it through. It was so unorganized! First they had us meeting in a spot on one side of the building, but then they had to move everyone over to a different spot on the other side. When we got there there were several different groups of people waiting for tickets and the signs were terrible. Everybody ended up in a jumbled mess and it took way longer than it should have to actually get the ticket. The part of me that really likes things to be organized in a logical and efficient manner was losing its crap.

It snowed for maybe 5 minutes while I was waiting in line, which made me happier! I was worried that I wouldn't get to see any snow on Christmas day, but I was lucky. According to Ella it didn't snow in her area of Seoul.

I went for lunch at a kimbap place across the road after I got my ticket. All of the restaurants near the venue were packed and I ended up sharing a table with two other fans attending the concert.

The concert started at 5 and I went to line up around 4:30. I had to go into the parking garage to begin lining up to enter the venue. There were tons of people lined up behind signs for all the different sections. I arrived just as my section was being led back outside, good timing!

The venue was awesome! There were so many seats in a horseshoe shape around a huge stage. There were big screens on either side of the stage and they would show a video of the entire stadium every few minutes. Unfortunately, the ground seating area was at an awkward height. Everyone sitting there was much lower than the stage and it made it challenging to see what was happening if people were performing on the main part of the stage. Whenever people performed there I typically just watched the screens because I was too low to see them. I started talking with the girl beside me before the festival started and I found out she was from Thailand. She was here with two of her friends from the US who she had met when she was on exchange there. She was a fan of GOT7 and her friends were fans of EXO. They were super nice to talk to and I gave them some of the stickers that I had received from the fan sites earlier. It was their first time in Korea and their first time seeing the groups that they liked so they were very excited. The one girl screamed the entire concert and even ended up crying at the end when GOT7 walked by. I was super shocked that she was like that because she seemed very quiet and shy when I was talking to her. I was glad she was so excited but omygosh did my head hurt after haha.

I was surprised at how much of the festival was prerecorded. I didn't know that they prerecorded events before I came here so I was super confused when the first performance started and no one was on stage. The prerecorded performances played on the big screens beside the stage though so it was ok. Many of the groups also came out on stage when their prerecording was playing and they waved to fans or did a more relaxed performance so it wasn't terrible.

I also thought that the event was an award show and not a music festival. I kept waiting for the MCs to come up and give an award, but it never happened. I clearly did not research this event well before I chose to attend it!

It was nice to sit and just enjoy lots of performances. EXO CBX (a sub unit of EXO) performed Miracles in December, which was one of the last EXO songs that I listened to before I took a break from k-pop (way back in high school). It's such a pretty song and I felt super nostalgic watching it.

I also really enjoyed Seventeen's performance. They are all great dancers and their synchronization is amazing to watch. There are 13 of them and yet they still manage to dance well with each other. iKon's 'Killing Me' stage was fun to watch as well. I am typically a little underwhelmed with their live performances, but this one was cool!

There were also non-kpop performers including Tiger JK and Yoon Mi Rae (who is an absolute queen with amazing music that I have been a fan of for years). I'm so glad I was able to see her live! Now I just want to see Younha perform and I can die happy.

I was super excited to see BTS' performance today because the set list showed that they were performing several old songs that I had never had the opportunity to see live (and never thought I would). One of the songs they were performing was one called Boy in Luv, which was (I think) the first song I heard by them (also back in high school). Sadly, all of their performances were prerecorded aside from the last song, Idol. They still came out on stage though. Everyone stood up and climbed on their chairs when BTS came on stage! It was so crazy and I was worried people would fall. I eventually climbed onto my chair too because I could barely see anything with everyone standing on theirs. I didn't fall, which, with my history of terrible co-ordination on land, was truly a miracle. BTS waved to fans and danced to a bit of the choreography on the smaller stage that was close to the crowd. I think Namjoon may have seen my slogan, but I'm not really sure. I was holding it up when he and two other members walked down the stage on the side closest to me and it looked like he noticed it, but there were so many other people around me that I really don't know. That's pretty cool if he did though!

Everyone walked out to the smaller stage near the crowd at the end of the festival and BTS eventually made their way around to my side. This was likely the last time I will get to see them in concert/live before they start going off to the military and it was my last show before I go back to Canada.

Hope everyone is doing well,

Emily

(December 25, 2018)