INTO THE-K: K-Culture Festival 2022

CIEE is a great program as I mentioned before in my Jeonju blog. However, sometimes Yonsei themselves provide an incredible event from time to time with their SAY program, which I have a feeling literally means Students At Yonsei program. However, disregarding the acronym Yonsei's SAY program partnered up with Hana Tour ITC and offered free tickets for the Into The-K: K-Culture Festival 2022. 

The K-Culture Festival describes itself as a festival where K-fans are the stars of the show. Despite their mission statement, there is no space for everyone at Yonsei to be the star. As I mentioned in my previous blog, these free events always come with a catch. The catch this time being that only the first 200 people who emailed the touring agency were able to go to the concert. Meaning that you are competing with a class of about 1,200 international students who are all in the Yonsei SAY's mailing list. Someone from the official Kakao group chat mentioned that she was not able to receive tickets as she was an hour late to respond. Thus, making it a competitive event to attend. Personally, I answered within two minutes. The details they require in order to participate are your Full Legal Name, partner institution being Yonsei, Nationality, Sex, Date of Birth, email address and contact number. Thus, having it previously written on your notes app would be really useful for emails of this nature. 

Disregarding its natural competitiveness, the event featured amazing artists which included NCTdream, MonstaX, IVE, STAYC, Cravity, WSJN, Zico, MCND, Blank2y, and MAX. Going into the event, I only knew Zico well. However, I had heard of NCTdream and MonstaX. I did not know that this lineup of artists was incredibly popular. Being present at the event, I could tell that these artists were not small indie groups. (Yes, call me a fake K-pop fan. I listen to K-rap more.) The event took place at the Jamsil Olympic Stadium now known as the Seoul Olympic Stadium. It is about a one hour bus ride and if you are going during rush hour, the bus will take an hour and a half. I almost did not pick up my tickets since my bus took longer than expected. I was ten minutes late to the stand, however, I was lucky enough to see that it was still open. The host or representative of the Hana Tour program also gives out his personal number for additional help which made it much easier to let him know I was going to be late. However, for future reference, take the subway.

I do not know what songs were played for each group since I didn't even know most of them coming in. However, the ones that I did know, Zico and Max played some of their most popular songs. Max for instance played Blueberry eyes and tried his best to perform Sugas part of Blueberry Eyes in full Korean, It's you featuring Keshi without Keshi, and Lights Down Low, and an introduction song. Zico on the other hand played a new song Freak, New Thing, Okay Dokey, Artist, and finished it off with Any Song.

Ultimately, even though I did not know about 80% of the lineup, the show and choreography was still incredible. The stage changing colors, bringing in pyrotechnics, and having the build up with each artist's entrance made it worth it and made 2 hours feel like 30 minutes. 

If you would like to see the performances, or what I saw from my perspectives make sure to see my compilations on my TikTok. Please keep in mind this is my first time doing basic edits in years.