Believe it or not, I saw them in concert.
Yeah, I don't believe it either.
During the time when I was researching everything about the CIEE South Korea trip out of sheer excitement, I looked up the concerts and events that were happening that week ( I did not think they would actually let us go to one, or that we would have time for one at all, since we had such busy schedules. During the two weeks, there was a K.Will concert the day we arrived and a B.A.P concert the day before we left.
'Wow!' I thought. 'That's so cool! wouldn't it be crazy if I saw them when I went to Korea? Boy! That sure would be crazy!"
And then we got our itineraries. And the BAP concert landed on our free afternoon day.
"Hahaha~" Thinks me. "That's too bad that the concert will probably start past our curfew of 11 pm! And its an hour away by bus! LOL oh well!"
So I casually peaked at the concert website and THE CONCERT STARTED AT 6 PM. I started getting excited, thinking it could actually happen. It all just kind of fit into place after that. I memorized the station route, found a group of girls that were planning to go from my group, asked my chaperons, and finally, when we were able to access Internet from somewhere in the Korean country (We were on our rural excursion by now)
We all huddled in the lobby, borrowing another girls computer and sat next the the outlet on the floor frantically trying to purchase our tickets. There were a couple of standing rows left, we snagged them in n time flat and were left in shock for 4 days straight, disbelieving that we were actually being allowed to go to a Kpop concert.
The day of the concert we gave ourselves an hour to get ready at the hotel, left for the train station and got some coffee's on the way there. We slowly but surely made our way to Olympic Park, suddenly realizing that we didn't know how to get there from the train station. Luckily, we spotted a little boy and his dad wearing B.A.P sweatshirts and we followed them to the stadium. Outside the stadium WAS PACKED, and it was only 5:30. We decided to skip dinner and just focused on trying to get in.
There was a surprising amount of foreigners at the concert and we met a lot of cool people. An Australian English teacher, A girl from Germany on holiday, lots of cool fans from around the world! I thought it was really cool how most of the girls in the audience were dressed up all punky and BAP style.
We eventually made our way inside and we realized that it would be a free-for-all to get the front standing spots. My friend and I made a snap decision to try to get these spots, since we would probably never attend a concert like this again, so we might as well go for it. So we closed in on the front spots, but fans in front had already linked arms so we couldn't get through. We made friends with another girl trying to get the front spot and practiced our limited Korean with her XD (Fighting!)
Suddenly, the concert began and it was pure pandemonium. I was being kicked, shoved and punched from all directions. Someones elbow was planted firmly in my back. And I was a HUGE target, since the audience was full of a lot of middle school and teenage girls that were a head shorter than me. There was this one girl next to me who kept trying to sweep my leg out from under me and made me cry out in pain. (I found that you can see her face on one of the concert clips on YouTube). I spent the whole concert battling to stand up straight after the abuse.
Let me tell you. Fan. Girls. Are. SCARY.
And for everyone who thinks "Well, you should have just shoved them back!" You literally can't. You are closed in front every side smushed by teenage girls, so tight. you cannot move your arms. If one cannot move there arms and legs, one cannot reeeally defend themselves.
But on the bright side, we could see everything. And we were about 2 feet away from the performers. We could have literally reached out and touched them.
Honestly, it was hard to pay attention to the concert this way, but BAP preformed amazingly. They were on key every note, and danced with energy. They performed all their hit songs, Badman, No Mercy, One Shot, Power, Warrior, and even Never Give Up. They didn't interact with the audience as much as I would have liked though, as they seemed to have orchestrated times where they would look break in between songs around the room and try to catch as many girls eyes as they could. I did actually have a moment with Jongup. He tripped a little while dancing and I laughed a little. I caught his eye and he laughed with me for a good 15 seconds (Which resulted in me being bopped in the head by the girl standing next to me). AND BangYoungGuk sung a ballad directly to my friend who went with me to the front. LUCKYYYY.
Overall there was a lot of energy. (At one point one of the performers started crying and I didn't know why...) There was a good amount of fan chats that I didn't even try to keep up with. I do wish that they hadn't provided all the members of the fan club with whistles to whistle along with the songs though...I could still hear them ringing in my ears 3 hours after the concert had ended. -__-. There weren't too many costume changes. My favorite was the spiffy looking Victorian Jacket.
One thing that really surprised me is how GIGANTIC that Zelo was. He is just a building of a person, he took up a lot of room on the stage. I didn't think that he was any taller than the other members before the concert...
I did not film or take pictures of anything in the concert. There were other people being forcefully carried out by security and I did not want to be one of them. I thought it was better to be safe than sorry and not take any footage inside.
I left the concert drenched in other people's sweat, bruised and exhausted. We all rode the train back to Paris Baguette to eat cream puffs and anything else that we could get our hands on. We were so tired. I underestimated the BAP 'Baby' Fandom. They may be a lot of of young middle school girls, but their determination made them stronger than 100 tiny lovestruck little hulks.
I will have to think about that.
Usually I'm not one for loud and crazy concerts but I made an exception because I liked the band. But it was a lot of fighting and thrashing and sweating. It was uncomfortable and the girls were very aggressive (By the looks of the one girl who was next to me after the concert, she came up REALLY close to me with the universal I'm-going-to-beat-you-up-why-don't-we-take-this-outside look). I don't know if other KPOP concerts are like this, or are this wild too.
I think I would go again, because it's an experience. If it was a band that I liked, and if I went with a group of friends. I probably would not try to get the front spot again though, but that's just me. I might weight lift before the concert...maybe take some boxing lessons (Just kidding XD!!).
I was also a little disappointed that all the cool fan meetings and signings were only for the people in the fan groups, and I wish I would have known all this stuff before coming to the concert.
I hope that I can return to Korea again someday, and I think I would be really interested in going to an Indie concert,
Sorry I only have one picture for you here, but here are two videos from the performance!
So have you ever been to a Kpop concert? What was your experience? Did you make it to the front? If not, what band would you like to see? Tell me in the comments section below!
