Breakfast with Lisa & Josh #56 - Diving Into K-Pop

Breakfast with Lisa & Josh #56 - Diving Into K-Pop

Welcome Back to Breakfast with Lisa & Josh!

Kimchi, bulgogi, bibimbap. Just some of the delicious Korean cuisine that we were looking forward to trying during our first visit to South Korea. But as it turns out, there was something else on our agenda that we were just as excited for – our very first K-Pop concert! Here’s how it all went down…

I’m not ashamed to say it. Ok, maybe a little.

Going to a K-pop concert in South Korea is on my bucket list. And it’s pretty close to the top.

It just seems so bonkers, so intense, so different than any other concert I’ve ever been to - I just had to go. I had to know what it was like.

For those of you not in the know - Korean Popular Music, or K-pop, is a strategic blend of basically every genre of music and performed by groups featuring anywhere from four to 21 members. It’s a generally relatively repetitive and consistent type of music - a lot of K-pop sounds quite similar as the other types. Once someone finds something that works in K-pop (Gangnam Style, anyone?) that trend will be used by all of the groups until the industry as a whole moves onto the next trend. Basically the same as pop music everywhere, but with a staggering 5.5 billion dollar government-sponsored budget behind it, with the intention of sharing South Korean culture with the world.

We got word of this massive K-pop festival (the first one since COVID lockdowns began over 2 years ago!) accidentally. We were seeing signs of a “Dream Concert 2022” showing up everywhere around Seoul, and we just knew that we needed to go.

We went online to buy tickets, but, predictably, they were all sold out.

We weren’t going to let that stop us from our dreams of K-pop.

We kept searching, and found that the South Korean government was supporting a program to encourage people to start traveling here again now that the COVID restrictions have been lifted. And what did they think was the best way to do that?

Give a full day tour of Seoul, ending with tickets to the biggest K-pop festival of the past 2+ years. And make this specific tour and these tickets only available to foreigners. We were in. They were right.

The process of purchasing the tickets was… challenging to say the least. The website felt like it was from the mid-90s, ala Geocities or Angelfire. The only method of payment that you could use was Paypal, to a gmail address. But still, our need for K-pop was strong, and we sent the money, honestly not expecting to get anything in return.

A few weeks later, we got a message on South Korea’s version of WhatsApp - KakaoTalk, from the organizer, stating that our tickets had been secured, and that we were all set to go. We still weren’t certain, but it was at least a good sign.

Once the day came, we showed up at exit #5 of a subway station nowhere near the location of the festival, and got picked up by a bus, and proceeded to go on our full-day guided tour.

Nearly immediately, the guided tour turned into a herding of cats tour (as most guided tours are, right?) going from one part of Seoul to the next, being dropped off, having the tour guide say “you have 30 minutes here, go and see the culture!” and then everyone on the bus immediately head into the nearest bar to chat, meet each other, and be surrounded (likely for the first time in a long while) by people that spoke their native language. We didn’t realize how much we missed it - being able to speak our native tongue to others that understood it - but it was really amazing being able to bond with the others in our group, hear their stories, and drink up the culture that we were supposed to be engaging in.

After a few more stops of this - it was time for the concert. We were all shuffled, in single-file lines, to get our tickets for the event at the site of the 1988 Summer Olympics, Seoul’s Olympic Stadium . A baffling 26 bands were appearing in this festival over the next 4 hours. It turns out that meant that each band would only get to perform one song. But as the evening went on, we learned that the “next level” groups performed 2 songs each.

And then, just as the sun was starting to set, the concert began. Our special tour provided by the government got us seats that were right next to the stage - some of the best in the entire venue.

The lights were blindingly bright, constantly changing colors. The air smelt of fireworks from the pyrotechnics being shot off seemingly randomly throughout the acts. Just as a group would hop on stage, it felt like they were leaving, being replaced by another. The sounds of 40,000 screaming K-pop fans whenever a particularly famous member of a group would take the stage was deafening. We weren’t allowed to stand, get up or dance, (due to COVID, I guess?), but the energy in that stadium was electric. The music was so fast, so high energy, that after 18 groups, it felt honestly exhausting to partake in and we were actually feeling glad we had actual chairs to sit in.

There were no breaks, no time outs, no time between bands. Just constant, non-stop 160bpm K-pop performed by girl groups and boy bands, wearing all sorts of coordinated outfits ranging from denim on denim to pastel crop tops to bedazzled vests. Four hours of wonderful, high energy, genuinely overwhelming musical catchiness.

It was truly, truly awesome. If you can, you HAVE to go to one of these. What an experience. Like nothing we’ve ever done, anywhere.

Just… bring some earplugs. And a few energy drinks. It’s a wild ride.

Videos This Week

Bullet Train to Busan for Korean Fried Chicken 🇰🇷 South Korea Travel Vlog 부산

That’s a big fried chicken to be carrying on a train. Oh well.

First Impressions Of Busan 🇰🇷 South Korea Travel Vlog 부산

Busan - a city of many, many sides.

See you next Sunday…ish :)

- josh (and lisa)

Oh, and if you want to learn how we afford to take all these trips after quitting our jobs last year, you’ll likely be interested in our Skillshare course on Travel Hacking and Frequent Flier Miles. It’s been really taking off lately, but we still have a few uses of this link left for those of you who want to see the class for free. It comes with a free month of Skillshare, which is more than enough to watch our class and any of the other great courses on there!

Bonus Cat Content

On our train ride down to Yeosu, Lisa picked out our hostel solely based on the reviews mentioning “a cat.” Well, here she is.