SM Tour and Rookies Concert

Memorise these tiny, adolescent faces.

Because in a few years' time, if EXO are anything to go by, and the fact they already have a lot of hardcore fans before they've even debuted, they'll be all you hear about for a long time.

We went to the COEX mall again, because SM were holding a few concerts for their "Rookies". If you're not particularly down with your kpop info, most of the big record labels still live in the 90s golden era of manufactured pop stars. And, despite all the jokes we made (and still make) about it, I think in the case of a lot of these artists, they're a lot better off for it.

They hold auditions to pluck willing and highly-talented (and beautiful) tributes barely out of nappies (okay, slight exaggeration, but they're usually primary school age when they get taken in) from the public sphere and basically put them into Pop Music Hogwarts. Or maybe Fame Academy. Whatever. They live in dormitories, usually with their future group members-to-be, and get trained daily by the best vocal coaches, choreographers, public speakers, models, personal trainers, drama teachers, musicians, etc, to be the perfect pop star.

And to be honest, it pays off. I'll get more into that later, but basically they school these kids until they're "ready" and then pop out a group of ready-made celebrities every few years or so. One of the things that's impressive is how prepared they are for hoards of screaming fans. I suppose it's because they gradually expose them to this most terrifying part of fame throughout their training. We'd seen some of the older Rookies during the SM Town concert as backing dancers and occasionally given a brief set to sing or dance. Presumably, this series of shows was also to get them used to a concert environment as well as gauge popularity, what works, what doesn't, and to generate hype.

SO. Being rather into kpop (in case you couldn't tell), we fought our way to some tickets and headed over to the COEX. We popped into the merchandise shop just to see if there was anything interesting or new, but mostly I was amused by the fact they'll brand ANYTHING. Here's a multipack of snack nuts (called Super Nuts, presumably linked to Super Foods) and someone presumably went "omg, you know what else starts with Super? Super Junior. Slap some faces on it. Boom. Done."

BoA 봐

photo stolen from Nick, sorry

Just another short post to mark the fact we saw BoA live! We go to an awful lot of concerts here because we're very aware that once we leave Korea, we probably won't have another chance to see Korean artists, and especially not for the same price. 

I saw Big Bang and Super Junior in London, and the atmosphere wasn't the same either. I don't think the shows were as long, and not as spectacular either, because I suppose venue rules and last trains are different, they can't ship over some of the set pieces, and they can't chat to the audience very easily.

We shared this bingsu with 예슬 the night before. LOOK AT IT.

Also, I tried to make some sort of fake kimbap without it falling to pieces.

This is the building it was in. A proper concert hall by Gyeongbokgung

We arrived at the venue pretty early, so after working out what doors we'd need to go in through, and scoping out the merchandise (as ever: disappointing) we went for a walk in the sun. (Remember when that was a thing you could do? Ah, winter.) There was a huge poster set up in the lobby for taking a picture with, but there was also a huge queue, so we decided it wasn't worth it.

The building itself was beautiful though, so it was great just to wander around there and take photos from afar.

It was summer, and I spotted a Gong Cha, so I was determined to have some bubble tea to tide me over until the show started.

영국여행 | England (Day 8)

What a terrible day we're having. Ugh. Sunny.

Day 8! Day 8 was a bit of a whim because we found out a bit last-minute that there was going to be a Korean Culture festival in London, and it would be a good chance to share our current home with people. The weather was really great! So hot and sunny and, unlike Korea, not humid at all, haha.

We went with Ann-Marie and Chris, with the promise of meeting up with a few more friends throughout the day depending on their schedules, including Yasmin and a very brief, fleeting hello with Jerlen and a few of the other Filipino kids from home. If we met anyone else, I'm sorry, my memory is bad and it was 3 months ago, haha.

I also took the opportunity to be a massive tourist a) for the sake of showing my students later, and b) because I haven't been touristy in London since I was about 17, so I needed an update. Plus, look at all the sun I have to document! Sun? In England?!

Danny Elfman's Music From the Films of Tim Burton

Hello, hello, long time no see etc etc I'm bad at blogging, as usual.
A long time ago (maybe July?), in a city far, far away (from England) Nick and I went to a concert in Seoul.

It was a celebration of Danny Elfman's music from all of Tim Burton's films, played live by an orchestra! A little bit different from our usual musical fare.

As far as I can remember, I'd never been to an orchestral concert, so this was quite exciting. We weren't sat particularly close to the stage, so although the usual ban on photos didn't seem to be present, there wasn't really anything to photograph, so excuse the lack of images. But I suppose you don't go to something like this to take pictures, so what were we expecting?

I'm not totally sure if there was any particular order to the movies that they played, but each section would begin with the movie title displayed on the projector screens. The orchestra would begin playing, and the screens would play some appropriate footage, occasionally broken up with concept art images.

It was really great to see and hear all of the music live, and in particular Danny Elfman himself came out for The Nightmare Before Christmas to perform some of Jack's songs.

I'm a little confused as to why it wasn't in one of Seoul's actual concert halls, as the sound wasn't as great as I was expecting. The orchestra were obviously performing very well, you could hear that. But I wanted to feel the musical vibrations in my chest and have the sound really all around me, rather than just amplified through speakers somewhere in front of me.

Having said that, I still had a great time and it was very cute seeing people leaving afterwards, humming their favourite songs. I'd definitely go to see another concert like this...but maybe not at this venue.

TVXQ Encore Show (aka TREAT YO SELF)

We were super excited for this weekend for a long time because meeting up with friends that are tricky and rare to see is always a special occasion, and via "planning" on Kakao it rapidly spiralled into a Treat Yo Self weekend (that's a reference to Parks and Rec) starting with burgers and cider at our fav: Grabab 

 Import drinks? Treat yo self. AVOCADO? TREAT YO SELF.

Anyway, the next day was the actual concert and naturally we passed the time with selfies, because the road to the Olympic Park is a long and boring one.

#sorrynotsorry #pangit

SM Town COEX Artium

I've heard the name COEX (COnvention centres and EXhibition halls) a lot in tourist things about Seoul as well as from people who generally seem to sing its praises, so I've always been intrigued by it but never enough to make my way to its rather out-of-the-way location (in relation to our home)

But the SM Town exhibit is still there and something we both really wanted to see, having given SM Entertainment a fair amount of our time and money in the past year alone, haha.

It wasn't too hard to find, considering the gigantic signs everywhere and the crowds of teenage girls coming and going from the direction of the entrance, laden with bags saying 'SMTOWN' on them. It's very pretty and elaborate for something that I've been told is just a temporary fixture.

Inside, the exhibition covers several floors, each with a different function. The walls are covered in photos of SM's various successes as well as display cases full of costumes and memorabilia from different artists. The first floor you come to is the pop-up shop, where you can buy all kinds of SM merch for almost all of their artists.

It All Started With the BIGBANG

I'm gradually catching up, after figuring out why my phone wasn't syncing photos with my Google Drive. This was only a couple of weeks ago, BIGBANG's big comeback!

Big Bang (I'm never sure how you're supposed to write the name) were the first K-pop group I ever listened to, way back in secondary school, thanks to the Lollipop MV. Yay, colours!

I've already seen them once before, in London with Ann-Marie and it was EXCELLENT. So I was very excited for one in Seoul, which you'd expect to be EVEN MORE EXCELLENT.

Things that compounded this excellence include the fact that we finally got fanlights for this show, unlike the others we'd been to. It's something so small and seemingly inconsequential but actually it really changed the experience. I felt part of the masses of other fans, and helped me feel like less of a fraud considering there's very few parts of the songs I can sing, and I don't know any 'fan chants'.

The other aspect is that I had fan merchandise for this show. I haven't bought any at other shows because either the design was uninspiring, too expensive, or sold out. Wah. But I bought this shiny number at the London show which again made me feel more like I fit in. (I also bought a GD mug to show my undying allegiance.)

SM Town Live 2014

This is VERY overdue. About a month ago now, we went to SM Town Live. After staying up late and freaking out over the user-unfriendly and foreigner-antagonistic GMarket, we had tickets and the event had actually arrived. I don't think it's ever come to London. I think the closest we got was Paris, so we were determined to go.

For those that don't know, SM is a music label in South Korea, home to some of the biggest stars in K-Pop, including Super Junior, Girls Generation, and the ever-ubiquitous EXO. SM Live, is basically a huge gig where their entire roster performs, as individual groups or artists, as well as some inter-band collaborations. It's also an exciting chance to see the SM 'Rookies' (future K-pop stars in training) in their element before they've even debuted.

Me, trying (and failing) to take a photo with the World Cup Stadium sign.

It was pretty easy to get to the stadium, as you'd expect, and even more impressive was the efficiency of the queuing systems. There were THOUSANDS of people there already, but it didn't feel particularly scary or stressful. Or maybe that was just because they were all 5ft tall teenage girls. (No, they can be pretty scary. I'm looking at you 사생 kids.)

We milled around for a while and went to buy some merch. I was hoping for a nice t-shirt or something but sadly, for a huge company with a ton of money and creative power, they don't actually have much that I would wear. There were plenty of people there wearing merch from previous SM Town shows though, and it all looked great, so maybe this is just a dry spell.

We settled for a book, which turned out to be just 140ish pages of painfully beautiful Korean faces.

Singin' In The Rain

This is just a quick post about the fact Nick and I managed to get tickets to see Singin' in the Rain live a week or so ago, and went on a night where both Sunny (Girls Gen) and Baekhyun (EXO) were performing! Too exciting.

[Sadly (but understandably) there was a strict "no cameras" rule in place, so I couldn't take any photos of the show. Large blocks of text are generally dull, especially with my writing, so I've nabbed some photos from google. In my rush, I've forgotten to take down any photo credits, so if a photo is yours and you want me to take it down or add credit, let me know!]

I'd never actually seen the original, and we weren't sure how much of it would have been translated into Korean (watching some clips of Wicked in Japan, it was a really interesting mix of English and Japanese), so the night before we just stayed up to watch the film, so that if there was a lot of Korean I wouldn't be totally lost.

Can I just say, I want to watch the film over and over. It's just so wonderful. All the dances and songs make me so happy, I'm really glad I've found it, haha.

Anyway, it's a good thing we did that, because it turns out that other than the character names, and vital lines in songs like "I'm singin' in the rain", and "Good morning", pretty much all of it was in Korean. Even Moses Supposes got translated into a Korean equivalent, which was fun to see. It was so nice to watch though, and because it's a very visual format I wasn't too lost anyway. I guess if people can watch Italian opera and get what's going on, there's no reason why this shouldn't work either!


We had a very cute encounter with a Korean boy in front of us in the queue, who seemed very excited to find foreign fans there, and was eager to talk to us about Baekhyun.

Some highlights for me were moments like when Sunny runs out into the audience near the end, and pretty much everyone gasped and sat up SO straight to see her better. I'm not sure what they thought she was going to do, but the excitement in the room was adorable.

Culture Class | Starting Something New

To my shame, I'm actually quite a culturally uneducated person, in terms of music and movies. When I reached the age where most kids start exploring music, old films, and interesting TV shows, I discovered anime, J-pop, and asian dramas. And I stayed there.

For a long time.

As a general rule of thumb, if you have to ask "have you seen/heard...[insert very popular thing here]?" my answer will most likely be no.

Until about a year or so ago, I hadn't seen the original Star Wars trilogy, I've not seen Jurassic Park (that I can actually remember), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Sound of Music, Singing in the Rain, When Harry Met Sally, any Batman films (new or old), and other than the bits of Casino Royale we had to watch at A-Level...I've never seen a James Bond film.

So, with all the spare time we have in the evenings, Nick and I have decided to start a sort of "culture swap", largely inspired by Polly Adams' Culture Coach project, where every week a classic book, film, and album are doled out in a sort of book club for people who've been living under a cultural rock for their formative years.

This week, we watched When Harry Met Sally (so good), and I finally watched Dark Night Rises (REALLY good), two in one, aw yiss. I also listened to Bloc Party for the first time ever, and am very much sold on them.

"Oh! They sound kind of like Two Door Cinema Club. I like it!"
"No, Two Door sound like THEM. But without any of the conviction."
"Ah. Yes."

종묘 와 낙원동 | Jongmyo and Nakwon Arcade

I'm torn between using amusing/weird titles for my blog posts, or the more sensible, descriptive option.

Anyway, this weekend we went to Jongno-gu, the "bell" district near Dondaemun, previously the eastern wall of old Seoul. We came here to get some guitars for Nick from the renowned Nakwon Music Arcade, but to make the most of our day out, we decided to go to one of the nearby palaces.

We kind of failed, in that we got a bit lost, but found Jongmyo Shrine, which was also on our list of "places to visit", so it wasn't the end of the world.

On our lost wanderings, we went through a small park area, and felt distinctly uncomfortable from all the rowdy elders just hanging around in large groups everywhere. It really felt like we'd entered some kind of gang territory and there'd be a clicking advance a la West Side Story at any moment.

Except this guy.

Too cute. But anyway, we found the shrine, which was enormous, and paid our paltry 1000₩ each before heading in. Because of all the trees, it was actually surprisingly cool inside the walls of the shrine, and many of the buildings were (I think) designed to make the most of passing breezes.