Hey caonimas, it’s the blog post you’ve been waiting for – Kpopalypse’s report on KCON Sydney 2017!  Ever wondered what a KCON event is like?  Well, you probably won’t read a more blisteringly honest and detailed write-up of anything KCON than right here!

PRELUDE: HOW I ENDED UP GOING TO KCON

 

I was honestly torn about going to KCON.  On the one hand, it’s an important k-pop cultural event and I knew that readers would certainly appreciate the review.  On the other hand, I’m very poor at the moment and KCON couldn’t have come at a worse time for me financially, plus the lineup didn’t excite me all that much.  The fact that it’s such a sausage fest was the biggest disappointment, and even discounting that, the selection wasn’t terrific.  Girl’s Day haven’t released any good songs since 1932, WJSN are yet to make a single decent song and all the male groups on the list are sketchy at best.  It all seemed like a big case of “meh”.  My resolution: I’ll go, but only if I can somehow get free tickets.

So I asked the organisers for free tickets, and about a week later they got back to me said “sure, we’ll let you go and see the Friday night concert for free, and also do you want to cover the Friday red carpet event and the convention?”.   Unlike Twitter admins who are still umming and ahhing about granting blue-tick status to Kpopalypse on Twitter despite the fact that I’ve matured my blogging image considerably, KCON staff recognised the value and cultural relevance of Kpopalypse blog, and for this I am forever grateful.  Naturally I said yes to their kind offer, and you can thank them for any entertainment value you derive from the rest of this post.  I’m only sorry that you don’t get a review of the Saturday event as well, but I wasn’t about to look a gift caonima in the mouth.

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GETTING TO KCON

The journey from Kpopalyspe HQ in Adelaide to KCON in Sydney’s Olympic Park started feeling like a weird Kpopalypse fanfiction once I boarded the Olympic Park train.  Olympic Park is the ghost town that Sydney built during the 2000 Sydney Olympics and now stands as a deserted monument to the uselessness and human folly of sporting activity and the colossal stupidity of any government that agrees to host an Olympic event in one of their cities.  There’s no direct route straight to Olympic Park on public transport, to get to Olympic Park one has to travel to inner-city scunge suburb Lidcombe (brothel three doors down from the post office, for your reference) and then catch a train from Lidcombe’s “platform zero” which both looked and sounded appropriately ominous.

Platform zero was tucked well away from all the other train platforms, and to add to the horror fanfiction atmosphere the train they used to carry people on the dedicated rail line to Olympic Park is the most rickety, creaking shit imaginable. To top it all off the train ride also gave me my first taste of k-pop insanity as I was trapped in a carriage with a girl who managed to talk for the entire train ride about all her favourite k-pop groups in one massive run-on sentence almost exactly like the one in my Ailee fanfiction.  I had no idea how realistic I made that story!

In Olympic Park there’s massive green fields and stadiums everywhere in all directions, for a city with such a highly condensed population and squeezed-in economised buildings that sell for stupidly over-inflated prices, it’s a ludicrous and jarring waste of space. Of course I had no idea where the fuck I was going but “follow the squealing fangirls” seemed like a viable navigational strategy and this led me in the direction of Qudos Bank Arena.

Qudos Bank Arena actually isn’t one of the larger stadiums in the area, it’s actually quite modest by Olympic Park standards and I’d estimate the capacity to be around 4000 if every available space in there was maxed out. However I wasn’t going into the arena itself just yet, my first task was to meet up at the information desk to get my media pass, and then go and visit the convention, so I started just aimlessly wandering around.  Some sneaky caonima spies had texted me earlier about how there was a massive queue for the convention, but I figured I could probably circumvent that somehow. I was right, as I just wandered straight into the convention space with no media pass and nobody stopped me.

After asking a bunch of security guards and venue staff who seemed to have no idea where anything was, I eventually found a small area by the SBS Popasia truck and bag check-in point where I met the very nice organiser who had greenlit my attendance and collected the media pass from her. The organiser crossed my name off a huge list – there were about thirty five people in the “press group” and I was told to wait with them. Then we were given some instructions and led around a bit, but the organiser had such a teeny tiny voice that I actually missed the large majority of what she was saying. However the crux of it seemed to be:

• Go to the convention

• Fuck around

• Meet at 5pm outside the convention to do the red carpet thing

• Go see the concert later

She probably said some other things too but I couldn’t quite hear them. There’s so much unnecessary vocalfaggotry in k-pop but here was one place where vocal coaching could have actually been useful for once, it’s hard to organise a large group of people if you have trouble acoustically projecting your voice.  Because of this acoustic impediment, I don’t know if she warned me about the fangirl stampedes. We’ve all seen them in GIFs but in real life a fangirl stampede is frightening, and I saw a few of them at KCON.

Here several fangirls are running directly towards me. They have realised that this particular fauna holding pen is the correct queue for something or other, and I happened to just be at the head of the zoned-off area at the time. Fortunately I’m completely safe as Kpopalypse is always OH&S compliant – there’s a large fangirl-proof metal barrier between me and them which is out of frame in this picture. Nevertheless I felt similar feelings to what the fictional marines in the “Alien” films must experience when they observe the face-huggers in glass enclosures, knowing that only some human engineering stands between them and certain doom.

As I strolled around I started getting quite a few questions from random strangers. Was this the line up for the high-touch? Was it the line up for the red carpet event? Where do I buy concert tickets? Can you take a photo of me and my friend against this EXO poster? As I don’t look like a typical k-pop fan, plus I was carrying a staff pass plus the passes for my radio station (which I thought might be helpful to have in case my press qualifications were called into question), people sort of assumed that I was responsible and knew what was going on. There seemed to be a bit of broad confusion about the general layout of the waiting lines, if there’s one thing that I would feed back to the organisers maybe better communication could have been an improvement as nobody seemed to know which queue was for what, and there seemed to be multiple queues for everything… or maybe there wasn’t?  I didn’t have to stand in any of them so it didn’t affect me directly, but I think if I was a regular ticket-goer I may have become frustrated.  I’d recommend either more signs at the entry to queues so people clearly know what they are for, and/or perhaps more people standing around specially deployed for the purpose of helping people and who have a good overview of the entire event to explain what’s happening to anyone lost, as most of the people with staff passes that I spoke to to try and get a bearing didn’t even know simple stuff like where the information desk was.  Also a sign posted at the train station saying “KCON this way” would have been a polite touch.  Hopefully they can improve on this aspect next year if the event returns to Sydney.

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THE CONVENTION

The convention part of KCON was definitely the smallest convention of any type I’ve ever been to in terms of overall floor space, with the entire event happening inside one high-school gym sized room. Here’s what was on offer:

I can’t remember what these people are signing up for, I think it was a beauty consultation or something like that. No, I did not sign up, Kpopalypse already meets required standards, at least in my own mind, which is what matters most.

At the KCON Official Goods stall you could buy autographed CDs, but these were all sold out before I got there (except for Up10tion, who I guess were too nugu, and Girl’s Day who didn’t even have any for sale for god knows what reason).  There were also some KCON shirts and other random stuff. I’m not sure if there was any other group-specific merch, I did see quite a few people with EXO lightsticks but I’m pretty sure they brought those from home, because they weren’t all one consistent variety.

There was a small area with a dance class happening. I’m not sure what exactly they were learning to dance, but watching people try to perform the dances with varying degrees of success made it clear how difficult it was.  Vocalfagging may have no place in k-pop but dancefagging possibly might. I don’t really know, as unlike music where I know everything and possibly far too much, I know very little about dancing which is why I don’t really blog about it at all.

Here we get to the real crux of what KCON is actually about.  The Korean government, music and tourism industry sponsors hope that all this interest that you folks have in k-pop translates into a broader interest in Korean culture overall, and that maybe you’ll become so enamoured in all the Korean-ness that you’ll want to pack your bags and head to Korea and boost their local economy a bit.

There were lots of very nice brochures about Korean travel and tourism opportunities available, the one with the big “HALLYU” on the front was actually legit impressive with tons of large full-colour pictures of idols and celebrities inside, making the perceived link between idols and tourism crystal clear. I would have picked one up but the last copy was snaffled by one of the other press team and it’s not like I give a crap about any of the tourist information so I didn’t worry about procuring one for later use.

You could make your own Korean fan here. I’m not sure how a Korean fan differs from any other type of fan, although I saw people writing in Korean on their fans, so maybe a Korean fan is Korean if it has Hangul scribble on it. Interestingly, KCON staff would come up to me at approximately 15 minute intervals for the duration of the convention asking me if I would like a free fan, and the fans that they would offer me looked nothing like these fans.  I could have said to them “but wait… this isn’t a genuine Korean fan, is it?” but I kind of took pity on them so I just said no thank you.

It’s not all hard dance-practicing, fan-making work at KCON though, there’s also time for recreation, and there were a few games on offer.  Tuho was by far the most eye-catching one – Tuho is apparently a game where you throw sticks into holes, and… actually there didn’t seem to be a lot more to it than that.  This lady would give people sticks, they would throw them into some holes, then she would give the players some instant noodles as a prize  (you can see them just above the holes in the picture) and then the process repeats. There didn’t appear to be any relationship between demonstrated stick-throwing-in-hole-competency and instant-noodle eligibility – everyone’s a winner at Tuho, it seems.  Let’s all take a moment to think about Tuho lady and hope that she was paid appropriately for her back-breaking hours of stick-retrieval and carbohydrate dispensation.

There was also a stage at the convention, where things would happen. When I first got in there were some girls plugging away at a (singing) cover of Girls’ Generation’s “Into The New World” which is a great song in isolation but which in the context of a convention with all the “culture” and “travel” propaganda comes off a bit too much like Hillsong for comfort.  The two people pictured above are MCs who ran some competition thing where people answered trivia questions about the k-pop groups performing at KCON for prizes, which I sort of half paid attention to but not really. Then one of the MCs sang Jay Park’s “Joah” because there is a small sector of k-pop fans who actually believe that Jay Park’s music isn’t complete bullshit.  I’ve noticee that a lot of young, well-groomed Asian men I meet are really into Jay Park, I think they buy into that “ladies man” image he projects and hope that if they can emulate some of that shine, they might get to roll around on the bed with some girl like he does in his music videos.  I haven’t got the heart to tell them that the women in his videos are models and they’re only there because they’re getting paid, and that Jay Park just jerks it to Girl’s Day like the rest of us. Let them believe what they want to believe.

Oh, did you know that the Winter Olympics is coming up in Korea? It would be hard to fucking miss it with this bear and the white tiger or whatever pointing it out for you and wasting precious convention floor space.  Do you know that because you like k-pop, you therefore love everything about Korea unconditionally, so you’re supposed to give a shit?  What, you don’t care about some irrelevant sporting event and you’re just into k-pop for the actual music? SHAME ON YOU, GO REFLECT TSK TSK ETC

You could also get a free makeover, now that’s pretty cool and slightly more relevant to k-pop given how much makeup every k-pop idol has on their face at all times. I’m not sure if the sign saying “just like SBS PopAsia on Facebook” means that you just have to click “like” on their Facebook page, or if they’re also trying to say that SBS PopAsia staff all got makeovers too and you can look as hot as them after they had theirs.  The confusion when grammar and technology meet.

If you’re really lucky a free makeover will make you about half as hot as Jacques Peterson from SBS PopAsia and Arcadey blog fame, who is in the centre of this picture, seen here inside the SBS PopAsia soundproof both with fellow staff. It was good to finally meet him in person after years of corresponding on the Internet and missing each other at various events in the past. I was also supremely jealous that he got to spend a fair chunk of his time at the convention in a soundproofed area, I would have paid good money to be encased in safety glass away from spazzing fangirls for the duration of the convention.  Anyway Jacques is a totally awesome person and an erudite young professional who loves k-pop and has been following it at least as long as I have, you can trust him to serve you the tea, maybe you should follow him on Twitter.

This is a wall with pictures of the nine groups attending KCON. There’s also a red carpet in front of it which is out of frame. I don’t know why it’s there, but the press group including me got a group photo taken in front of it. The white tiger was in on the photo action too, I put my hat on the white tiger at the time, but I don’t know where the photo is or who took it. It might end up on the KCON site or something. A lot of fans also got their photos taken in front of this wall and were really excited by this photo opportunity HEY IT’S JUST A WALL WITH SOME PICTURES ON IT CALM DOWN GIRL FUCK

While the convention was going on, there was also soundchecking happening in the main arena for the concert later that night. These sneaky caonima fangirls are peering through the gap in the concert door, trying to get a glimpse of their biases on stage. Pentagon’s “Like This” was playing while this photo was taken, and although I heard vocals in the mix, I doubt that the guys in the group were actually on stage at that time, after all the vocals are in the backing track too in that usual vocal-cheaty k-pop way, so just because you hear vocals doesn’t mean anyone is actually singing. I don’t know if the fangirls were successful, but I thought it would be really funny if suddenly the door opened in their faces.

There was also food out in the main area and I didn’t take any photos of it because I feel like an Instagram cockbreath taking photos of food on my phone, but one area where the convention was a definite let-down was the culinary aspect.  The best food on offer was the chicken and rice with a little kimchi and veg in a bucket thing and that was barely a snack and cost $13, the pork bulgogi roll (wait, is that a thing) I didn’t have but it was tiny and the same price and the other food was pretty basic chips and stuff, and a chicken katsu burger which was a bun, a katsu and a bit of lettuce for once again $13.  I really was expecting a lot more here given that outside of k-pop music, food is really the only aspect of Korean culture that I actually give any fucks about at all.  Come on guys, the reputation of Korea is riding on those horrid oversalted French fries, I know it’s hard to feed a couple thousand people efficiently but a little bit more effort here would have been nice, especially given the admission price.  Do you want us to go to your country and waste all our money or not.  I had far better Korean food the next day in Sydney for the same price, when I went to a cool Korean place called “The Bab” that actually had posters of IU selling soju on the walls and for exactly $13 I got a beef bulgogi that was about three times the size plus five different side dishes.

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THE RED CARPET EVENT

Part of the deal of the free pass was “take photos of the stars on the red carpet”.  Sounds pretty cool, right?

This is the audience area for the red carpet event. There’s two separate zones, with the front zone being for the press group and presumably also for people who paid a premium for VIP tickets. Then there’s the back area outside of the silver barricade for everyone else. The press were let into the audience area before anyone else so we could take up positions with camera gear. However there was a “no tripods” rule and also a “if more than one of you are from the same media, only one of you can attend the red carpet” rule. Everybody obeyed the first rule but I think a lot of people ignored the second rule because I didn’t see a lot of enforcement going on, which meant that things were still irritatingly crowded for no reason.

On the left side of the stage above you’ll see the Qudos Bank arena sign.  Here’s what the view looks like from that sign:

This is the area where the idols walk through to get to the stage. I set up position here, and waited… for over an hour. It was incredible how long KCON took to get their shit together for this event, given that all they had to do was move people into the venue and switch on a bunch of microphones, the actual concert itself was far better organised, time-wise.  Now while my position looks good and was fine for personal observation purposes, it’s actually crap for taking photos, at least with my equipment.  I was not realising that these idols would all be walking very briskly and that trying to get a decent photo of any of them with my crappy phone while they whizzed across the red carpet at fangirl-evading speed would be impossible. Idols clearly are used to moving very quickly through crowds for OH&S reasons and thus all my photos of idols walking looked like this:

No shit, that’s about the best one, too.  Due to my lack of decent camera equipment, every time the idols walked by, I watched at the red carpet corner to get a close look and then just moved to the stage to get better photos where you can actually see what they looked like. Anyway here they are, I hope you enjoy these super high quality photos:

Here’s SF9. Each group had some sort of introductory catchphrase, then got asked three generic questions, along the lines of “how does it feel being in Australia”, “what can we expect from your stage at KCON” and “do you have any message for the fans”.  The groups had the questions translated to them, but answered in English where possible. There’s no point telling you what the answers were because it’s all pretty much the same shit these groups always say, you’ve heard it all before.  Each group was also asked to pose facing forward, and facing both slightly left and right so people could take photos.

This is Pentagon. Pentagon receive the Kpopalypse award for “best English speakers at KCON” with multiple members seemingly being quite fluent.  I can’t remember which member did most of the talking but it’s clear that CUBE are big on English lessons and they got through the questions with the most ease out of any of the groups.

Victon on the other hand relied heavily on clunky translations but got the award for “spiffiest dressing” with some very suave purple and black suits that probably would have cost more than those VIP tickets some of you patrons bought.

When I was about 5 years old I remember boarding a jet airplane. At that age, the sound of the jet engine was terrifying and I thought my eardrums were going to burst, I had never heard anything that loud.  I had flashbacks to that moment when EXO walked up on the red carpet to the stage and the screaming all around me amped up to fever pitch.  Once again I was thankful for the strength of KCON’s steel barricades. Anyway EXO did the thing and the fangirls went ballistic on every word and gesture, however for unknown reasons EXO only answered one question instead of three. Later, I heard that there were rumours that EXO weren’t going to do the red carpet at all.

Girl’s Day were last up, and did their “every day Girl’s Day!” catchphrase. However instead of “what can we expect” from your stage, the second question was “can you show us some of the sexy poses you’ll use tonight”. Good looking out, KCON MCs. Girl’s Day happily obliged them, so here you are:

I can’t comment on the male groups as a heterosexual male (Ill leave that for Arcadey’s Twitter), but I now am obliged to throw down the real talk – how fappable are Girl’s Day, really? Having seen them now within jizzing distance as they walked up the red carpet I can now confirm to you the following rating which applies to both boob sizes AND general fapability:

Minah > >> | Yura > Hyeri > Sojin |

Minah is easily the hottest, no competition. The lack of her “cute” look in recent videos and photo shoots might be down to either surgery, excessive Photoshop, way too much makeup, or a combination of these three, but in person she’s still got a lot of what made her look great in videos like “Don’t Forget Me”. She also has definitely the best figure as far as what I look for – short, cute and rocking a kind of slutty Chrissie Amphlett look. Yura is more “generically” attractive in that Nana modelesque kind of way that sex creeps like Asian Junkie dig but that I don’t really give a fuck about, and she was the biggest hit with audience reaction too but I wasn’t keen on the clothing choices for her and she’s less my type even though I will admit she has appeal. Hyeri doesn’t look as good as in the early Girls’ Day videos, she’s definitely had face surgery that’s dulled some of the features I really liked about her into that Korean average kind of look. Sojin just looks kind of ordinary to me, half of the girls in the press group were hotter than her (especially there was one cutie who looked like Suhyun, damn) but then Sojin’s about 92 years old so I’ve got to cut her some slack, she does look astoundingly good considering her age, and healthy as well, whereas Hyeri kind of looked like her dress was holding her spine in place and if someone undid her she’d collapse into a small pile.  Sojin is probably the only person on the planet older than me and she does rock it well, I hope I look as good as Sojin when I get as old as her.

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THE CONCERT

Here’s what the stage looked like when I first got to it.

The T-shaped thing is a really good layout, it means that no matter where you are on the floor, chances are that you’re going to get a good close look at your faves at some point. It also takes up a large volume of floor space which makes it easier for the venue to “look full” although it isn’t really. There were some opening acts performing, a couple groups of Australian teenagers doing cover dances to k-pop songs, and why not.  They were pretty good I thought.

Then we had some very brief MCing and the concert was on before I even knew it.  Here’s another picture of the stage just before the lights went down and SF9 came on:

As you can see, not exactly a full house.  Don’t get me wrong, there were a LOT of people (most are out of frame), but it wasn’t anywhere near sold out.  I think the high ticket prices and lineup might have kept a fair few people away.  More did filter in while the first few groups were doing their thing though, by the time EXO hit the stage the crowd was more respectable than it looks here.

So, here’s what you got:

SF9 – were on first.  They performed “Easy Love“, “Fanfare” and “Jungle Game“.  After their first song they had a brief break where they talked to the audience, this was a pattern that was repeated with all the groups.  I actually really enjoyed SF9 and I thought they had the best songs of all the male groups, on average.  They also really put a lot into their dance routines, you could really see at the end of the first song when they started talking to the audience but were still completely out of breath from just one song’s worth of dancing.  However I can’t help but feel a bit ripped off getting only three songs.  Surely the other groups would do more…

Pentagon – performed “Like This“, “Can You Feel It” and “Gorilla“, the latter in particular with outstanding dancing and staging.  Usual audience chat (and after-first-song tiredness) and they also did some stupid “Pinata” thing with the audience which had nothing to do with a pinata as there was no pinata in sight, but it was basically just getting them to do some random shit by spinning a boomerang-shaped wheel on the big screen.  The random shit ended up being a dance competition thing but it wasn’t random at all because all the backing music for it was clearly prepared in advance.  Anyway yeah, three songs, thanks cunts.

There was an interlude where for a change of pace Chanyeol from EXO performed the Goblin OST duet “Stay With Me“.  His duet partner was Seola from WJSN (Cosmic Girls), who as far as I know was the only person from Saturday’s lineup to make an appearance at the Friday show (apart from SF9 who performed both nights).

Victon – performed “Unbelievable“, “Eyez Eyez” and I can’t remember the other song but it might’ve been “What Time Is It Now“.  I enjoyed Victon the least out of all the sets, the had the worst, cheesiest songs and also the lowest amount of audience rapport.  They also did the pinata thing and I can’t remember what it ended up on but I was only half paying attention, at this point I had noticed that the Suhyun girl from the press group had fucked off, presumably to get a better seat further to the action, as plenty were spare.  Or maybe I smelled funny.

Girl’s Day – performed “I’ll Be Yours“, “Something“, “Expectation” and “Ring My Bell“.  Definitely my favourites for the night just because “Something” and “Expectation” are both really good songs, but the other two worked quite well in context.  The old-school bass of “I’ll Be Yours” was a nice change from the synthetic sub-bass of almost everything else, and “Ring My Bell” while definitely a song I don’t like was a good pick for a fast-paced see-ya-later song.  Usual audience banter etc.  At one point Sojin actually said that she hoped the event would bring greater cultural exchange between Australia and Korea.  Calm down girl, don’t they pay you enough or what.

EXO – came out and did “Monster“… actually no they didn’t, that was SF9, who just fucking turned up and pretended to be EXO presumably just to fuck with people like me sitting way at the back who can’t see people’s faces.  Er, okay.  No, actually EXO did BTS’ “Fire“… no wait, no they didn’t… or did they?  Who the fuck actually did “Fire” that night?  I don’t even fucking know, all I know is that it probably wasn’t BTS.

EXO (for real this time) – came back on and did “Power“, “The Eve“, “Heaven“, “Tender Love” and “Ko Ko Bop“.  Predictably, the fans went nuts and everyone had a good time.  The song choice was a bit eclectic and this was good, better than hearing early crap feature tracks like “Growl” or “Wolf” which I honestly expected.  The songs they picked worked well for the night as EXO were just a little more downbeat than SF9 and Pentagon, and a little less cheesy than Victon.  I guess with so many members gone from the group since the early days they didn’t want to revisit early material.

I haven’t provided any photos here because they all look more or less like this:

I’m sure there’s like 2968 fancams already on YouTube by now anyway.  You all know what a k-pop concert looks like, I’m sure.

So how was it?  It has to be said that the whole event was efficient as fuck – as soon as one group was off, the next group was on literally seconds later, and the schedule ran super-tight.  The concert started a little bit before 8pm and everything was done and dusted by 10pm which is a little too fucking short for my liking given that we’ve got five groups performing, two of which have fairly extensive back-catalogues that weren’t even touched.  I couldn’t fault the staging at all, and there were no fuckups anywhere, one stray bit of feedback for a few seconds during EXO’s set was the only mistake I could find in the whole night’s proceedings.  All the groups were also well-presented and knew how to work the crowd, doing all that typical k-pop fake-ass audience engagement shit where they kind of look at you but not really.  EXO in particular were very careful to often spread themselves out at equal intervals across the entire T-area and main stage, so no matter where you were standing on the floor you got to get up close and personal with someone, their higher levels of experience doing live stages certainly came through here.  On top of this the sound quality was excellent, and the right volume – loud enough to get over the fangirls but not deafening.  You couldn’t fault the professionalism anywhere.

It’s worth mentioning that EXO’s Sehun and Suho did some of the MCing at one point, and SF9 members did MCing at other points.  There were also the night’s hosts which were two other guys from KCON.  They all did well and didn’t crap on too long, although the constant mentioning of Hotels Combined got a little bit much – okay, I get it that they’re the event’s main sponsors, but the audience also paid $200+ for tickets each and in some cases a lot more than that for VIP shit so maybe let’s just chill out on the constant promo, yeah?  “Combine your hands together… like Hotels Combined!”… they seriously said that, and that one got some groans even from the young usually-impervious-to-Kpopalypse-style-cynicism k-pop audience, which is when you know you’re pushing it just a little too far.

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CONCLUSION

So – was it good?  Overall, yes.  Was I glad I went?  Yes.  Would I go again in 2018 with another media pass if they’d have me, to report on any improvements?  Yes.  Would I pay full price to go again?  Not likely, unless it was an absolutely amazing lineup.  Maybe if they brought T-ara out.

Positives:

• Great staging and sound quality
• Technically flawless
• Efficient concert stage management, no wasted time
• Groups mainly focused on better material
• Nice and friendly staff and organisers
• Minah’s boobs, seriously

Needs work:

• Too much confusion with queues and lines
• Rubbish catering especially for the price
• Too short, longer stages would be nice, or failing that at least cheaper tickets
• Can we get our shit together a little quicker for the red carpet please
• Why not combine your many ads into one ad… like Hotels Combined
• I know crazy fangirls pay the bills but a little more gender balance in the lineup next time please

Thanks for reading this write-up, and thanks for KCON for being good sports and agreeing to let me into their event!  It’s time for Kpopalypse to say goodbye, as well as Minah, so I’ll see you in the next post!