Now that it’s 2022 and we’re all pretending that the global pandemic isn’t a thing anymore, live k-pop concerts are starting to become more frequent again.  This means that the probability of a k-pop concert being in your area has potentially increased!  If you’re one of the lucky people who lives in the 8.75% of the globe where k-pop artists actually bother to do their “world tours”, but have never been to a k-pop concert before and would like to go, this post is for you!

 

In this post I will run down all the basic trufax that you need to know about k-pop concerts.  Some of these will also apply to any type of concert, some will only apply to pop concerts and some only specifically to k-pop concerts.  However it is good to be aware of all of these things, especially if your music taste changes and you one day start listening to better music than the k-pops (which sounds crazy, but yes it could happen to you).  As someone in the music business with a very clear view of how all sides of the concert situation are managed, I’m uniquely positioned to give you a much better guide to k-pop concerts than all those sugar-coated guides out there on k-pop sites that are just like “spend all your money you dumb fuck”.  Let’s get started!

THE CONCERT ANNOUNCEMENT – IS IT FOR REAL?

Yes, we’re going to start all the way back here.  So – a k-pop concert is announced in your area!  Time to get excited, right?  Well, not just yet – try to calm the fuck down for a moment.  A lot of k-pop concerts are actually sneaky scams by people who know that those in the throes of k-pop ecstasy tend to be uncritical by nature.  That same lack of critical thinking about music and marketing that k-pop fans parade around on their social networking like some kind of badge of honour can be easily exploited by shady individuals looking to part young k-poppers from their coins.  Also, some concerts are not scams in a literal sense, but are simply so badly organised that they are guaranteed to fail before they even get started, which means that in practice they still function like scams because they still take your money away from you and don’t even have the common decency to give you a below-average semi-mimed concert in return (more on that later).  The following video is a promotional video for an Australian k-pop festival… that never happened.  Promoters and fans both lost a ton of money and were never reimbursed, including yours truly.

While I was bummed out at the time that I didn’t get to meet Raina and tell her how high she was on my bias list at the time, in retrospect I’m glad that I lost some money here because I learned some valuable lessons and now I get to educate thousands of people on the nature of k-pop scams using first-hand experience.  My loss is your gain!  So how to avoid a situation like this?  Here’s some signs of a k-pop concert scam that you should watch for.  Not all of these are certain indicators, but put enough together and you can be pretty sure that the concert is not actually going to happen.

• The actual concert itself is announced before the majority of the big-name performers are announced.  Legit festivals start with the big names first (to draw sales) and fill in the nugus that you don’t care about later.  If they’re doing it the other way around and promising “bigger acts will be announced closer to the date”, or doing some other “teaser” bullshit, it probably means they’re having trouble actually securing the services of (read: paying for) those acts.  It’s probably not a financially secure operation and has a high failure risk.
• The concert date isn’t reflected in any of the group’s official promotional material.  This is a huge red flag.  Never mind who is actually selling you the tickets, go directly to your fave’s official accounts.  If the concert isn’t being listed and promoted on the group’s official website/socials, it’s not happening.
• The concert organisers are selling tickets in a way that bypasses the ticketing agency.  This sometimes happens with “early sales”, “VIP offers” etc and these are often charged at exorbitantly high prices.  Only buy tickets through a reputable ticketing agency that has a clear refund policy in place if the concert doesn’t happen. 
• In the lead-up to the event, key players in the company who are involved with putting on the show suddenly leave the organisation.  This possibly indicates people abandoning the sinking ship, either due to lack of being paid their own wages, or fear of legal liability, or even ethical concerns as they don’t want to be associated with or condone the behaviour of the “rotten egg” at the top who is steering the event into destruction.
• Artists on a multi-artist line-up suddenly pull out mid-way through event promotions.  This is usually an indicator that the timeframe for their payment guarantee to attend the event has expired and they didn’t receive the funds, so they withdrew their involvement.  Which in turn, is an indicator that the event organisers have possibly bitten off more than they can chew in trying to get the event up and running in the first instance, so the entire event might soon be about to be cancelled.
• Event sponsors only come on board late in the process, and they’re very small or you’ve never heard of them before.  Feel sorry for them – they’re probably getting scammed too, for even more money than you are.
• It probably goes without saying that you should also be aware of phishing scams in a more general sense – make sure that the ticketing site you’re using is actually the real one, the best way to be sure is to NOT follow any links that you are sent, but try to “organically” search for the event through the ticketing agency’s own official website.

Now that you’ve been through all of that and presumably confirmed that it’s a real event, there are now some more questions for you.

DO YOU ACTUALLY WANT TO GO TO THIS BULLSHIT?  REALLY?

Consider that most k-pop concerts are:

• mostly lipsynced, or at best quietly mumbled over the studio recording
• filled with talking and fluff instead of songs for about 50% of the running length
• overpriced as fuck for what you actually get
• filled with dickheads in the crowd, the same dickheads who terrorise you on online forums if you have any opinion that isn’t “oh gee golly isn’t my bias great, I would lick his poo because it tastes like caramel milkshake”
• a great way to get diseases from unwashed smelly people

Feeling brave?  Then read on – but before you throw that money down for the chance to catch a drop of oppar’s pearly spittle on your cheek, there’s one more factor you may want to consider.

CAN YOU GET IN FOR FREE?

Like most k-pop fans, you’re probably broke.  Don’t worry – there are options.  There are plenty of ways to get to see your faves for no money.  Here are some of them.

• Winning some bullshit competition.  Big events have an extensive free list of “comp tickets” that are used for promotional purposes.  Remember the last time you tried to buy a ticket of an artist you’re a huge fan of, and you logged into the website to make your purchase 0.00001 seconds after sales went live, only to find that the seats you really wanted were already sold out?  They were probably reserved seating for competition winners.  Try to find out who is running competitions that give away free tickets, and pay attention.
• NOT winning some bullshit competition.  Sometimes there is less interest in competitions than expected, so if you’re really lucky, you can actually get a comp ticket but bypass the competition completely.  Ring up and ask nicely, if you present yourself as a polite and valuable customer of whatever it is they they do (“I’m a longtime listener of your radio station” etc), if they’re nice folks and they’re allowed to, they might just give you a ticket.
• Working at the event.  Big events often want workers, and paid work might be hard to get, but volunteer work usually isn’t.  Volunteering a few hours at the merch stand or picking up soda cans or whatever in exchange for free admission is probably worth it, just make sure you can get away from your assigned task when the time comes to check out your bias.  
• Getting a media pass.  This is how I managed to go to KCON in Sydney and you can read the story of how I did it here.  If you’re a writer like me, a v-logger, if you are paid staff or do volunteering for a media organisation or someone else with any kind of media-related social profile, it’s worth asking the question  of the event organisers “I do [x], are there media passes for this event?  Can I have one please?”
• Have connections.  You don’t need to be best friends with oppar, you just need to be best friends with someone who is marketing oppar.  That’s easier than you think as big events have a pretty large marketing web.  It’s worth asking the question to anyone you know who might be connected to the event in some way.
• Bullshit or sneak your way in.  Not recommended for various reasons, and probably won’t work in a venue with strictly organised seating, you might get into the venue but as soon as you enter the staging area without an allocated seat or standing zone you’ll be ushered out on your ass very quickly.  You might have slightly more luck at an open-air festival if you have a friend on the inside who can pull a few strings for you, but if they can do that then why not just go the whole hog and ask them for a proper ticket so you don’t have to worry about being caught and ejected for the entire time you’re there.

BUYING YOUR TICKET – SELECTING A SEAT, AND VIP PACKAGES

So you’ve decided to go the boring route and actually purchase your ticket like a normal person, fine then.  I probably don’t need to give k-pop fans advice on how to waste their money online seeing as you all seem to be masters at it, but it’s worth thinking about where to sit.

 

Here’s a typical plan for a k-pop arena stage, of course different buildings will vary but some variation of what you see here is normal for an A-list act (and only A-list acts tend to have international touring budgets).

The most expensive tickets here are the red standing, then light blue standing, then yellow seated, then light green standing, then the rest.  The dark blue bar up by “block 5/block 6” is wheelchair seating, spare a thought for our mobility-impaired brothers and sisters who can’t get closer to the stage even if they have the money.  The two orange seated blocks are “restricted view” seats (not possible to see the entire stage from here due to structures getting in the way) so are considerably cheaper than the yellow seats next to them.  The very cheapest of all seats are dark green.  Note that above k-pop stages are often video screens to project those all-important faces to the back of the arena, so no matter where you are, you’ll still get to see your faves close up, probably, kind of.

So notwithstanding cost, where’s the best place to be?  If you want to get closest to the performers, red.  But if you want to get close to the performers AND don’t want to deal with sweaty unwashed fans in your face, then yellow because it’s seated.  If you don’t care about visuals but are instead interested in sound quality, then light blue or light green is best, standing as close to that grey rectangle labelled “mixer” as you possibly can.  This is because audio engineers always mix the room so it sounds perfect from where they sit, but that doesn’t always translate across the entire arena because of how sound waves travel.  So the audio where they sit is generally always fine, but if you sit anywhere else, you might get lucky or you might not.

It’s also worth knowing about what some of the terms in VIP packages actually mean, if you’re not familiar with this, so you know what you’re actually paying for.

• Fansign – an event where you meet idols and they sign your shit and you get to talk to them for a little while, the length of which will depend on how many people are also waiting to see them, but generally less than a minute unless they are super nugu.
• Fanmeet – an event where fans meet idols in a private setting and do… stuff.  Usually that stuff means a fansign, something like a red carpet but without the carpet, and maybe a performance or two.  There’s a good recap of a fanmeet here on Asian Junkie.
• Red carpet – an event where your idols walk on a red carpet to a small stage and are asked some questions by an MC.  These rarely last long, but you’ll get a much better look at your idols in the flesh than you normally would on a live stage.
• High touch – an event where you and all the other fans walk in a line by your idols and you touch hands briefly, so you can brag to your friends later “I touched Sana” and you can also think about it for later use.  Seriously, what is this fucking k-pop cult. 

The following video combines a “red carpet” with a “high touch”.

Note that this video of Twice is probably the gold standard for these type of events.  I’ve seen some high touch events where they literally rush the fans along as fast as humanly possible like goddamn cattle and even at its slowest you’re still only getting about three seconds of time so you have to weigh up whether the bragging rights within your fandom cult and enhancement of your fap experience is worth the extra arm and a leg that they’re going to charge for it.  Note that these extra events are without fail before the live show, not afterward.

ITEMS TO TAKE WITH YOU (AND NOT)

There are some things you should take with you.

• Your phone, fully charged, and with some kind of shock-proof casing.  Only bring a charger if it’s a multi-day event or if your phone sucks and doesn’t have a long lasting battery life.  If you plan to use the awesome camera and awesome screen of your phone a lot during the actual show, account for the fact that it will drain the battery quicker than if you were just enjoying the show like a normal person.
• A water bottle, make sure it’s a disposable one as some shitty events will make you throw out your water bottles for “security reasons” but the real reason is so you’re forced to buy another identical bottle inside the venue at marked up prices.  You don’t want to lose your favourite bottle your grandmother gave you in this way.
• Enough money to pay for transport plus whatever you need.  There might be merchandise you want to buy, although it will probably be overpriced and ugly bullshit you still might like to keep your options open here just in case the people running the show actually have a clue.  Some venues only take cash.  Some venues only take EFTPOS.  Bring both, just in case.
• Some ID.
• Snacks of some form so you’re not tempted by the horrid food at the venue.
• Your ticket.  “But it’s an e-ticket” – okay zoomer, print it out anyway.  Don’t rely on having a copy of your ticket on your phone etc because Murphy’s law dictates that when you get to the ticket check-in will be the one time when your phone will die or start doing a big-ass update without your permission.
• Sensible shoes.  You’re going to be walking around, and standing around, a lot.  Take something comfortable and durable.  This goes for all your clothes but shoes more than anything else.
• Hearing protection.  Don’t skip this step!  The concert itself will be very loud but not deafening, but what will definitely be extremely fucking loud, and right in your ear all night, are the screams from the audience.  Anything will do to protect your ears but I prefer the squishy silicon plugs you can get from the chemist.
• Hand sanitiser.  Essential if there’s a “high touch” event, and should be used after touching any shared surfaces (doorknobs, dirty buttons etc).  Forget about COVID specifically, an idol’s hands are the germiest things out there if they’ve touched 50 other people before they’ve gotten to you, imagine catching every virus from every sick person at the venue, at once.
• A lightstick, if you have one.  Why the fuck not, they can actually be handy to mark yourself out as a k-pop fan to strangers who are also k-pop fans, and it’s easier to explain to a security guard than a torch but can perform the same function in an emergency.  One of the better things that k-pop has brought to the world.

Here are some things you should NOT take with you.

• Drugs (including alcohol).  Drugs are no fun.  Drugs endanger the life and happiness of millions.  It must stop.  We appeal in particular to the youth of today.  Stop the madness!  There are better things in life.  Well actually that’s not true – drugs are fucking awesome.  However you don’t want to get so fucked up on drugs that you can’t even accurately recall what happened, or worse yet, pass out (or get arrested, in the case of illegal drugs) and miss the show completely.  Save the getting wasted for the after-party.
• Weapons of any kind.  Don’t take these.  If a seriously violent situation develops at a concert (stratospherically rare, but not unprecedented, especially if you live in Guns R Us land), your best defense is always going to be your feet.  Being where the action isn’t should be your goal in an emergency.  Don’t try to be the hero, all big concerts are crawling with security, there are actual heroes at the venue who are paid to do that hero stuff so you don’t have to.  Also never mind protection from some random psycho, if you have a weapon yourself, once you’re in a room with that many k-pop fans you might even be tempted to go on a killing spree of your own, and now you’re the problem.
• Anything that might raise the eyebrows of someone checking your bag.  If you can’t convincingly explain what it is and why you have it to a security guard in 10 words or less, don’t take it.  These guys and girls running security have a thankless job so try not to make it harder than it is by taking in some weird shit that requires a thesis to explain, unless you have absolutely no choice in the matter.

This is a general list.  Check ahead of time with the venue what can and cannot be taken, usually this information is publicly available, but be aware that some venues are sneaky caonimas and can change the rules on you at the last minute so just be aware that this could happen and err on the side of “the venue will probably be hypocritical dicks”.

GETTING TO THE VENUE

There’s a lot of generic travel advice that I could insert here but won’t.  Just refer to basic traveler’s common sense for when going to unfamilar places.  If you’re worried about going alone then yes you should definitely travel with another person who is attending the same show, but be wary of other people who are k-pop fans and who are also strangers that you meet online.  A stranger that you meet online is still a stranger, whether they love your favourite group or not, and they might potentially be just as predatory as any other stranger that you could happen to meet online.  Just because you think you can trust them is not enough – do background checks on the individual, and make sure you have verified information on who they are and that you tell other people (i.e parents) who you’re meeting, where you’re going, and what time they can expect to be contacted to verify that you’re safe etc.  However if you can definitely trust them then two is safer than one plus having some company to experience events with will definitely enhance your experience as long as they are nice people and not pushy or stupid.

It can be weird going to a new place that you haven’t been to before if you’re catching public transport or walking through the streets but remember – you won’t be the only one in this situation, as you get closer to the venue you’re bound to run into other fans in the general area especially if it’s a really big event.  Following other k-pop fans around can be useful if you need to orient yourself.  If you’re near the venue and lost, look for people with lightsticks and fan merch, and follow them or ask them where things are, hang around them for safety in numbers if you’re concerned.  There’s one thing k-pop fans at a k-pop concert love to talk about and that’s the k-pop concert itself so don’t worry – they’ll be helpful, probably overly so.  If you’re IN the venue and lost, you can also look for staff, there’s usually tons of them around, being bored out of their brain herding insane zombie fans around and who will probably enjoy interaction with a rational human being seeking assistance.  Knowing who to go to for help can be really useful especially at big events where there are often multiple queues for multiple different activities that aren’t always clearly signposted, most really big events will have an information desk of some type.

WHEN SHOULD YOU GET THERE?

Do you have a reserved seat?  If so, enter the venue about fifteen minutes after the doors open (but long before the group hits the stage obviously).  If the venue are running on time (and k-pop events almost always do, because they have to – they have a young audience whose parents will complain if the kids are roaming the streets too late at night) then the bulk of the queue to get in should already be inside, so you can usually just walk right up to the gate without having to worry about having to do too much queueing.  There is absolutely no reason to get there early, other than orientation.

What about if it’s general standing room?  We’ve all seen those people who camp outside venues the day before pop concerts, or all day, so they can secure the best standing spot right at the front of the stage.  I don’t recommend this, unless you’re with a big group of friends who can treat it as a social occasion and make all the waiting seem fun somehow.  The main reason why is that the difference between “I queued outside the venue for an entire week” and “I got inside the arena fifteen minutes before the group got on stage” is usually only about five meters, maybe ten at absolute maximum.  You’re throwing away whole chunks of your life to get only a few meters closer to someone you’re not allowed to touch anyway.  Look at the stage plan above again – if you’re anywhere in that red zone, you’re going to be very close to the stage no matter where in that red zone you stand, so there’s no need to hug to the side of the stage so possessively.  Oppar isn’t going to pluck you out of the crowd and let you marry him just because you happened to be closer to his shoe, you won’t die if you’re a few metres back.

INSIDE THE VENUE ORIENTATION

Once you get to the venue, before you go and take your seat you’re going to want to locate the following:

• The cafeteria.  The food will generally be disastrously bad plus stupidly overpriced, but it’s still good to know where these facilities are, because they are often right next to…
• The toilets, which you are going to want to get acquainted with.
• How to get to the correct entrance to the arena, and when you emerge from it later, how to get to the toilets and outside the quickest.
• Emergency exits (if you’re concerned about venue safety, crowd crushes and how to avoid them read this companion post)
• The merchandise booth, which leads us to…

BUYING MERCHANDISE

You may want to buy merchandise.  Take a look at the merch stall and see what’s available – is there anything you like?  If so, is it an exclusive item that can only be purchased at the venue?  Pull out your phone and check the price and availability online.  If it’s easily available cheaper online, just buy online later instead and that way you don’t have to stand in queues for ages at the merch stall and then have to carry that merch around with you for the entire night, where it could get damaged/dropped/some fan pukes on it etc, plus you’ll probably save money too.  Merchandise sold at venues sometimes has a huge markup, this tends to be more true if it’s a bigger group. 

If it’s definitely an exclusive item, and you decide you really want it, and you might have to queue up with the mob, what a drag.  This is no time to be shy, be sure to be as assertive as possible and make your presence felt in the queue so you can get to your item and buy it before it sells out, but don’t be a dick yourself and get so pushy that it alerts security guards to your presence, you don’t want to get ejected from the venue for unruly behaviour. 

Once you have whatever you were there to get, immediately stash it somewhere safe and out of sight, like the depths of your bag, because people will steal that shit, or at the very least damage it “accidentally” after glaring at it in green-eyed jealousy.

SOCIALISING WITH THE HORDE

At some point you may feel compelled to talk to the other fans in attendance.  Perhaps someone might strike up a conversation with you, or perhaps you’re feeling particularly brave and might want to converse with the zerglings for entertainment or social enrichment.  Don’t be afraid of being yourself and being honest!  Internet warriors are always pussy in person without exception, so even if you run into an ultra deep OTVIII level fan who can’t stand your nuanced opinions along the lines of “I only like 95% of their songs”, they’re unlikely to actually do anything about it beyond scowl internally a little and maybe plan to online harass and doxx you later.  See here for a guide on what to do if that doxxing actually happens.  However most fans are honestly quite nice and you should generally have no problems talking about your shared love of music etc.  What real life experience with fandoms will tell you is that yes while k-pop fans are very into it, it’s only a slim minority who cause actual issues for people, it’s the Pareto rule in action, also known as the 80/20 rule, which dictates that 20% of the k-pop fans will give you 80% of the problems.

To explain this better, if X is a random variable with a Pareto (Type I) distribution, then the probability that X is greater than some number x, i.e. the survival function (also called tail function), is given by

 

where x_m is the (necessarily positive) minimum possible value of X, and α is a positive parameter. The Pareto Type I distribution is characterized by a scale parameter x_m and a shape parameter α, which is known as the tail index. When this distribution is used to model the distribution of fandom insanity, then the parameter α is called the Pareto index.

From the definition, the cumulative distribution function of a Pareto random variable with parameters α and x_m is

 

It follows (by differentiation) that the probability density function is

 

When plotted on linear axes, the distribution assumes the familiar J-shaped curve which approaches each of the orthogonal axes asymptotically. All segments of the curve are self-similar (subject to appropriate scaling factors). When plotted in a log-log plot, the distribution is represented by a straight line.  So in other words, fans are nothing to worry about.

WATCHING THE SHOW

There’s several things you need to know about k-pop concerts if you’re actually going to fork out money to attend a live one, in order to optimise your enjoyment of the experience.  Here they are.

At a k-pop concert, there isn’t actually all that much singing and dancing, compared to annoying talk breaks, pointless videos, and other fluffy bullshit designed for fandom cult consumption that any rational human who reads things at kpopalypse.com would really rather not sit through and insult their intelligence with.  These breaks serve an important function however, they are timed to allow the idols some rest between the strenuous dance routines, and they also buy time for stylists and wardrobe to get their shit together and prepare costume changes, so you can be guaranteed a lot of these breaks even in the most streamlined of k-pop concerts.  They serve an important function for you as well, because they allow you to go to the toilet.  Just before and just after the show itself the toilets will be packed with people trying to squeeze one out, but once the show starts you can guarantee that 99.9% of people will be glued to the stage, this is the time to go and do your business.  A song that everybody loves but that you really hate is easily the best time to use the toilet, there’ll be far less queues then than any other time.  Pick a ballad if you can because ballads tend to have a longer running length than upbeat songs.  Every group has bullshit songs like these, and you can guarantee that at least one will always be performed, often two in a row, because once again it gives the performers a little bit of a rest between all the songs where they have to do the splits at the front of the stage five times per minute.

The second best time for a toilet break is any annoying “fan engagement” talk break activities as these tend to go for a while, if you’re brisk about it you can usually do your business and get back in time well before the next thing that happens that you actually are inclined to give a shit about.  If you want to test this theory, play the below video and once it starts practice taking a shit.

I did mention hearing protection before, remember that this is not for the actual music itself, it’s for providing a buffer against fan screaming, which is far louder.  You probably won’t want to walk around with earplugs in your ears for the entire night, but you will want to have them in for the show itself.  The time to put them in is right at the times when fans become the most excited – just before the performers grace the stage for the first time, as this is when the screams will be at their absolute loudest.  Also be sure to have them in during any insipid and boring competitions where they pit the left and the right sides of the room off against each other to see who can scream the loudest (fucking yawn), and also when fans are screaming to try and generate an encore from the performers (which is always planned well in advance, so don’t bother joining in the screaming match – in a tightly controlled k-pop show it’s already been pre-decided, you’ll either get an encore or you won’t and no amount of screaming or otherwise will make much of a difference).  The other time when you will definitely want hearing protection in place is during the red carpet event and fansigns, or any other situations where the performers are interacting directly with the fans.  Fans get very excited during these events and are prone to all types of irrational behaviour.

Oh and by the way, let’s get one thing straight – even though it’s a “live concert”, and you’re there to see songs being sung, you’re not actually paying to see your idols sing live, most of the time, so don’t be surprised if there’s a lot of miming and eerily perfect vocal performances.  The one time when they usually are singing live is the slower songs, but even then, not always.  In the faster dance numbers, definitely not, at best they are singing at mumble-volume over the top of pre-recorded backing tracks of their own voices.  K-pop dancing is at such a high level that it’s actually genuinely difficult to dance to an upbeat song and sing a powerful vocal that an upbeat song actually requires at the same time, and when it comes to fooling audiences it’s a lot easier to fake the singing part than it is to fake the dancing part.  Read here for more information on how artists fake their live singing, but the basics of it are that there’s a lot of smoke-and-mirrors that goes into live performance and with the technology the way it is these days the groups that are singing and playing everything 100% live all the time are a minority (and no, MR Removed videos will not tell you who is really singing and who isn’t).  The sooner you accept this as a reality and stop worrying about “vocal performance” like it actually matters, the happier you’ll be.

ESCAPING

So the show is almost over, and you’ve hopefully had a good time and gotten your money’s worth, and now you’re thinking about planning your exit strategy and fucking off into the night.  There’s two ways to escape the venue the most effectively.  The first is to leave right at the final note of the final song, before everyone else gets up, and beat the rush by a fraction.  If the last song is one I don’t like very much I’ll sometimes leave during it, if I’m satisfied that there won’t be another encore and/or I’ve heard enough anyway, because nobody leaves at this time and I can escape into the quiet night air and go home or to my hotel quietly.  The other best time to leave is about ten minutes after everyone else leaves – stay in your seat and chill out, play with your phone a bit or talk to friends while everyone else files out in big queues.  Once the mass of people are gone and it’s kind of quieter, then go.

Sometimes k-pop shows have an official “after-party”, and if you’re sufficiently adult to be out late without parents who would be worried about where you might be plus able to do so safely, you might like to go to this and have a good time.  After party organisers will often try to lure you to their location by dangling the carrot of possible appearances from k-pop stars who were performing at the actual show, and you’ll often hear rumours like this about after-parties, but this is almost always a lie just designed to get people into the after-party venue and buying drinks, so don’t get your hopes up.  However that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go.  What will definitely happen at an official after-party is you’ll meet other people who were at the show, and because they’ll usually be older and not so much fanboys/fangirls, you’ll find that this is where you can do some of your best socialising, if you’re into that.  If you happen to be “sexy, free and single and ready to bingo” you also have a convenient and probably-not-sleazy-at-all icebreaker on hand for every potential conversation you might want to have, which is simply asking the other person if they were at the show and how did they like it, or what were they doing instead.  Have fun, be safe, don’t leave your drinks unattended or say yes to any limo rides and let the pussy roll.

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That’s all for this post – hopefully all you caonimas curious about k-pop concerts found this helpful!  Kpopalypse will return!