I finally got to attend KCON NY after a 2-year hiatus. I was only to attend Saturday, June 23 though and it was primarily for the concert. I attended a meet and greet at the Olive Young booth with beauty YouTuber, HeyitsFeiii. She did several giveaways of Olive and Young beauty boxes and KCON concert tickets and audience engagements through K-POP and Youtube trivia. I didn’t get to win anything sadly. I still enjoyed seeing her in person. She is really nice and friendly.
This year they had a merch section. The lines were really long but it was near the KCON Stage. While I was waiting I got to see some of the Cover Star K Contest. The contest featured different k-pop cover groups who were semi-finalists. For merch, I was glad they had several different options to buy. I ended up buying a t-shirt and a KCON lightstick for a friend. I enjoyed visiting the other booths at KCON NY. My favorite booths were Bibigo and McDonalds. I enjoyed the free Korean dumpling sample and photo. At the McDonalds booth, they had a Dance Dance Revolution arcade machine up for people to play. I enjoyed a good game of DDR.
In the evening I attended the concert. The lineup for Saturday was Super Junior, Pentagon, Heize, Stray Kids, and Red Velvet. Super Junior’s Choi Siwon was the host of the show. Jun Curry Ahn also performed during the pre-show. All of the performers were amazing. Super Junior started off the main show with a medley of hits such as “Sorry, Sorry”, “Black Suit” and “Mr. Simple.” Super Junior showed us exactly how they remained a k-pop boy band for so long. We were all entertained throughout the whole night. Both Stray Kids and Pentagon showed me they are worthy upcoming k-pop boy groups to add to my playlist. What’s awesome about Stray Kids is that they only debuted in March of this year. To have just recently debuted with a full album and already in performing in America is a huge feat if you ask me. Heize showed off her amazing vocal abilities as well. Red Velvet blew me away with their English rendition of Bad Boy. Honestly, it shocked us all. We are all still waiting for a single release.
Even though I only attended one day of KCON this year I enjoyed myself. The only things I didn’t like was that tickets went on sale literally after BTS tour tickets. I felt as if it was done on purpose. I only could go one day due to getting funds for tickets last minute. Plus KCON literally changed the ticket tiers last minute. People who use to get good seats would now be considered nose-bleed. I had to get P6 which was way up high in the back at the top level. Also, I can tell KCON had become more commercialized since everything was sectioned off. I didn’t even properly get a booklet so I had miss the only convention I wanted to attend. The panels and the workshop were in a separate section. I will definitely attend next year despite all that because I enjoyed the concert. Plus my ticket was only $30 dollars which were below face value. Hopefully next year I can plan to attend more accordingly and have better seats and some of the actual perks like audience engagement.
Hmm you had an interesting experience there! Would you recommend it to someone who doesn’t know anything about kpop culture outside of watching kdrama? Great Article!
Yeah, I would recommend checking it out. I looked at your blog and I think it would good thing to visit. Plus you can just go to the convention and not the concert. The convention is cheap to go and there’s freebies available. Thanks for checking out my blog and following in it. I will be following yours too,
That sounds more my speed lol. I have nothing against kpop, but since I’m already into anime I don’t want anything else to take over my life (= I also really love freebies. I will definetly try to go next year.
And your welcome! Thank you so much!
No problem. I also will be updating my blog soon don’t worry. 🙂
Looking forward to it! (=