Feel Korea and London Korean Festival 2017 were two separate events. The latter was free for all visitors to introduce Korean culture and the day ticket that was mentioned to those who purchased the Feel Korea concert tickets was not needed in the end.
I imagine this year's London Korean Festival was much like the 2015 one with introducing Korean food, traditional culture, technology and having booths to celebrate Hallyu. I was fine with this being an indoor setting as that was what I preferred but I didn't realise they would opt for this venue.
As I didn't really experience the London Korean Festival as long as I had hoped due to a lack of information being circulated properly and the handling of queuing being up for debate**, I will focus on Feel Korea instead.
Broadening the partnership between UK and South Korea, Feel Korea's music event brought four music acts to the stage at Olympia. The queues for this event started incredibly early, prior to the official doors opening time of 7pm. Hardcore Kpop fans mingled, listened to music as they waited outside the venue.
Once they went inside, there was a long wait of perhaps 40 minutes before the evening began. A warm up consisted of a Taekwondo demonstration event, followed by the appearance of the MCs. This included EXID's Hani. KNK/Keunakeun were the first to kick things off, followed by SNUPER, EXID and finally HIGHLIGHT. Understandably, the organisers left the more senior groups to the end. Also taking into account HIGHLIGHT have been here before when they were still BEAST and performed with other Cube entertainment artists.
In addition to having 4-5 songs on their sets, there were also special stages included e.g. KNK performing Ed Sheeran's Thinking Out Loud and Hyerin from EXID performing easy-listening popular song You Raise Me Up. SNUPER and LoKo dance school also performed a Bangtan dance cover medley, focusing on Danger, Fire and Not Today.
Despite the sound not being as perfect as it could be inside Olympia, the crowd were incredibly hyper and excited from start to finish (with the odd fan pushing past, even during the queuing outside. Inevitable of course). I was happy to see 크나큰 live nonetheless (I should have come earlier to see two of the members on the judging panel for the Kpop cover contest). Understandably a large number of the Kpop fans attending were there for EXID and Highlight so there was a lot of waiting and the occasional hand waving, selca stick waving and heart shape gestures whenever it felt needed.
It's nice to see more Kpop acts coming this way. Let's hope these idols will have opportunities to tour here.
HIGHLIGHT
View post on imgur.comEXID
View post on imgur.comSNUPER
View post on imgur.comFancams:- Platonic Love // Back:Hug
KNK / 크나큰
View post on imgur.comFancams:- KNOCK // Sun, Moon, Star
If you want the rest of the photos the links are as follows:-
EXID, HIGHLIGHT, SNUPER and some of London Korean Festival ~ link 1 // link 2
A KNK / Keunakeun-focused album since they seemed to have more photos that were reasonable quality ~ link 1 // link 2
**I emailed a complaint to the organisers and I received a generic response==>
"Apologies if you had trouble on the day. The daytime event was free and was very busy for the venue capacity.
The queuing system was arranged to take in consideration of the numbers and working wth the best advice of the venue on the safest methods to hold that amount of people awaiting for the doors to reopen at 7pm for the ticketed evening show. We hope you enjoyed the show."
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