Reason to Celebrate--MTV Buzz Asia Concert

This was a good week...pretty much everything came together.

A friend of mine from Geoje-do (cool blog about teaching experiences on Geoje-do here) came up this weekend with a couple of buds from the Island. One (Andy) has a friend in concert promotion and they had 2 VIP tickets to the MTV Buzz Asia Concert (sponsored by the super-cool iriver company-article here) at Chamshil Indoor Stadium (which I think is the same as the Jamshil Auxiliary Stadium). Thanks Andy!

I had no idea it would be so packed. We got there just after 7PM, when it started. We read the part on the ticket about first come/first served, but missed the line about 'doors will be open at 4pm'. Whoops (Koreans probably made a day out of it and came at noon, knowing them). Well, the place was full, but our VIP friends were already in. The gal (Anne) came out and (owing to her sister who works with the Prince tours showing her the tricks of the trade) she not only got us into the stadium but into basically any seating area that wasn't already full. Thanks Anne!

The acts were pretty cool. We missed the first one, 보아/BoA but caught the rest. Take a look at the pics below of BoA, Jaurim and Shinhwa. For all the boy bands/acts I tried to get the most masculine pictures I could for my site, but if you want fruitier ones they're all over their sites. (I sometimes wonder about these guys, but at least the girls are hot.)


BoA, Jaurim and Shinhwa.

There were a few J-Pop and Taiwanese acts too: Namie Amuro, Vanness Wu and Wang Lee Hom. There were a couple of others, but the names were in Chinese and I'm feeling a little lazy now.


Namie Amuri, Vanness Wu and Wang Lee Hom.

So, as you know, Koreans love to get together and eat and drink, that's why the after-party was so cool. It was in the uber-tony area of Apkujungdong. It's home of the highest priced real estate (and women) in all of Korea. Yes, I'm sure I saw many genuine Fendi bags and plastic bodies. The best part was the 2 free drink tickets. Ah, there's the Scot in me speaking again. The next day we hung out in lovely Yeouido Park (another review here) where we fed the birds (below). It reminded me of the flocking to the afterparty/bar/dancefloor the night before...birds of a feather and all that.


The gatherings: concert, afterparty, in the park.


Here's another flocking...of Koreans to the beach in Pusan. I think the caption says there are 1,000,000 people there at the beach (about 2/3 of the population of the Vancouver area). I wouldn't put it past them.

And my final comment on this topic: credit cards. This article on how Koreans were lured by the notion of 'easy money/credit' (fanned somewhat by the card companies' desire for market share at any cost) and hwo it almost lead to suicide for these three individuals (sadly, many of also 'succeeded' in passing on their debts to their heirs, as happens here when a debtor dies).