Ready Or Not...: 140823 나눔 Sharing Concert in Seoul

as usual, this is a personal travel account, not an ordinary ~~whatever that means~~ fanaccount, so if you just wanna read about the concert, there's gonna be irrelevant stuff.

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a couple of days earlier, when I was checking Bangtan's schedule for fansigns, I did notice that they suddenly had this performance on the program even though I had heard no one talk about it.
but since it was just two days away, and I am completely clueless about how to go about things here in Korea, I just shrugged it off.

but then the next night a sweet new aquaintance, who's also in Korea at the moment, asked if we were going to the concert, and I was like, no cos no tickets and blah blah blah.
then she said to try and search on twitter, cos she had just bought one for 35000 Won. I was completely mind-blown cos 35k?!!? what the hell, why so cheap?!?

she told me to search in Korean, and I told her I don't understand Korean at that level, but in the end I still gave it a shot cos what the hell, it couldn't hurt, right?

I quickly gave up, though, cos although I did find people who mentioned about the concert and tickets, the tweets all had so much Korean, Google Translate gave up so I didn't understand if they were buying or selling or just crying in general over not being able to go.

after giving up on that little quest, she suggested we just go to the venue on concert day and buy from a scalper.
of course we've seen the ajeosshis at every concert we've been to, so there would probably be ticket resale at this thing, too.
we thought about it and decided to give it a try. usually scalp tickets can be really expensive, but since she could buy online for 35k, how expensive could scalp tickets be?

on concert day I ran into Michelle on twitter, and after telling her she told me not to buy that way, but at least try the box office first when they opened. BAP had been sold out but when she went there on the day she got almost front row, so it was worth a shot.
of course I also hadn't thought of this option, so Michelle to the rescue! cos my main concern about the scalpers weren't so much the price, but maybe ending up with fake tickets and not being able to get in and see the boys.

Michelle has been slightly interested in Bangtan lately (maybe my evil influence?) and she was really jealous, but she didn't get money until tomorrow, but we said we'd loan her the money so she could come.

then we all scrambled to get ready and get to the venue. we thought we could shower, grab a snack on the way there, and be there around 3pm, but of course we can never estimate time even close to reality so we didn't arrive until 4.
fortunately Michelle took about the same amount of time, but it was a bit of a gamble since we don't have mobile wifi and I couldn't get a hold of her before we left the hotel wifi. so I just told her 4 and hoped she could make it lol

we waited about ten minutes for her, and in the meantime hubs went in search of the box office. turns out there isn't one for concerts, just the little huts selling football tickets on game days, but he said there were a lot of people in orange vests gathered upstairs so maybe something was going on up there?

we decided to go up and have a look around, but on the way we saw these pavilions with with piles of the orange vests with the concert name on, and I thought we should go ask if they knew where to buy tickets.
turns out it was with them, and the decent English speaking woman told us that we could get them at 20k a piece! HOW CHEAP IS THAT?!

as she was getting our stuff together and hubs was paying, she asked us if we knew about the program behind the concert. I knew it was some sort of charity program (the concert name in Korean had the word famine in it), but we just said no, and with an almost apologetic smile she said "well, it's mostly for teenagers". I laughed so loud.
but it was something about the kids not eating for 24 hours to better empathize with the African hunger issues the program was raising money and awareness for.

we got our tickets (our country zone was Niger), and had just climbed the stairs to the upper level of the stadium when we was people getting herded (in a nice way unlike at Lotte Concert) downstairs to the basement? we just followed along cos no clue what was going on??
it turns out the entrance to the pitch was below ground level, so soon we were on the grass trying to locate Niger.
cute boys were ushering people around and Michelle's poor camera was working over-time even before the concert started lol but she doesn't discriminate. cute is cute.
as usual, we were all told to sit down and wait and people happily complied cos it was way too hot to stand and wait.

we were clearly supposed to wear the orange vests, but mine fit like a crop top. and it was hot as hell, so to have something so tight on on top of my clothes was a no go, so I took mine off oops

it wasn't even 5pm yet and it wasn't supposed to start until 6, but time passed surprisingly fast.
we were all sticking out like sore thumbs, me and hubs cos of our heights, Michelle and hubs cos of their whiteness, and all of us cos of our age. seriously, when the ticket lady said this was mostly for teenagers, she wasn't kidding. I think average age was around 14-15?? and about 95% were girls, but since their were also girl groups on the bill, there were boys around, too.

I wore my concert sandals, but I took them off as soon as we sat down cos it was too hard for my fat ass to have to get up and down from all the way up there when we were moved around by the staff from time to time to make room for the steady stream of people coming in.

suddenly people started screaming, and way up by the VIP lounges, behind the stage, were Block B peeking out, and some of them even came out and sat on their balcony. Michelle and I were really excited over this cos Michelle didn't know, and I couldn't remember who were gonna perform besides Bangtan so this was a nice surprise.

other people came out of their lounges, too, but people only seemed to scream over Block B so either the rest were nugus, or just groups we didn't know.

one of the groups made their way down backstage, and we assumed they were gonna start the show, but we had no clue who they were. Michelle didn't recognize them, and I couldn't remember a group with those stage outfits and that much face paint.

Niger was in the far right corner of the pitch, furthest away from the stage, but before everything started we were a lot closer to the stage and further towards the middle.
we were supposed to stay seated during the concert, but despite loud security guys in suits and the same side parting yelling at everyone, more and more people slowly stood up and moved the crowd forward.
I sorta hung back cos this meant I could stand up without blocking the view of anyone and thus I was being left alone by security, and I could freely run around to get a better line of sight when the TV cameras moved around.

before 6, while people were still arriving, this MC guy came out. I think he was sorta the project..MC cos the TV show itself had other MCs.
he started things off by introducing this performance of traditional Korean music and dance. let's be real, this was a kpop crowd and people weren't exactly paying attention.
then this other guy came out and had everyone stand up so we could try to dance along, but, um, it wasn't really catching on...

for a brief moment they also had this guy with the sun glasses come on stage.

guy on the left is project MC guy

I can't remember his name and I dunno what he does (actor?), but he's got this catch phrase about hope or something?? he was apparently found fitting to come on stage for literally two mins and yell and growl that phrase around.
I dunno, the kiddos seemed to be amused, but I was just puzzled.

then came a dance performance with what turned out to be the face painted group.

at first it was just this one guy on the huge stage and the music was like background muzak, but suddenly it changed and turned into this long, dub-step-y, amazing performance with these tubes that looked like big worms, and by the end pretty much everyone was captivated.
I think they were from Australia? which means they were probably from Korea lol. point being I wish I had paid attention to their name/location so I could've looked more into them later.

the show MCs walked right past us when they arrived. 2AM's Changmin and 8eight's Lee Hyun. the last MC was a girl from...T-Ara? sorry if I'm wrong, I don't know her.

in the end the real show didn't start until around 6:30, and I think that must have meant they were super behind schedule cos all groups were rushed on and off stage by a very commanding stage pd.
maybe it was technical problems with the sound cos that seemed to be an issues throughout the show.

the concert itself was like an endless parade of nugus for us, occasionally interrupted by familiar faces like Block B, Kara, Red Velvet, Orange Caramel, and Bangtan. Michelle knew/knew of a few more, but this is the first time I've been to a joined kpop concert and had that can-we-move-it-along feeling.

apparently a lot of the kiddos felt the same way cos lots were clearly only there to see specific acts and just left after those performances. luckily Block B opened the show and after their set we were already able to move a lot closer cos so many kids up front left.
of course we stuck it out until the end, but that was a lot of nugus...

after the music part had ended, and when only about 40% of the audience hadn't already left, the MC guy came back out and after a little talk there was this countdown and a huge confetti shower to mark the end of the 24 hours of no food for the kids.

but then that was it.

we wanted to get something to eat, too, at the mall under the stadium cos 1) starving, and 2) that way we wouldn't have to deal with 10k girls on the subway.
but everything either had a huge queue or was closed/closing (I don't know what time it was at this point?), and my eyes were starting to act up (tl;dr I had had a really bad eye infection a few weeks earlier and was just barely recovered), so in the end we dropped the food part, parted with Michelle at Hapjeong, and just went back to the hotel so I could rest my eyes.
we just had Shin ramyeon from 7-11, but who doesn't love that, so.

we looked through our pictures and videos and overall we were okay pleased. it's not fansite material, but the reason hubs doesn't film is cos I forget everything I know about photography and camera settings when biases are present so it's better this way.

my hand tremor gets a lot worse when I'm overly excited, but for pocket cams at full 20 x zoom, I'm not complaining.

no, wait, not true, cos for some reason my camera decided to screw me over, and pretty much the only video with auto-focus problems this time, is Bangtan ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ
I'm seeing them again in a week, but still, this was my 1st Danger performance, and just.... WHY ㅠㅠㅠㅠ

their voices are still totally on point, though. Jeongkook's voice is so deep now I'm quivering in my panties. his long note in BIL AHAHAA no. and Jiminnnn. I'm so happy he has so many lines in Danger.

rap line were on point and everyone danced so hard.
everyone else, besides Block B (and later, Kara) had only done one song, so when they didn't rush off stage when Danger ended I felt like crying.
Namjoon said a few quick words. I was too excited to catch it all, but I assume something about them currently promoting and please give lots of love and support?
and then he introduced 상남자. I can't believe I got to watch that live again, I love that song so much ㅠㅠ❤️

as for the rest of the groups I don't have that much specific to say this time.
Block B was great. I absolutely love Her and they even did it twice. after the first time there was apparently some sort of problem so they did it again, this time out on the extended stage, so that's why there are 2 cams.

Orange Caramel were cute, but unfortunately I don't like their current promotion. I wish they could've done Catallena instead :(

Kara was still Kara, despite the changes, and I was really happy they got to do Step, too, cos one of my fave songs of theirs.

hubs got slightly fired up about Red Velvet (something about the green one idk), but I still can't see the appeal of both song and group..

anyways, nothing much else to say besides I love Korea. (and Michelle, without whom this might not have happened, cos oddly there were no ticket scalpers at the stadium??)

thank you for letting me see my boys for a measly 20k Won ❤️

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as far as pictures and videos go, it's the usual drill.

please, DO NOT RE-UPLOAD my cams without my permission, but feel free to spread my youtube links around, preferably with a "do not re-up" note.
and DO NOT crop, edit, gif, vine, or whatever else you can think of that would alter my original material.

as far as the pictures are concerned, feel free to share if you find them good enough for that, but DO NOT crop my watermark, DO NOT edit, and please re-up in full size. please credit.

other than that I hope you enjoy, and as usual, thank you if you actually read through this entire post ♥

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1) Block B - Her 1 + ment

2) Block B - Her 2

3) Red Velvet - 행복

4) 방탄소년단 - Danger + ment + 상남자

5) Kara - Step

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1st performer. I dunno who she is.