On Saturday, March 30th along with other thousands of fans, I made the pilgrimage to Seoul Olympic Park and anxiously awaited the start of the show. When I first arrived, I had to get in a long line to pick up the tickets, then another line and exchange tickets for a wrist band, and lastly, I had to get in line to get into the venue. Even though the area was crazy busy with vendors and fangirls, everything seemed to go quite smoothly. When it was time to line up to enter the venue, we lined up according to ticket number so I got to go in pretty fast. This was my first time attending a big Kpop show in Korea so I really wasn't sure what to expect. When I bought the tickets I was given a section and seat number, so I assumed I would have a seat. When my friend and I actually walked into the venue though, we soon realized that somehow we had gotten seats in the standing section! We were quite surprised and not sure how things would work out, but we were in the section to the right of the stage and at any given point we were not more than 20 feet away from GD. Almost right before the show started my friend and I noticed that the the people who were standing beside us started taking their cameras out and snapping photos of someone in the crowd. We later found out that the person who had been making her way to our area was a very famous Korean actress named Han Ga In, and neither my friend and I knew who she was so we shamelessly looked her up in google. I was very surprised to find a celebrity standing amongst the crowd and wanting to enjoy the concert just like everyone else. I always thought it would be more convenient for them to watch from a VIP area or behind the stage, since the crowd was all over her. I felt bad, my friend and I kept joking that the safest place for her to be was right next to us since we didn't know who she was and weren't interested in snapping hundreds of photos of her.
Finally, the time we had all been waiting for finally arrived. I was already really excited to see him perform live for a longer time, since when I saw him at the Seoul Music Awards earlier in the year he had only performed two songs with the rest of his Big Bang mates. He started out the concert by performing for the first time his new single titled 미지 Go (Go crazy). The crowd went crazy, and the bass was heavy pumping energy throughout the entire song. The concept for this single seems to be on pair with the title, and I'm really looking forward to it. Immediately after 미지 Go, G-Dragon jumped into one of his older, but still quite popular songs Heartbreaker. He went on for about another 3 songs before pausing briefly to introduce himself. Wherever he went, the standing crowd followed, and at times I didn't think I would manage being squished for two hours, but luckily my friend and I were able to move around a bit and position ourselves in a space that wasn't so bad.
Even though G-Dragon was performing alone in quite a large stage, it never felt empty. He was able to move around, weave in and out of things and make his fans feel like he was interacting with them one on one. His stage presence is definitely one of a kind. During the fourth song he performed Light it Up in which Tablo of Epik High joined in, followed by The Leaders which brought out CL of 2ne1 to perform with him. The last guest performer came about halfway through the show, when label mate Lee High joined him in singing Without You. I thoroughly enjoyed all of the guest performances with the exception of Lee High. In general, I just am not a fan of her music/voice, but after seeing her live I also am not a fan of her as a performer. She didn't smile, and didn't engage with the crowd or even GD; she just kind of stood there with a blank expression on her face and sang.
As the concert was starting to wrap up G-Dragon performed his hit single Crayon and Big Bang's Fantastic Baby. To be honest, when Fantastic Baby started playing I was expecting TOP or Taeyang to surprise us and join him on stage, but he sang all of the parts himself, even playfully mimicking TOP during his part. After Fantastic Baby he disappeared off stage and then returned for an encore by weaving in and out of the crowd and singing Breathe. After his encore performance he paused for about 10 minutes to talk with the crowd. I don't speak Korean, but what I have gathered from reading posts on the internet is that he thanked everybody involved in the process of preparing for the tour, his parents, band, and of course his fans. After that I really thought the show was over because he looked exhausted (I later found out that the poor boy had been battling a bad cold during both Seoul concerts), but he surprised his fans by finishing off the concert by performing his new single one more time.
Overall, the entire concert experience was memorable. The Korean and international fans went above and beyond to show support for G-Dragon not only as an artist, but as a person. Despite the large crowd, YG did a great job managing things and keeping everything running smoothly, and G-Dragon put on a terrific show! If he decides to wrap up his tour the same way Big Bang did, and having a final concert in the place where it started, I hope I'm still in Seoul and can attend so I can relieve the memories and perhaps see how different the first show is from the last.
The venue had really strict rules against taking video/photos, so here are the few I managed to snap before/after the show.
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| G-Dragon closing out the show |
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| Exciting the venue |
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| Crowd exiting the venue |
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