Chapter 7

Lost in a Sea of Skyscrapers and Fans

When the car dropped us off at Digital Media City in the heart of Seoul, I thought I’d stepped into a sci-fi film because the buildings were not just towering skyscrapers, there were wild designs, art deco sculptures and unsymmetrical architecture. It was cool but also humbling to be in the presence of half a dozen skyscrapers in the middle of a mostly flat area.

‘Okay is this Seoul or Coruscant from Star Wars?’ said Sunny echoing my thoughts.

‘I know right. When is a speeder gonna fly by?’ we giggled and straightened up with Miss J stepped out of her boxy vehicle she used to drive us from the Troy.

‘Welcome to DMC girls,’ said Miss J waving her arms out with a flare. ‘Take lots of pictures okay.’

There was this one building shape kinda like the big egg in London that literally shimmered and I had to take a photo in front of it.

While we were snapping photos a timid looking girl in curls and dungarees approached me.

‘Excuse me, are you Angel G of Confessions of a K-pop stan?’ she asked, and I nodded fervently. She looked around 16 with a kind face and a bag full of K-pop idol pin badges all over it.

‘Yes, I am.’

‘I’m Bella, I saw your post on Twitter and thought I’d say hi. I love your blog so much.’

It wasn’t the first time I’d been recognised because of my blog but it was the first time in Korea, and I had to admit it was pretty cool.

‘Been reading your blog for a while, I commented that I’m an exchange student from New York and that I’d love to meet you if I could.’

‘Oh yeah, you’re BellingSwansee right? I’d never forget that name.’ At this Bella eyebrows crinkled and her cheeks went pink.

‘Is it okay if I have a picture with you?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Miss J for me perking up and taking Bella’s phone from her. Sunny and Liz stepped to the side while Miss J snapped a few photos of us first on her phone then on mine.

‘Are you here for GXY’s prerecording?’ I asked when the little photo session was over and we were on our way again.

‘Yep,’ she said skipping alongside me while I walked hand and hand with Sunny and Liz. ‘I’m so pumped plus it’s going to be so awesome to see them with you.’

I beamed down at her and she smiled. Sunny and Liz giggled at my side. Bella was adorable like the cute little sister I always wanted to share K-pop with. My brother was more into video games than anything else. Sunny and Liz were like sisters to me too, but we were the same age.

We only walked for a minute or so until we stopped in front of the tallest and easily the most lavish building in DMC with its massive LED screens, gift shops, two story windows and a garden to die for.

‘This is the Music Time studio,’ said Miss J waving her hands again. ‘And that,’ she added pointing to a Korean woman with a lanyard and a ponytail. ‘That would be the fan café manager.’

‘How do you kn…?’ I started but I felt it was time I stopped questioning how she always seem to know things. She approached the woman and started talking in fast Korean I couldn’t catch while pointing to us. In front of the woman was a long queue of GXY fans talking animatedly, some in Korean, other in Japanese and English. GXY was a global group thanks to multinational members; Brendan from the UK like us, Shou from Japan, JT was half Korean, half Chinese and Tony K was from Los Angeles. GXY had a way of bringing people together and I thought it was beautiful. None of us spoke the same language or even looked alike but we all loved GXY.

‘All sorted,’ said Miss J when she returned to us. ‘You’re numbers are 2, 4, and 9 on the list which means you will all be in the front row.

‘Assa!’ said Sunny in Korean.

Front row to see GXY. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it. I’d been writing to Brendan Choi for the past two years, telling him my hopes and dreams and how much I love his music. When I saw them at the Korean Cultural Concert in London the year before, I had terrible seats. I still had a good time, but I was little more than a dot far from the stage. This time I would be mere metres from him.

I knew he wouldn’t recognise me by my face. I never sent him photos in my physical letters and the fan café doesn’t allow fans to send personal pictures of themselves to the members. I sent only words of encouragement on the fan café message board cause it was public. Anyone in the café could read it. I hoped I could handle the prerecording because later this week was the fan sign when I would be face to face with him.

Getting into the prerecording for music shows was a bit complicated. It involved joining the artist’s fan site or café as they call them in Korea, post on the main thread with your name, and phone number and then the fan café manager will put you on the list. The list is posted once the sign-up time ends and then you line up according to your number on the list. They check your name and ID to make sure you are who you say you are and then you wait to be let in the studio.

I looked forward to prerecording’s’ here so much because they are so special and only last the week the song is released. The idols will pre-record their title song with only their fans in the audience so we can scream and do fanchants as loud as possible. It’s a really special time that’s cherished by the idols because its only their fans and they can really connect to them or at least that’s what Bren says he likes about them.

Main recordings however were hard to get into because the studios could only hold so many fans. The bigger the idol, the more amount of fans they were allotted. So, the higher up your name is on the fan café list, the higher your chances are of getting in. I heard of one idol group only got to have 10 fans enter the main recording. Fortunately for us, Miss J had us covered though saying she squared it with the Music Time PD. Again, I already stopped questioning her power.

It took about half an hour for everyone to have their names and ID’s checked owning to the fact that more fans than the manager was used to signed up. The queue for GXY was almost the longest among the other fan queues also waiting to go in with 56 of us. However, to the far right nearest to the garden was what I distinctly recognised as The Xtremes fans all holding their black and white light sticks. Their queue had easily more than 100 fans. Even though this was the last week of their promotions, some bigger groups pre-record their main stage when their schedules were too full to attend the main recording live.

‘Ugh, ignore them,’ said Liz turning me so I couldn’t see them. The Sixes kept spreading that chart manipulation article on Twitter so much that we had to counter them by posting a lot of positive things so that the negative article would not be the first thing anyone saw when they typed in GXY in the search. No thanks to the Sixes, Moonlight Eyes reached 10 million views in less than 24 hours so far and eventually that took over most of the search results.

‘Wow, our fan chants are going to be so loud today,’ said Liz looking down at the GXY slogan in her hand that had the name of the group in the front and lyrics to Moonlight Eyes on the back with the fan chant highlighted in red. She was trying to memorize them when Sunny suddenly squealed.

‘Oi, steady on Sun.’

‘Its Tony K, he’s live on Instagram.’

All at once fans around us started getting notifications and exclaiming rather like Sunny did, each of them glued to smartphone screens as a young man with red hair appeared with a bowl in one hand and chopsticks in the other.

‘Hi my Dear Astras!’

‘Hi Tony!’ we said though we knew he couldn’t hear us.

‘Just wanted to come on for a few minutes to thank you all for the lunch you provided us and the staff today, it’s delicious.’ He took a large portion of what I recognised as pork cutlet and rammed it into his mouth with a grin. It was traditional for Korean fans to collect donations from people on the café to order food for the group during their recordings. With their busy schedules, it was difficult for them to get a decent meal and groups always dieted before the start of each promotion. This way the band could get a healthy meal and get energised for the long day of performing, fan signs, and radio show appearances.

‘I love pork cutlets, thank you so much,’ said Tony through a mouthful. Then a boy with puppy dog curls appeared on Tony’s right.

‘Minho!’ said Sunny and she took screenshots. ‘He said Tony took the biggest piece.’ Sunny translated for us laughing.

‘We have to go,’ said Tony after only 6 minutes or so of being on live. ‘See you soon, love you.’

‘Love you too!’ we said and the live ended.

‘Oh yeah,’ I said looking around at all the fans staring at their phones and exclaiming their glee at seeing Tony and Minho. ‘We may not be 100 strong but we will be the loudest cadets this studio has ever heard.’