U-Kiss singing "Man Man Ha Ni"
Two weekends ago, I ended up getting a six day weekend. In Japan, we use to call this Golden Week. In Korea, I don’t think it’s called Golden Week. However, for simplicity, I will call this week Golden Week as well.
I was suppose to go to Thailand for Golden Week, but my reservation was cancelled and I couldn’t make it again because everything was full. So instead, I went to Busan for two days, did some work with the Camarata Music Company, and then went to a bunch of festivals in the middle of nowhere. Lots of my friends went to the big festivals that weekend, like the Lotus Blossom festival, or the lantern festival. I opted to go to the Guri Han River Rape Blossom Festival and the Seokwansa Mountain Temple Festival. Why?
U-Kiss were performing.
For those just tuning in now, U-Kiss are my favourite music group. They’re an “international” k-pop group, meaning that among the 7 members, they can speak at least four languages. There are three fluent English speakers (Kevin, Eli and AJ) two who speak Chinese (Eli and Dongho) and they’re all learning Japanese as well for their Japanese debut this summer. That on top of all of them being fluent in Korean. So, when there are about ten million festivals on in Korea, the way I picked which to go to was by who had the best concert. 
Guri Han River Rape Blossom Festival
Girls Day perform at the Guri Han River Rape Blossom Festival
On Sunday, May 8th, my friends and I headed to Guri-si instead of our regular Sunday pilgrimage to Inkigayo to go to the Guri Han River Rape Blossom Festival. I had an idea that this one would be in the middle of nowhere, but it really was in the middle of NOWHERE. In all my time in Korea, I had only been this far from a subway station once before, at GEPIK training. We had a long bus ride from Guri station to the river, and eventually ended up following a bunch of local 6th graders who had been talking about the concert that night.
The festival itself was cute. There was a lot of food booths selling a lot of makgeolli and not much of other beverages. I did manage to find a booth selling bottles of water and ice-pops. So I was good. ^_^ There were a lot of fun craft options for kids, the most popular being the kite building. Kites FILLED the sky, there seemed to be hundreds, which was really pretty, but didn’t photograph well, sadly.
There were concerts going on throughout the day, but up until 7, none of them really struck my interest. I sat around and watched some of the ones between 5 to 7, and enjoyed the music from previous generations. After realizing that our seats were absolute crap, my friends and I decided to position ourselves at the side of the stage, which ended up being an amazing spot.
The festival was an amazing opportunity for me, because normally, photography is strictly forbidden at concerts and events. At a festival, they can’t stop people, so I was able to bring my really good camera and got photos of all the acts I liked, aka U-Kiss, Girls Day, Dalmatian, and Kim Hyeongjun (SS501, Big Kim PiroPiro <3) I’ve put my best photos out of the 700 or so (!!!!) that I ended up taking.
While the concert itself was fun, the crowd at Guri were a little grumpy, to say the least. There were a lot of older men and woman who had spent most of the day out in the sun, drinking and listening to old trot music. As fun as that sounds, I’m pretty sure that the extended sun and heat made even the nicest of people crabby, so I was dealing with a lot of grumpy older people who felt they were entitled to be mean to me for whatever reason, be it my youth or my foreign-ness or something. I had a little consolation later when Eli from U-Kiss tweeted about how he’d been hit on the way off stage as well, so they weren’t just pushing the nobody foreigners around for the hell of it.
My spot ended up being amazing, and I really enjoyed the concert. Afterwards, we ran into a bunch of first year middle school students (or 6th grade elementary, it’s hard to tell this time of year) who were quite chatty with us and helped us find the busses.
Overall, I’m really glad I went to this event, because it felt a lot more like what normal Koreans might do on a weekend, instead of going to some huge event sponsored by tourist groups and made to appeal to foreigners. And since this review went longer than expected, I’ll write about the second festival in a separate post. ^_^
