KCON 2018 LA, a three-day global K-pop music and culture festival dedicated to bringing “All Things Hallyu” to the American fan base, officially wrapped up Sunday, attracting tens of thousands of avid fans from all across the globe.
This year, 95,000 people gathered for the event, held at the Los Angeles Convention Center and Staples Center. The organizer for this year’s event chose the catchphrase “KLUB KCON” — a combined K-pop music genre, including K-hip-hop and K-EDM.
Nineteen famous Korean acts, including K-pop band TWICE, Wanna One and female soloist Ailee, took the stage to entertain and thrill K-pop fans. Attendees were even able to test famous K-beauty products and try delicious Korean food on the sidelines of the K-pop convention.
KCON originally started in 2012 in Irvine, California. As the years went by and more people became interested in Korean culture and music, the event expanded, finally positioning itself as one of the most symbolic Korean wave platforms in the U.S. KCON has become so famous that the convention has been held in 19 cities throughout the world.
Most notably, KCON is proving that K-pop is highly popular with Generation Z, which in turn proves that fans of K-pop are becoming more ethnically diverse. In the early years, 80 to 90 percent of the Korean music fans were ethnically Korean. But with the improvement of technology and Internet, the Korean Wave spread to other parts of Asia and eventually the West. Now, many K-pop fans today are non-Asians.
K-pop has been creeping up on American charts for the past decade, but just now reached a new milestone. This past June, Billboard Magazine announced that K-pop boy band BTS became the first K-pop group to top the Billboard 200 album chart, with “Love Yourself: Tear.”
K-pop and Korean culture continue to gain more recognition and traction in the U.S., and BTS and KCON are just some of the many examples of how the K-pop fandom thrives. In the world of K-pop, language is never a barrier and fans across the country share a common passion.
By: Maytinee Kramer
