Battle of the Fans: 2014 K-Wave Festival in Melbourne

The annual K-Wave Festival returned this year on the 6^th of September in celebration of modern contemporary Korean culture. Thousands of Hallyu enthusiasts, dressed up in their best fan gear, flocked down to Federation Square as early as 10am in the morning in anticipation of the event – it’s like the Comic Con of K-Pop here at Melbourne!

The Seoul Story brings you the highlights from the exciting and fun-filled program!

Are You a True K-pop Fan?

This year’s festival was themed ‘Battle of the Fans’, and for good reason too. Throughout the day, fans participated in several rounds of speed quizzes onstage with the hope of winning the grand prize and establishing themselves as the #1 fan of their favourite K-pop group.

Fans of the top trending groups in Australia: GOT7, Girls’ Generation, Big Bang, EXO, and B.A.P, thoroughly entertained the crowd with dance-offs, as well as their astounding knowledge about their favourite groups.

They all did really well, but there can only be one winner… which turned out to be the GOT7 fans’ representative! The lucky one walked away with the grand prize.

Dance, Dance Revolution: THE KPOP EDITION!

K-Pop fans are known to be a really awesomely talented bunch of people. A whole host of exceptional singers and dancers were on hand to perform song and dance covers of K-pop songs, prompting loud woops and hollers from the crowd. The groups spared no effort in terms of stage outfits, dancing powerfully to grueling choreography and shimmying gracefully to the steps of catchy girl-group dances.

Eric Nam, thou who grace us with thy presence

By 6pm, thousands of fans had gathered in front of the stage for what was decidedly the highlight of the evening – a special Q&A session with featured guest Eric Nam!

The multilingual talent emanated boyish charm and answered fans’ burning questions onstage. He revealed how he burst onto the K-pop scene – how he started off doing auditions for TV shows, as well as Youtube song covers in college.

Eric the Riceman

With so many K-Pop stars performing under a stage name, the singer told the fans that if he had to pick another stage name it would be ‘Riceman’; a clever rearrangement of the letters in ‘Eric Nam’! Eric also expressed that he would like to collaborate with fellow YouTuber-turned-K-pop singer Ailee in the future.

The Seoul Story would like to thank SQ Entertainment for giving us the opportunity to cover the festival! Be sure to also check out our interview with Eric Nam here!

[Text by Thenghui]