Hallyu North in Toronto Falls Flat

[rougepoison.livejournal.com]

Hundreds of fans filled the Enercare centre on Friday May 6th for the inaugural Hallyu North k-pop convention. With popular k-pop group SHINee headlining the show, it was difficult to see where the show could go wrong. Fans were in for a shocking surprise as the evening went on, as they saw how bad things would become.


Many fans were able to overlook the limited selection in merchandise and goods, knowing that actual stores hosting these tables are limited to begin with. As well, the food festival that ended up being just two food trucks was a shame, but was easy to look past because there was also a hot dog cart and everyone was able to get food and drinks. After all, the main event was the SHINee concert taking place that evening.

Organization began to become a problem as people were unsure of where to line up. Eventually, lines were formed outside and began to file in at around 7, when the concert was scheduled to begin. Fans filled the different sections with excitement, the teaser video playing on repeat. Finally, the lights dimmed and Shimmycocopuffs came on stage, the MC for the event.

Shimmycocopuffs was an interesting choice for an MC, because his focus isn’t really k-pop culture and he only had limited knowledge of SHINee. He did well though because the fans were supportive and he knew enough about k-pop that he could introduce the group.

When SHINee came on, the fans went absolutely insane. The first song that they performed was “Sherlock”, which really got the fans’ energy up. Once the song was sung, Shimmy and a translator came on stage while SHINee introduced themselves. Key impressed everyone with his fantastic English, and the others did really well with the self introductions as well. It seemed that there was the intention of doing a question period, but the translator did a really poor job of translating, summing up what was clearly more than a sentence from Jonghyun to just a few words. The translator later seemed to disappear, and Key took over as the translator, which left the group in a really awkward situation. They performed “Everybody”, “Beautiful” and “View” which was fantastic.



And then they left the stage.

Shimmy came back on the stage and said we might be able to get SHINee to come back out if we cheered. It’s hard to tell if this was part of he script, or if the guys did actually need convincing. The crowd cheered and chanted encore over and over again until SHINee came back out onto the stage to perform their next song, “Replay”. The performance was great, and the audience was cheering and singing along. And then SHINee said goodbye and left the stage.



And this time there was no encore. Just announcements that the show was over.

The fans milled out of the venue in a daze. Did the much anticipated concert really only last under 30 minutes? Did it really go without the questions or the fan interaction that was promised?
The air afterwards buzzed with disappointment.

It really wasn’t until after the Chicago showcase, which was over 2 hours and involved six songs plus games and questions, that the salt was really rubbed into the wound that the concert was a complete failure.

Day two of the convention ran with little incident, but the damage was done. Few people wanted to return for the rest of the convention after the disappointment. By the end of Sunday, the the group “Hallyu North Refund” made it onto the CBC news, bringing mainstream media into the mix and making the issue public. Many fans feel that, since the show was only half the length that was promised, people should be given half their money back. Whether this happens is still yet to be seen, but we recommend those who came out from the concert upset to join the Facebook group.

We know that SHINee are not to blame in this situation. They put their full energy into the entire event, and it could be seen and heard in every song. The question remains though – what happened? We’ll be waiting to hear from Hallyu North to see if they release any statements, explaining the evening.



Video of Sherlock + Beautiful from the show:

OP's Note:I drove 6 hours from Montreal for this and I was definitly disappointed. The whole thing was a disorganised confused mess. SHINee were amazing and I felt terrible for them throughout the whole concert. A lot of people are filing Paypal dispute over this because Hallyu North are not answering any requests for comments are still pretending everything's fine. If anyone went and want to share their horrible experiences. Feel free to do so in the comments.



Sources: Ksoulmag Jjajangmyeon Explosion

Comments

[chouta-angel.livejournal.com]

Dang, that sucks for everyone who went to Hallyu North. I was at the Chicago fanmeet and it was absolutely amazing. I'm still randomly crying from it.

[rougepoison.livejournal.com]

I'm also crying thinking about Chicago's fanmeet and what ours could've been XD I'm glad you enjoyed it.

[chouta-angel.livejournal.com]

SHINee is one of those groups I thought I'd never get to see. I've loved SHINee since they debuted back in 2008 and while they've never been my ultimate favorite, they've consistently been in my top 5.

To be honest, if the Chicago event hadn't been announced, I would have gone to Hallyu North.

[luxelet.livejournal.com]

i saw all the tweets about the fanmeet in chicago and everyone seemed to have such a good time. i'm so jealous!

[rougepoison.livejournal.com]

Here's a few other points I forgot to mention while making this post:

- They told us to not start lining up for wristbands before 1 pm but by the time 12 pm came. A huge line had already formed in front of the venue and no one came out to manage it. Then they told us it would be a 15 minutes delay that turned into 45 minutes before they opened the door.

- All the panels that day were cancelled without notice. (Fan Chant Workshop + Shinee 101 course I think)

- One of the 2 food truck didn't have a permit so they were forced to go outside to serve food. The line was HUUUUGE because there wasn't a lot of variety. (The food from that truck was amazing though. One of the only positive points)

They told us to start making a line in front of the concert hall by the number on our wristband by 5 but by the time 5 arrived. No organisers were present to make sure we lined up in the right place so everyone kind of clustered around the door regardless of wristbands. We waited 30 minutes this way before they decided to usher us OUT OF THE DAMN VENUE to line up outside behind people holding signs. They spent an hour ''trying'' to organise us but people in line weren't backing up so it was very hard to get into a single file. By the time we started to get into the venue, it was well past 7.

- They seemed extremely confused about what to do with people that had presales. I also heard a lot of the perks (merch, etc) that came with pre sales were extremely disappointing or non-existant.

I'm probably missing a lot of details because there's a whole bucket list of disappointement. I'll try to add more as I think of it. Sorry for my terrible english. I'm french-canadian XD

EDITED TO ADD: The sound wasn't the greatest either. Jonghyun's mic was barely working, Taemin's mic kept acting out ( You can actually hear it during the Sherlock performance.) Key sassing the sound people because their in ear speaker was too low made me laugh though. He looked annoyed.

[lovealwaysliana.livejournal.com]

I feel sad reading about this on Twitter. Chicago was awesome! The MC/Translator dude did a great job. Shinee was great. Key spoke a lot of English of course and Minho was doing his best. Even Taemin got in on the action. The songs were so amazing. The atmosphere was electric. It's way more fun than I thought because the term "fanmeet" is so awkward but I enjoyed it a lot and Shinee seemed to be really into it as well.

I'm going to Toronto for the Kpop Con so I hope this isn't a theme... lol

[rougepoison.livejournal.com]

Definitely not! Kpop con is made by PGTW instead of Hallyu North and they were amazingly organised last year when I went for NU'EST.

[chouta-angel.livejournal.com]

Giraffe Onew is going to be one of my favorite things for a long time.

[gray-fairy.livejournal.com]

Wow, that MC sounds horrible. Key had to act as a translator? Omg, good thing he's so fluent lol.

[sra-interesante.livejournal.com]

so this is why nobody is talking about that event but instead they have tons of pics and fancams from chicago fanmeet

i always feel bad about those situations ocurring the first time a groups goes to a country .... it makes not just that production team look bad, most like the whole country productions companies

i learned that from some korean agencies, if they have a bad experience with a country they are visiting for the first time they really think twice before ever comeback .... in my country we had a messy company producing BAP tour in 2014 and when tour got canceled things just got worse (they havent return money to some people, omg 2 years later its still a mess) .... now BAP is planning another tour, my country wont be included and they said it was due to that company

[keki7.livejournal.com]

So sorry for the fans who went through all that. Due to work commitments and finances I wasn't able to drag my ass from Atlantic Canada to Toronto so I was spared. But if I had been there you'd better believe I'd be hunting for a refund.

[ohsnaplettes.livejournal.com]

The convention itself was disappointing. My friends and I ended up going through every stand in about an hour. We spent the remaining two hours trying to decide what to get for food, sitting, and when to start lining up.

Line up for SHINee was supposed to start around 6. My friends and I were unsure about where to line up so we asked three different staff members. They all sounded like they knew what they were talking about, but each answer was different lol. One girl told us we were lining up along a wall and that wristband numbers don't matter, and the other two said that wristband numbers were extremely important, with no mention on where the line is supposed to be.

Organization was a mess, it seems that they came up with everything on the spot. First they tried to organize everyone by zone (A, B, C, D) from the horrible clump that was formed in front of the hall entrance. They called out zone A first to make their way to the front of the clump. 15-20 minutes later, they tell us to go outside and organize ourselves based on signs designating our zone. That was about another 30 minutes.

The whole experience was bittersweet. SHINee was the first group that got me into K-pop 7 years ago so it's basically been my dream to see them since then. I wish there was more to their performance, but I'm grateful that I even got to see them at all.

[ohso-insane.livejournal.com]

This really explains why nobody on my facebook talked about the event. I'm presuming the only reason why they had Shimmy MC the event was because he's probably the only Korean-Canadian youtuber that's somewhat relevant...which sucks because a lot of people I know stopped following him. They should have gotten him to translate though.

I am still a little shocked they managed to get SHINee to come for this event.. I was thinking they'd get a couple of lesser known groups for something like this.

[kirrita.livejournal.com]

Getting to see #SHINEEinTORONTO (https://twitter.com/hashtag/SHINEEinTORONTO?src=hash) live was 🔥, so freaking good! - the unorganized situation @HallyuNorth (https://twitter.com/HallyuNorth) was not... pic.twitter.com/vixrOFjfKf (https://t.co/vixrOFjfKf)

— Xavier Woods (@XavierWoodsPhD) May 7, 2016 (https://twitter.com/XavierWoodsPhD/status/728767467963580416)

HaNo, what's good?! :((

[pandamanic.livejournal.com]

wrestling in omona??? lmao i heard he was posting snapchats about the concert.

[theharleyquinn.livejournal.com]

i love his journey into shinee stanhood lmao

[mlmello.livejournal.com]

I always suspect about this fanmeetings or "special concerts" because I think it will happen exactly what happened - 30 min and it's over. not shinee's fault at all, they probably have different "offers" of shows and stuff, but it sucks that these production companies don't explain things properly. they know people won't waste their money for 30min stage.

[rougepoison.livejournal.com]

Yeah especially when they tweeted to fans that the whole thing was going to last an hour.

[mlmello.livejournal.com]

really? damn it.
that really sucks. I hope people find something legal to ask for a refund if they promoted like this and only gave a 30min thing.

[kyokomurasaki.livejournal.com]

I'm really sorry for all the Shawols that got screwed over by this mess. I went to the Chicago fanmeet and it was gr10 so there's really no excuse for not being organized. The MC did a good job and I was actually fairly impressed by how well things went (SubK's still on my naughty list for being assholes though.)

[queenhinata.livejournal.com]

wowww :( that sucks. i was thinking about going ..but i live in ny so i would be travelling quite a bit + i'm in finals season rn so

[bomsnose.livejournal.com]

gosh this sounds bad.
while i hate the organizers for the mess, it does make shinee look like real pros, just making the best out of any situation. not every band could pull this off.

[sodapab.livejournal.com]

What a terrible mess, I feel so bad for the fans -.-' and it lasted only for half an hour??
and what the heck happened to the translator, disappearing like that...?

[soyogi.livejournal.com]

the event was on-par with the BTS concert in terms of disappointment: less than half an hour, little question/answer period, and very poor organization by the event hosts. it felt worse than BTS organization-wise imo but some people still haven't gotten the merch they ordered from TGM so it could've be worse. I can try to "justify" the price of the ticket since it also paid for two-day entry into the event but you really don't need two days to be there. the worst part is that the event seemed so nicely organized and they hyped themselves up to let us down. you would think that there were enough examples of badly organized k-pop concert events for organizers to know what to do and what not to do but no, apparently not.

SHINee looked tired all around. Shimmy asked them if they'd come back and they said yeah but really, who knows if they'll come back :/ the impression left on SHINee/SM about Toronto isn't encouraging.

the only upside to the whole thing was SHINee performing Replay (my dream come true) and meeting ItsJRE lol

[jade-808.livejournal.com]

Ughh I was waiting for this post! I don't think that any of us who attended this event were expecting some grand concert performance, but based on what Hallyu North organizers had inboxed and tweeted and replied to many con-goers, we expected an hour with performances, fan interaction and just general fanmeeting activities like Chicago. But all we ended up getting was a disorganized event where we spent more time lining up, being bored with no directions or signs to know where the panels were (with many being cancelled without notice), and no damn food! Those food trucks (3 in total with the hot dog stand for that hockey game) were hella expensive and the nearest places were 15-30 min walk kmt! I keep hearing all these different stories about what happened, and I read from several ppl that one of the top organizers, who was rude to complaining fans, told them that it wouldn't be a good look from a marketing standpoint if they advertised the event as i was (30 mins or whatever). If that is the case, why the heck didn't they just go for another group, a smaller group whose company would give them more time with the group?? When Pop! Goes the World did TKC15 last year, they started off small with Nu'est and now, they are doing bigger this year with bigger groups and more sponsors. It's not always necessary to go after such a big group. Ugh I'm just so annoyed by this whole event. They really screwed over so many people by promising all these different things and not delivering. The second day was much better imo, My sister and I only went to support the YouTubers and cover dance groups that came, and we even made new friends, so that was a plus. Other than that, the entire convention was so, so disappointing. I couldn't even see anything during the concert because it was a standing concert and everyone's necks were in my line of vision T__T, so I basically felt like I was just listening to SHINee in my room... *sigh*

[kareymoop.livejournal.com]

I went and I had my expectations low for the convention because our kpop cons tend to be pretty amateur but it was such a bad event. Even just the disorganization that occurred from trying to just get into the concert was so messy.

I could go on and on about this but I mainly just feel really bad for SHINee and all the fans who paid more for any section other than section D (the last section), and also the people who travelled for this convention. I paid $90 CAD for the convention and concert and I still feel like it wasn't worth it. SHINee were really really great but I could tell that even they were a little pissed off. The funniest thing was that my friends and I got into our car literally 5 minutes after the concert and we ended up driving behind SHINee's van on the way out, so I'm sure they wanted to get out of there too lol