To celebrate the 10th anniversary of this Annual Music Award, M Broadcasting Station held three award shows within the same week in three different countries. The final stop of the awards show consisted of performances from various artists, as well as the presentation of the main awards everyone was looking forward to every year. As a fan of the Korean entertainment industry, I have now been in the KPOP community for 11 years. For 11 years, I have been to many concerts, award shows and fan-meetings of various artists and enjoyed many talented singers’ performances together with a huge KPOP community of fandoms. This time, thanks to a special opportunity, I was able to witness the coming together of an award show behind the scenes, worked alongside with local staff and came to realise many things regarding the KPOP scene. 

First day

Solo singer S was the first artist rehearsal - her professionalism and aura on stage was definitely admiring. She wore no make-up and was in comfy clothes that made her look even more slim and pale in real life. Although the live performance ended up having lip-sync for almost all the artists, she sang live at 10am in the morning even without any background music and it was amazing. It was a smooth and fast rehearsal, and the way how she practiced as if she was performing on stage live was something to applaud for. 

Solo singer C had a complicated dance routine, but she managed to do it effortlessly. The performance consisted of C rising up from the right stage, and then moving on to the left stage to dance so it took a lot more time to work out the movements for her and her dancers. However, even the back-up dancers were just as professional and it helped with the rehearsal to run smoothly. Although the rehearsal on the first day went well, the full rehearsal right before the live performance was when she fell down the stage due to miscommunication between the staff who was controlling the stage. Unfortunately, the rehearsal had to stop immediately as she sprained her ankle… but what was more to my surprise was that at the live performance, she danced perfectly as if that accident didn’t even happen and I grew to respect her even more. It was actually one of my personal goals to watch her dance live on stage one day, so I was very happy that I could see her up close in real life. That incident also allowed me to realise that artists work way harder than we think we do, and if it wasn’t for the opportunity to watch how a show comes together like this, I wouldn’t believe that their professionalism and hardworking attitude was to this extent. 

Rapper T and his wife, rapper Y’s special performance with rapper B and idol V from the boy group S was full of energy and exciting to open the ceremony that night. Behind the scenes, the fluent English speakers would discuss details in a professional manner to make a rap performance look cool effortless. Most people may think that rappers just walk around, look swag, and rap on stage - but in fact every step, every interaction between the rappers are all carefully planned out beforehand to deliver an exciting performance to the audience. 

A few rappers came together to put on a rap medley performance, however I only managed to figure out two or three of the artists - rapper S, rapper C and rapper B. Never particularly liked or disliked rapper S, but I heard he’s had quite a few controversies before. The only thing I know is that his stage presence and rapping skills are of extremely high quality. Even though he wasn’t at the rehearsal, and I only saw him right before the live performance, he pulled it off professionally. Rapper C and rapper B’s collaboration performance was smooth and they were also two of the few artists I managed to see up close. Both very tall, and actually much better looking in real life! Their rapping didn’t take much time to rehearse, but I was a bit disappointed at the stage decorations for their stage as even for us as staff, it was hard to see their faces properly. For this performance, I think it would may looked slightly better if you watched it on TV compared to the audience at the ceremony (although most of their performance was hardly caught on our cameras to be honest).

In recent years, the amount of idol girl groups debuting seem to be more than idol boy groups in general. Although I had confidence recognising idol boy groups’ members, song, and even choreography, it was a complete different story when it came to idol girl groups.

Idol girl group O and W came together for a collaboration performance stage, and the total number of artists was 17. Before meeting them, I only recognised around 3 members… but with a total of 4 songs between the two groups, it was probably the hardest rehearsal for me. The girls were young, but you could tell that some were hardworking even off stage, while others looked like as if they were just waiting to head back to their hotel rooms. A few vocalist members sang live at the rehearsal and turned out to be better than I expected, however it turned it to another lip-sync performance for the live show. At that point, I didn’t really understand the intention of lip-syncing anymore. Why not let the talented ones sing if they can? Some artists were even seen skipping the singing and just focusing on their choreography at the live performance, as if they were trying to tell the rest of the world: “to be honest, I’m so done with this lip-sync thing”. I understand that maybe it would look bad if someones makes a mistake on the live show if they sing live, but what is the difference if artists start to skip the singing part since both the artists and audience know they’re lip-syncing anyway? 

One thing that also came to my mind was that it’s no wonder Korean beauty is such a popular thing in recent years - it really does wonders to people. I would hear that a certain girl group member is usually the ‘visual’ of their group, but without the fancy clothes and makeup, they would easily just blend in to the background behind the scenes. That was also difficult in some ways, as every rehearsal would seem different with those particular members, and it wold even sometimes seem like there were two different members in the same dance position at two different rehearsals. 

Even though I was not familiar with girl groups, and had to kind of “study” throughout the rehearsals to get to know each of them, the partner I worked with was confident in recognising idols with his years and years of experience. I remember asking him: “after so many years of experience in this industry, is there anything special that you feel about this work and this industry?” Before answering me, I remember he asked me how old I was, and realised that many of the artists we saw on stage were very much younger than me, and the rest were either the same age or only a few years older than me. His response was something I didn’t expect (although I didn’t exactly know what to expect either), but something that I very much agreed with after that night.

“어린 나이에 이런 일을 하는게 힘들 텐데, 하지만 그 사람들은 주변 친구들 보다 제일 열심히 살고 있는 것 같아”. 

“Even though it might be difficult and tiring to work in this industry at such a young age, I think they are probably the most hardworking people in their generation.”

(To be continued)