What makes a fan becomes a saseang? According to Google, In South Korean culture, a sasaeng or sasaeng fan is an obsessive fan of a Korean idol, or other public figure, that has engaged in stalking or other questionable behaviour that constitutes an invasion of privacy.

    In my opinion, it is true that some of their behaviour are quite questionable and sometimes up to a point where I think that their actions towards their idols makes absolutely no sense at all but behind all this, there must be a reason as to why they started being a saseang in the first place.

    To be honest, I was not really interested in the topic of saseangs at first because I only think of them as a group of people who have nothing better to do in their free time. Well, not until one of my best friends became one. Let’s call my friend, S, who is an international saseang.

    S and I have been friends for 3 years now and we got to know each other through a mutual friend on twitter. We met for the first time at idol group E’s concert and ever since then we have been attending every single concert that was held in our country together. Money was never really a problem for us as we have our part time jobs and on top of that our parents do give us allowance every week. 

    Things were going great until idol group B came to our country to hold a fanmeeting and S won a pair of meet and greet passes to the event. She didn’t inform me about her winning the passes but instead I got to know about it through the mutual friend that I mentioned earlier. I was sure that she was going to ask me to come with her for the fansign, probably she wanted to surprise me. Boy, I was definitely surprised. 

    As I counted the days coming nearer to the fansign I realised that she might not be inviting me after all. There was less than 24 hours before the event and she has not even once brought up about the meet and greet passes. Since the fansign event was held in a shopping mall, I decided to go to the venue anyway as I can still see idol group B from the upper level. Yes, that was the first time I went alone to a k-pop event, without my fangirl partner.

    I did not bother to check on her whereabouts or what the hell was she planning to do on that day because I was downright a moody and the answer to her whereabouts were pretty obvious. I went straight to the mall and found myself a nice spot on the 2nd floor that was directly facing the stage. I waited for about 2 hours or so and then the 7 membered group that everyone was waiting for finally made their appearance.

    They did some fan service at the beginning of the fansign and I was absolutely happy for the fact that I managed to secure such a nice spot to view all of these. About half an hour after promoting their new album and more fan service, the idols were finally seated and the chosen fans were instructed to line up accordingly before going up on stage. 

    I was happily taking photos of one of my bias in that group before the lens of my camera caught an image that I dreaded to see. It was my best friend,S.