'KCON 2016 New York' up close

The hallyu movement is growing faster than ever. While the popularity of K-Pop has been accelerating rapidly since 2010 in North America, KCON 2016 Presented by Toyota has been arranged for fans who cannot meet hallyu stars easily due to vexing geography. KCON invites large number of hallyu stars to New York and LA. Since KCON 2016 Presented by Toyota held their first concert in California in 2012, they've expanded their venues to the east side of New York. KCON now comes to Abu Dhabi, UAE, Chiba Prefecture, Japan and Paris, France in order to meet the international fans around the globe.

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This year's KCON 2016 Presented by Toyota took place in Prudential Center in New Jersey for two days on June 24th and 25th. Korean food brand, BIBIGO, various hallyu beauty brands, and character items were sold to satisfy the demand from fans. KCON New York was a huge success as they invited a great number of truly talented female idol groups, male idol groups, and rappers. Their website crashed two days after ticket sales opened.

Especially, the news about fan meetings with boy group BTS and girl group Mamamoo received explosive reaction on SNS. Both the events filled the hearts of K-Pop fans across North America with excitement. Domestic media, including Billboard and USA Today, published articles like "List of K-Pop you should know' in anticipation of KCON. Eric Nam emceed KCON New York, smoothly showing off his famous show hosting skills and also performed as an entertainer. Ailee, a former New Jersey resident, gave the audience a hot performance which garnered great attention from fans. Instagram user, Tunashark, revealed his love and adoration for Yoon Mi-rae.
"Yoon Mi-rae's performance was flawless!"

The most noteworthy parts of this year's KCON is that although the concerts took place on weekend evenings, the panels representing hallyu products and local Korean restaurants and hallyu experts in North America sat down together to talk about the future goals and business opportunities of K-Pop, starting Friday. Fans also participated in these conferences freely and discussed how they should accept K-Pop growing in North America as active participants of the growing hallyu movement and its integration into American culture and how to reach the hallyu fans in the small cities.

Especially, Jeff Benjamin, K-Pop columnist for fuse and Billboard and Lisa Espinosa, editor for HanCinema, a Korean movie and drama portal for English speaking regions, who visited Korea to participate in 2015 online opinion leader invitation project by KOFICE, joined the KCON New York conference on Friday as panels and shared their expert point of view. The two panels nourished the event by sharing their positive point of view based on their network with KOFICE.

Meanwhile, the upcoming KCON in LA this July will attract their large fan base in the western region. It is expected that the visible growth of KCON each year will be more noticeable in LA this time again as KCON New York was a huge success. I hope KCON 2016 Presented by Toyota will be more successful so they can come back with more frequent K-Pop events.