Welcome Party of K-Performance Supporters

K-Performance Supporters Season 2 - Welcome Party

Along with many other activities to promote Korean Culture and Tourism Industry, Korean Tourism Organization (KTO) is leaving no stone unturned to promote Korean Performances for the outer world. KTO is managing a program of recruiting foreigners living in Korea as K-Performance supporters, letting them watch K-Performance shows, and Korean Culture and in return the members are expected to promote the events by writing blogs related to the activities attended. It is basically one of many efforts of the Korean government to turn the Korean society into a Multi-cultural public which is considered to be a closed society unlike other developed countries. Korean performances are already on their way of promotion through media either it is print or televised but this activity is a tremendous effort to bring K-Performances to the front by a two-way process of blogging by foreigners as the expatriates would mix with the Koreans as a first step and then the people living in outer world would know about the Korean culture and K-Performances by reading blogs by foreigners living in Korea.

K-Performance Supporters Season-1 which was organized in 2012 remained quite successful letting seven K-performance supporters win different prizes ranging from money in cash to return air ticket to some tourist place in Korea. The last year’s project was a kind of small one as compared to this year’s plan as the number of K-Supporters recruited this year is quite large which would bring more positivistic results hopefully in respect of the goals. 

Being a foreigner in Korea, and being interested in Korean Culture and Korean Performances, I applied to KTO to work as K-Performance Supporter and after getting selected, I attended the very first activity namely Welcome Party on 5^th of April, Friday. It was started by a dinner in K-Pop Concert Hall, Gungnum, followed by a short ceremony of giving prizes to the best supporters of last season. Afterwards, on 3^rd floor of the hall, a K-performance show started which was quite entertaining rather marvelous. 

Many dance and B-Boys performances were shown on Korean and English music making it a beautiful blend of "Konglish" in nature. The event was attended by many foreigners living in Korea between 20 to 35 years of age approximately from 64 countries of the world. I enjoyed the energy level and commitment of the foreigners to the event that they contributed with full zeal. During the performances, some performers called some participants from the audience on stage and it was very interesting to see them moving on beats without the fear of symmetry in their moves and yes, they did well. I enjoyed being there a lot and it was far more than my expectations. Another worth mentioning point is that the performers were very interactive with the audiences. They not only performed well but they introduce themselves with the audiences in a proper way one by one and remained interactive throughout the performances.