by Reporter Jae-Hoon Lee = As the government applied Level 4, the highest level of ‘social distancing’ related to Corona 19, to the metropolitan area from the 12th to the 25th, the popular music industry also took an emergency.
According to the popular music industry, on the 9th, singers and agencies scheduled to hold concerts in Seoul and the metropolitan area this month and August, such as ‘Mr. Trot,’ and ‘Miss Trot’ Na Hoon-ah entered an emergency meeting.
The performance of ‘Singer Gain,’ which was already scheduled to be held at Suwon Indoor Gymnasium in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, on the 10th, has been canceled.
The ‘2021 Together Again, K-POP Concert’, which was scheduled to be held offline at the SK Olympic Handball Stadium in Seoul Olympic Park on the 17th, has been switched to non-face-to-face. This is the first large-scale offline concert since the spread of COVID-19. NCT Dream, Oh My Girl, and Brave Girls are scheduled to appear. In addition, idols such as Brave Girls this month and Seventeen in August have considered holding fan meetings offline, but this is also subject to change. Even in the 4th stage, it is possible to keep concerts, a means of livelihood for singers and agency officials. It operates a designated seating system and can receive up to 5,000 spectators by applying the venue’s rules. However, many areas are difficult to use in reality, such as restrictions by local governments. There is a limit that must be finished at 10 pm, and concerns about enforcement are also emerging in the industry where citizens cannot go out.
‘2021 Beautiful Mint Life’ (June 26-27, Olympic Park 88 Lawn), a large outdoor music festival for one year and eight months after Corona 19, JTBC ‘Singer Gain’ Top 10 Seoul Concert (2-4 of this month There are also voices that the recently completed concerts such as the Olympic Hall, Olympic Park) were at a miraculous timing.
It is interesting to see if the 4th level upgrade in the metropolitan area will also affect the region. Trot’s top 6 national tour concert will be held in Cheongju, North Chungcheong, from the 10th to the 11th.
The fourth wave of COVID-19 has put the pop music concert industry into trouble again. From February last year to May of this year, the Korea Music Label Industry Association (KMA) estimated the damage to domestic popular music performances to reach 184 billion won, and this amount is expected to continue to increase.
Idol agencies that were cautiously anticipating the resumption of concerts in the second half of the year are also in the mood to change their plans. An official from a mid-level idol agency said, “There was talk about whether the group’s new song to be released in the second half of this year should be promoted online and internally at the same time, but I think we will have to refocus on online.”
The Central Quarantine Countermeasures Headquarters announced that there were 1,316 new confirmed cases as of 00:00 on the same day. This is the highest number of confirmed cases since January 20, when the first documented case of COVID-19 in Korea. Following the metropolitan area, the epidemic scale in non-metropolitan areas is also increasing, raising concerns about the nationwide spread.
