The Grand K-POP Festival 2015 was held on September 4th at the Seoul Olympic Stadium with the goal of promoting Korean culture by attracting fans of Korean pop music from around the world to the festival – and attract it did, since it boasted an impressive line-up of top stars: SNSD/Girl’s Generation, CNBLUE, Chen of EXO, Taemin of SHINee, BEAST, Block B, EXID and BTOB. The festival was organized by the Korean Tourism Organization and hosted by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.
The opening act of the night was CNBLUE – who better than veteran frontman Jung Yong Hwa and CNBLUE’s upbeat tracks to get the crowd going? They performed LOVE, Love Light, I’m Sorry and Can’t Stop.
BTOB had four of their hit tracks ready as well – WOW, 2nd Confession, It’s Okay and Beep Beep (It’s Okay unfortunately not included here).
EXID performed Ah Yeah, Whoz That Girl, Every Night and Up & Down:
EXO’s main vocalist Chen showcased his widely-praised “honey vocals” in his first appearance as a solo artist in an official event line-up (he was a guest performer at the APAN Awards last year) with an impressive performance of Best Luck, his OST for the SBS drama It’s Okay, It’s Love, and Last Love by Kim Bum Soo.
The crowd’s thunderous chants of “Kim Jongdae” (Chen’s real name) throughout his stages were only equalled by the enthusiastic reception that SHINee’s Taemin received. Taemin performed Ace, Pretty Boy, Experience and Danger – four dance songs! Crazy, but he definitely pulled it off.
Block B mixed things up with their energetic performances of HER, Unordinary Girl, Very Good and Nice Day. Below is HER:
Veteran A-listers BEAST rounded out the festivities with some of their popular hits – YeY, Good Luck, 12:30 and Beautiful Night (12:30 and Beautiful Night below, with Dongwoon greeting fans in Korean, English, Chinese, Thai, etc. LOL):
And SNSD was the closing act of the night, beginning with their latest comeback track Lion Heart, followed by Party, Hoot and finishing off with Gee.
Time-Travelling Tofu 