Global K-pop fest KCON to return as in-person event this year

KCON, a major annual festival of K-pop and Korean culture, will return to South Korea, Japan and the United States in person this year after a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, organizers said Thursday.

CJ ENM, a leading entertainment and media company in South Korea, said the festival will make stops in Seoul, Tokyo and Chicago in that order in May and in Los Angeles in August, with one more stop set to be made in Tokyo in October.

It will mark the first time since September 2019 that the annual festival will be held in person. For the past two years, CJ ENM has replaced it with scaled-down online events amid the spread of the coronavirus.

The company said it will stream some of the festival programs online to draw participation from as many international fans of Korean culture as possible.

Launched in 2012 amid the global emergence of K-pop and Korean cultural content, KCON has been at the forefront of promoting Korean pop culture overseas with top-tier groups, such as BTS, Girls’ Generation, TWICE and NCT 127, featured in music concerts. KCON’s cumulative visitor total tops 1.1 million, according to the company.