On May 2nd, I attended NCT DREAM's 2024 concert tour in Seoul at the Gocheok Sky Dome. Getting tickets was not easy. When I joined the queue on Melon (a ticketing website), I was behind 21,000 people in line. At that point, I knew my chances were slim, but I decided to wait it out, hoping for a miracle. Unfortunately, by the time I got in, all the seats were already taken. I loitered on the page for a couple of hours, hoping a seat might pop up. There were instances where I would see a seat become available, but someone else would always snag it before I could. It became a daily routine to check back on the seats, feeling like a hawk hunting for scraps lol. I was super persistent, knowing that I couldn't let such a rare opportunity slip away. I even tried to reach out to resellers on Twitter, but their prices were way out of my budget, which I should've seen coming. Around a week before the concert date, I finally managed to secure a seat in the back section. I celebrated with my friend who was able to get tickets on her first try. We were both in the back of the arena, but in different sections.
We arrived at the venue at around 1:00pm, six hours before the concert was set to start. We got there early anticipating a long merch line—and it was. Initially, we remained hopeful, thinking that the line wasn't anything too crazy. The line looked shorter than the line I was in at EXO's fan meeting. However, the lines moved at a snail's pace, and the heat started to take a toll on us. We saw fans in front of us start to become weary, sometimes squatting and sitting in the line. My friend and I watched as the fans ahead of us grew weary, some squatting or sitting down to rest. After a couple of hours, we were completely worn out, barely having the energy to talk or joke around anymore lol. There was even an ahjussi selling water to us in line, clearly knowing he could take advantage of our situation. Honestly, if it weren’t for him, I might have seriously became dehydrated under the hot sun.
As 6:00pm approached, we started to worry that we wouldn’t make it in time for the concert. To make matters worse, the employees announced that the lightsticks were sold out, which was the one thing we really wanted to buy. It was frustrating to see some fans leaving with multiple boxes of lightsticks when we couldn’t even get one. I really wished they had limited the number of lightsticks each person could purchase. Some girls in front of us started to lose their patience, and began complaining to the employees about the ridiculous wait. At around 6:50pm, we finally got out of the line with our goods. I ended up purchasing a shirt and a small PVC wallet set. Realizing the concert hall was farther away than we expected, we had to sprint to make it in time.
As you can see, I ended up quite far in the back. Despite that, I was relieved to make it just in time, as I really didn’t want to miss the start of the concert. Thankfully, I didn’t, because the opening was SO GOOD. They kicked things off with "BOX," one of my favorite tracks from their new album. It was cool to see them finally perform tracks from their newest album DREAM( )SCAPE. I'm a bit more familiar with NCT 127 songs, so there were times where I had to pull out Google's "search a song" feature to figure out the title of the song playing. I became a fan of "119" and "SOS," which have a grungier vibe that I realized I preferred over their poppier sound.
Toward the end of the concert, the members rode on these cars to get closer to the fans. I was so jealous of the fans in the front row of the first-floor sections. This is what it looked like blown up on my phone—I was seriously making the most of my Samsung’s 30x zoom feature.
Some of their sets were so pretty, especially for Broken Melodies. I wasn't the biggest fan of this song initially, but seeing it live made me appreciate it more lol.
Overall, this was one of the biggest highlights of my time abroad. I definitely had a little bit of post-concert depression, which I never knew I’d finally get to experience! It was also unfortunate that Renjun couldn't participate in the concert, but it was touching to see how all of the members still mentioned him and shouted him out. I’m still buzzing from this experience, and it’s something I’ll remember for a long time.
So
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