The 5 crazy hardest things we've ever done for SHINee

It sometimes hits me how hard it is to get information about being able to do things SHINee-related in Korea. I still don't know everything there is to know and it's been a loooooong learning process. From Music Shows to free concerts to SHINee World Concerts to fansigns to special events, endorsement promotions and the list goes on, there are a stack of things you can do but....they're all super difficult. So here's the absolute hardest thing's we've done as fangirls. I hope you find it interesting~!


Disclaimer: before anyone goes pointing fingers and saying: omgosh this girl be crazy, I'd like to put things in context. I have a full time job and I would never ever have done any of these things if it was going to affect my job negatively. I'm also a fully grown adult and I ALWAYS always do these events with at least 1 or 2 other friends who have my back. I really recommend if you want to do SHINee events or just fan events in Korea at all that you network like crazy and pick up a few awesome friends who can help you out. And some working Korean. Estimating whether it's a good idea to do an event is really important. There's definitely a point where you should call it a day and accept that even though you lined up for 24 hours in the freezing cold.... you're just not going to see SHINee today.

5. Musical Ticketing
The first SHINee musical I was ever blessed with seeing was Bonnie and Clyde this year. Unfortunately I was an idiot and didn't go see Onew in Rock of Ages because I was young and stupid and didn't know how to musical. I also JUST missed Key in Catch Me If You Can because I was graduating University. Dang it.

In any case, Musical ticketing is serious business yo. Ticketing generally opens on a Tuesday at 2 oclock and unfortunately M Musical (the company that runs the musicals) opened Gold Membership early last year and have decided since to stop allowing Gold Membership. Which means that people with existing membership get access to ticketing the day before normal peoples do. So....by the time you even crack the ticketing window open the first 3 rows at least are all gone. It...kind of sucks.

Musical ticketing can thus be a painful endless nightmare of constantly checking Interpark to see what's been released by other people if you want the best seat possible. That sometimes means waking up at obscure hours of the day to check if anyone's let their tickets go at 3 in the morning. It also sometimes means you've bought a ticket and then find a better ticket the next day and somehow have to find someone who wants your previous ticket because if you refund it you'll lose money on fees OTL. 

The first run of Bonnie and Clyde was, for this reason, pure hell for me. I've since learnt that swapping tickets and selling them on like a crazy person is a bad idea and I shouldn't do it for my own personal peace of mind. So basically; when you're buying musical tickets try and swing the best seat you can and stick with your ticket. It hurts your wallet and your soul less.

4.The 3 super insane Everybody recordings that ruined our lives
I've done a few SHINee promo periods and I don't know; some may disagree but Everybody was a pretty tough one. Maybe because I personally went harder for Everybody than I did for WSS or Dream Girl or Lucifer (I was in the country for these promo periods)

Number 1 was the late night SBS pre-recording from hell. It was meant to be a Thursday night pre-recording for Everybody on SHINee's comeback week. SHINee would record Symptoms on Sunday and Everybody on Thursday night preceding to save time. Only for some bizarre reason SBS was running seriously behind on getting SHINee's set together. I don't know what happened exactly but a recording that was meant to be over by 10pm at the latest instead didn't start until 3ish in the morning. Around 900 people initially showed up and by midnight possibly 600 remained. The recording didn't finish until just before 5 am. Maybe I'll go into detail on this later if anyone's interested, but let's just say we didn't expect to be going to work/classes the next day with only about and hour and a half of sleep ^.^;;;

Number 2 was the MBC post-recording that occurred at the disgusting time of about 2 in the morning. MBC had to record the entire Music Core show for the next week in one night for unknown reasons and so we reported to MBC at about 8pm at night and waited. and waited...and waited. SHAWols were eventually moved into the studio where we proceeded to watch every. single. artist...except SHINee. SHINee had the dubious pleasure of recording last and so we sat through every other artist and then...all the other fan groups were allowed to leave and we were moved to the front and finally. finally!!! got to see SHINee. It was probably made all the more glorious that we were rewarded with their glowing beautiful faces after such a long wait.

Number 3 I didn't actually go to. I had to chose between doing the Everybody post-recording for MBC or the Symptoms recording at SBS and I couldn't make it back to MBC studio's in time for the check in. But SHINee pre recorded something like 2 weeks worth of Music Core appearances in one go and this is also where fans got first wind of Onew's neck injury. I remember messaging friends in the recording who were fan accounting the situation. I think a crazy rumour like Onew collapsing on stage was going around. In reality SHINee had performed Everybody probably about 15 times that day and Onew's neck and arms were really feeling it. He had to rest a little, which is completely understandable, but jumped straight back into the recording. This recording went until about 10 o'clock that night so the timing wasn't too bad but I can only imagine the worry fans felt for Onew inside that studio; fans worry a lot I've noticed ^.^;;;. Glad to have him back in top condition <3.

3. SM the Ballad Showcase
Going to start this off by saying: SM you suck. I don't often agree with people heaping blame on SM for every little thing but there really was a huge management f**k up regarding ticketing for SM the Ballad's showcase. Tickets for the showcase were free but were being distributed from SM's 3 Everysing locations across Seoul. How many tickets were available was completely unannounced and EVERYBODY wanted tickets. SM the Ballad consists of Jonghyun but also Taeyeon, Chen, Zhoumi, Krystal, Changmin, Zhang Liyin and Yesung. So SHAWols, EXO fans, DBSK fans, SNSD fans, f(x) fans ALL wanted tickets. The tickets were given out at opening time Sunday morning and I heard from a friend that a line was already forming on Saturday night. I went to check it out, not really intending on queuing overnight; it was freezing cold, raining a bit and had been snowing. I wasn't dressed appropriately either. Somehow I spotted some friends and ended up convincing myself to wait it out overnight. I'm still not sure what possessed me other than.....Jonghyun is perfect and I have a really big thing for Zhoumi. We froze our butts off overnight and by opening the next day there were probably at least 500 people waiting at the Myeong Dong location. They began giving out tickets at 10 o'clock...to the first 130ish people. Completely ridiculous. 

The Apgujeong location began distributing at 10:30 and gave out a similar amount despite there being near 1000 people lined up there (or so I hear). The last location to open was the Pop-up store (or EXOsing as we like to call it) . At 11:00 there was definitely over 1000 people waiting on location, many of whom had slept overnight in the freezing cold, and only 120ish people got tickets. People had assumed that there would be 800 tickets as that was near the venues capacity. SHINee's Dream Girl showcase early last year had allowed for over 1000 people. Yet SM the Ballad only let in 300ish people for about 5 fandoms. And despite knowing that lots of young, silly fangirls would sleep on the street for tickets, SM didn't announce how many tickets would be available. I'm still really pissed that so many people went through with sleeping out on the street and SM didn't have a care for all the middle school kids that stayed out overnight because they desperately wanted a ticket. It's one thing a fully consenting adult deciding to do crazy things but I feel like someone needs to be held accountable for the amount of kids that engage in this crazyness.

2. SHINee World Concert 3 ticketing
SHINee are hugely popular. I bet we all know this by now. People flew in from all over the world to see SHINee World Concert 3. And it definitely showed when time came for ticketing because holy crap was it hard to get your hands on a ticket, ANY ticket. Not even a good ticket, just A SINGLE ticket was a nightmare to get. Me and friends had plenty of all night Internet cafe/PC bang hang outs to try and nab tickets that were re released at odd hours in the morning. Now if all else fails when ticketing, there are still tickets for sale on the day of the concert. We didn't have much luck getting tickets online so decided to try our luck in day of ticketing. We were going to be at the venue bright and early the day of the concert and get in line and hopefully nab a better ticket. One problem: some crazy annoying person decided to start lining up on Friday. And when one person starts lining up, everybody needs to join the line. SO we had to scramble out to the concert location and line up....overnight....again. With about 200 others perhaps? More showed up in the morning at which point the line wound around the park and dissapeared into the distance. It was still nothing like the merch line though. That was incredible!

It was freezing cold. Actually way colder than lining up for SM the Ballad. SHINee World Concert was unfortunately around the same time Seoul experienced it's final cold snap before Spring bloomed. It snowed a bit but mostly it was just really cold. The only upside was that we had SHINee's rehearsal to serenade us through a few hours of the night. And then Jonghyun's radio show. As tiring as staying the night was though it ended up being a bit like a SHAWol camp out, with lots of yummy food and good company. Not the most ideal location but it was a park and there were lots of convenience stores around.....I guess it could have been worse?

1. Gangnam festival aka SHINee's Everybody Comeback Showcase.

I could write pages about this event and maybe I will later. We still think back on this event and feel like crying (from both joy and pain). It was the longest weekend of my life and I can't go near the location without shuddering and feeling a little nauseas to this day. Unfortunately Gangnam Festival was an un-ticketed free event that not only SHINee were performing at, but also EXO, Infinite and Girl's Day....SHINee, Infinite and EXO have some of the largest fandoms in Korea and so EVERYBODY and their mum wanted to go to this event. And because there was a public holiday Thursday before the concert, someone decided to start a list on Wednesday night.

In Korea when you go to fan events there is always a written list made by some brave, unfortunate fan. Basically the first person on location starts a list. Everyone after them adds their name to the list. Faster you get to the location, higher up the list you are. The List for Gangnam Festival started on Wednesday night and to keep your number in line you had to make it to ALL the check ins or roll calls until the day of the event. There were Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night and then Saturday morning check ins. We had to go to all of them and then, because of some arguing and craziness Saturday morning between fans, the event management told us we had to sit tight and hold our spot if we wanted to keep it. So from about 8 oclock Saturday morning until 8 oclock Sunday night we sat and held our spot. SHINee didn't come out until 8 or 9pm on Sunday. We got to see a dry rehearsal briefly on Sunday. It was completely necessary as well because by Saturday night 1000's of people were lined up. Literally THOUSANDS. 

Ordinarily I'm sure none of us would have gone through with this disgusting insanity. I mean, sitting on a street in Gangnam overnight is completely crazy. However, this was SHINee's comeback showcase. It was free. We'd NEVER seen or heard either Everybody or Symptoms at that point. And nearly every SHAWol I know was there in that line. So as tiring and horrible as lining up was, it was the most memorable SHINee event I've ever been to. I made some amazing friends that weekend and had a really good time. Again, it was like a giant SHAWol camp out with lots of coffee and sharing blankets and taking turns charging each other's phone batteries and taking a nap in nearby cafe's.

I still have a really vivid memory of every SHAWol in that audience holding their breathe as SHINee began springing to their feet at the beginning of Everybody. I think I'll always remember nearly everyone completely losing their shit when SHINee picked Taemin up and THREW him. I can remember people standing around me pulling their hair out and actually looking like they were having a mental breakdown. I can't even begin to describe the noise when SHINee busted out that shuffling sideways move and I think someone actually fainted when they made that airplane for the first time. It was intense shit.....maybe because most of us hadn't slept properly in over 36 hours nor had a decent meal or drink or ....shower o.O But it was literally like reaching some untouchable nirvana; the closest thing to heaven on earth I might ever find. 

Just as a wrap-up; this whole post seems like a bunch of whining but I'd like to finish it off by saying I don't regret a second of it. We got some really crazy awesome experiences. So... question: would you sleep out overnight for SHINee? Or are we completely nuts?