With the Korean pop culture becoming a increasingly globalised phenomenon, Korean entertainment companies are ready to recruit more talents from all over the world and train them to become the next K-Pop idols.
K-Pop first gained its popularity in East Asia in the late 1990s and entered the Japanese music market towards the turn of the 21st century. In less than a decade, it grew from a musical genre into a subculture that spread infectiously throughout the world. Teenagers and young adults became obsessed with the culture and some of them even aspire to be the idols themselves.
With that in mind, Astro Malaysia collaborated with KBS World and the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Malaysia and held the “2015 K-POP World Festival” last Sunday (14th June) at Sunway Giza.
The “2015 K-POP World Festival” is an annual global K-Pop competition organised by South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The competition, which is now into its 5th year, kicked off with regional contests hosted by Korean embassies and cultural centers overseas. This year, the preliminary rounds took place in 63 countries, including Malaysia. The winners of each national contest will then advance to the online qualifying round. After tallying the online votes plus the opinions from an expert panel of judges, about 15 teams will be selected to go to Korea for the final round in Changwon City, Korea.
South Korean boyband VIXX, who arrived in Malaysia on Saturday (13th June), was invited to assume the role of judges for the Malaysian preliminary round of the “2015 K-POP World Festival”.
The 12 finalists, who battled it out at the “2015 K-POP World Festival” in Malaysia, included Fuxion Dance Crew, FXN, P.A.S, Double F, Variance, HIM, Villainess, Yiting Tan, Zetty Lee, and DuoFrio.
Fuxion Dance Crew, who performed EXO‘s “Call Me Baby“, was crowned the “KBS World Category” award winner. HIM walked away with the “VIXX Category” award for performing a cool mashup of BTS songs, including “I NEED U“. VIXX personally went onstage to present the award to the young, talented dance crew.
Alex Goh, who mesmerised the crowd with his solid vocals when he sang Johan Kim’s “I Want To Fall In Love”, emerged as the grand prize winner in the “Vocal Category”. Epsilon Kueen was also chosen as the grand prize winner for the “Performance Category” as they danced their hearts out to BTS’ “Danger”, “Concept Trailer”, and “Attack on Bangtan”, as well as VIXX’s “Voodoo Doll”.
Both Alex and Epsilon Kueen are now one step closer to realising their dreams as they will now represent Malaysia at the Grand Finals in Korea.
Known for their powerful performances, VIXX also entertained their fans by performing their hit songs including “On and On“, “Light Up The Darkness”, and “Error” before announcing the winners for each category.
For more information regarding Astro Circle and the Astro Circle Points, please visit Astro Circle’s official website.
