This day in history: New Kids on the Block come to Korea.

Scan from this blog, click to enlarge.

On February 16th, 1992, the extremely popular boyband New Kids on the Block arrived in Seoul for a concert on the 17th. You can find video of their arrival and concert courtesy of youtube:



That's interesting footage in and of itself, but I suppose the most significant part of their visit and was a day later one fan died and dozens more were injured during a stampede at the concert. From a February 18th article from the Chicago Sun-Times titled "30 Korean teens hurt in crush at New Kids concert" and available as a pay-per-view:

A stampede at a concert Monday by the singing group New Kids on the Block left about 30 teenagers injured, witnesses said.

The accident occurred 40 minutes into a concert by the teen idols at a gymnastics hall in Olympic Park before 16,000 people, the witnesses said.

About 200 fans, most of them teenage girls sitting in front rows, stood up and swarmed around the stage, they said. Hundreds of other fans pushed from behind, crushing those in front. The performance was halted, the witnesses said.

The American singers, unhurt, were escorted away by about 20 security guards.

"It was pandemonium," one witness said. "Many girls lay unconscious on the floor, some screaming in pain."

The pop group, which was mobbed when it arrived at Seoul's Kimpo Airport on Sunday, is on a concert tour of 45 cities in 23 nations.

A day later, an article "Korea teen dies after New Kids concert frenzy" from the same paper available now as a pay-per-view:

An 18-year-old South Korean high school student died Wednesday from injuries suffered when frenzied fans stormed the stage during a concert by the rock group New Kids on the Block.

A hospital spokesman said Park Chong-yun, among at least 50 fans hurt during Monday night's concert, lapsed into a coma Tuesday. She died early Wednesday morning.

News reports said prosecutors have sought an arrest warrant for Hong Hyon-pyo, 33, president of Sorabul Records, which sponsored the concert. Prosecutors allege the promoters sold more tickets than there were seats in Seoul's Olympic Gymnasium.

The rowdy behavior of the teenage fans has shocked staid South Korea, where teenagers are expected to study, respect their elders and not make a fuss.

"The picture that our teenagers have portrayed to us during the concert has left many people in shock," the influential Dong-A Ilbo newspaper said.

The concert before an audience of 15,000 had to be stopped after the stage was stormed but resumed 3 1/2 hours later.

I haven't found much information about this incident anywhere, and it was grudgingly and as a last resort that I signed up for a free trial with High Beam to retrieve those two articles. But I did find this article (.doc file), perhaps from Click Korea from 1993, on the burst of popularity of Seo Tae-ji and of newer styles of Korean pop music, and of how authentic Korean pop music even is:

Rap and the “Seo Tae-ji syndrome” took the older generation by surprise, but they should have been warned. The first sign came last February when American teen idols, New Kids on the Block, hit Korea. Their effect was both devastating and eye-opening. Starting with a melee upon their arrival at the airport, their visit ended with an aborted concert and 50 hysterical female fans in hospital.

Organizers of the concert took their share of the blame for their lack of proper planning and their greed in filling the concert hall beyond capacity. The brunt of the attack, however, fell on the young fans. “What is wrong with them?” people asked “How can they act so crazy? Where did this behavior come from?”

The New Kids phenomenon was branded an undesirable import. With rather misguided intentions, the Culture Ministry promptly moved to ban any concert that had the potential of arousing similar hysteria. Paula Abdul was allowed in, but Michael Jackson never had a chance.

The whole article is interesting, especially when it talks about local artists mimicking and thereby "filtering" foreign musicians and styles, so give it a read. However I haven't been able to find anything else about the New Kids or the Culture Ministry's policies toward raucous concerts. All I know is that Michael Jackson "reportedly loved" bibimbap when he eventually came to Korea.

I wrote the bulk of this post about a week ago, before news that a mountain-top stampede killed four just a few days ago. But I'll leave the rest of the post as-is in case people want to read about a couple other recent stampedes. In 2005 11 people, including eight between the ages of 54 to 76, were killed trying to enter a concert in Sangju. From CBS News:

Concertgoers trying to enter a stadium Monday sparked a stampede, killing eight women and three boys, and injuring 72 others, officials said.

The accident occurred at about 5:40 p.m. (0840 GMT) in the city of Sangju, 165 miles southeast of Seoul, when 20,000 people were waiting to enter a stadium for a concert that had been organized by a television network, said Kim Sung-in, an official with the city government's disaster management division.

Kim said 11 people died when one of the gates opened to let the audience inside, and that the death toll could rise by another one or two.

Another city official said the dead were eight women aged from 54 to 76, along with three boys aged 7, 12 and 14. Another 72 people were injured, said the official, who refused to give his name.

"There were elderly people in the front, and when pushed from behind the elderly people in the first row fell, leading to a chain reaction of falling and being crushed," Kang Mi-kyung, an eyewitness, told South Korea's Yonhap news agency.

You might also remember a few years ago at Lotte World, a big stampede injured dozens as they were all trying to enter the park. The reason so many were trying to get in was because admission was free that day . . . in order to build good publicity after a man was killed on a roller coaster a short time earlier. From the AP:

Tens of thousands of people crowded to get free admission to an amusement park in Seoul on Sunday, triggering a stampede that injured 34 people, officials said.

About 50,000 people were waiting outside the Lotte World theme park on the first day of a six-day free-admission event when the accident happened, said Kim Heung-kyu, an official in the park’s operational department. Television footage showed the crowd swaying back and forth in front of a gate before the stampede occurred.

The Songpa Police Station said 34 people were injured in the accident. Injuries ranged from broken bones to abrasions, Kim said.

. . .

The theme park organized the event in an effort to improve its image after a person fell to his death during a roller coaster ride at the park earlier this month.

The purpose of including these last two seemingly unrelated examples isn't to pretend that stampedes only happen in Korea, or to bash Korea via conflation. But the actions of these teenagers, which had shocked "staid" South Korea in 1992, seems less shocking when you look at other examples . . . or watch people getting on the subway. Newspapers often say things like

The picture that our teenagers have portrayed to us during the concert has left many people in shock.

But it's not as if their behavior is exclusive to teenagers. While we don't hear about stampedes very often, the behavior of the kids in the above video isn't unfamiliar to anyone who watches television or sees how wound up their students get over their favorite pop stars. Hell, whenever they do a surprise concert at school, you'll see scores of enthusiastic teenage girls rush the stage.

Anyway, the band is back together and touring venues large and small in North America. They haven't announced any dates for Asia, much less Korea, and it's probably smarter that way.