[NEWS] BIGBANG LISTED AS 3RD ON 12 REASONS TO VISIT KOREA IN 2012

3. Hallyu Madness

2012 is looking to be a good year for K-Pop.

If you're a devoted follower, you might already know that there are several big comebacks in the works, like an upcoming Big Bang concert, or Se7en's new album. You might also know that 2ne1 will be releasing their collaborations with will.i.am.

But if all this is hard to remember, you can just remember one: the 21st Seoul Music Awards, which will be held on January 19, 2012, at the Olympic Gymnastics Arena, which will be the K-Pop event of the next year.

And it just so happens that the date of the awards ceremony coincides with the period of the Korea Grand Sale. Coincidence? Or clever maneuvering on the part of the Visit Korea Committee? Doesn't matter; saw BIGBANG!

Also keep your eyes peeled and your limbs oiled for the 2012 take on last year's K-Pop Cover Dance Festival. If you think you have the moves, you can even enter the competition and submit a video of yourself dancing to a designated K-Pop song. Otherwise, it's a good chance to gawk at startlingly on-the-spot K-Pop impersonators.

"Last year we had 2PM as judges," says Yoon Heejin of the Visit Korea Committee's Public Relations Department.

"They were astonished at how accurate some of the contestants' impersonations were. For example, a team that danced to Girls' Generation also managed to capture the individual characteristics of each member, down to the outfits, the hair, and the roles."

Finally, the Hallyu Dream Festival, held in Gyeong-ju, historical capital of ancient Korean kingdom Silla (like the Shilla Hotel), combines K-Pop shows with historical "experiences" for a quasi-music, quasi-film, quasi-history fair festival that acknowledges K-Pop's less famous but equally worthy brother, the K-Drama. More specifically, the period K-Drama.

Fans of Silla-era period drama "Queen Seondeok," for example, will appreciate that they can explore on foot the former set of the drama, and perhaps even the former setting of the actual events, minus K-Drama's tendency towards heavy fictionalization.

Source:  cnngo.com