A Free Seat at a Live K-Pop Broadcast: How Overseas Fans Apply for Music Bank
Friday afternoon in Yeouido, the broadcasting district of western Seoul. A line forms along the side of a television studio building. If you flew to Korea for a K-pop concert, this is where you can claim one more seat besides the one you paid for. It is the studio audience of Music Bank, the TV music chart show that airs live every Friday, and admission costs nothing. Nobody sells a ticket here; you apply for one, which makes the competition work very differently from concert ticketing.
At a glance: Music Bank on KBS2, live every Friday from 5:15 p.m. to 6:35 p.m. · Filmed at the KBS Annex Open Hall, 13 Yeouigongwon-ro, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul · About a 10-minute walk from National Assembly Station on Subway Line 9 · Admission free · Apply through the "audience application" menu after creating an account on the KBS website · Your original passport or alien registration card is checked at the door · Tourist information in foreign languages, phone 1330
Free does not mean easy. Seoul's official tourism service states plainly that seats are very limited and that submitting an application is no guarantee of getting in. The application pages are in Korean only, so turn on your browser's translation before you start, and finish creating the account before you fly, not after you land. What the staff check at the door is the physical document. If your passport is back at the hotel, you have to go and get it, and Yeouido to Myeongdong is about 40 minutes by subway each way, 80 minutes round trip. A live broadcast does not wait. Spend those 80 minutes on a trip you took because you trusted a photocopy or a phone photo, and you lose the free seat and your Friday evening together.
Getting there is simple. Leave National Assembly Station on Line 9, walk toward Yeouido Park, and the studio complex is in front of you. The big difference from a concert trip is the finishing time. The broadcast ends at 6:35 p.m., so late-night transport is not a problem at all: you will be back in Myeongdong or Hongdae long before the subway stops. What you do have to give up is the whole afternoon. Counting the queue and the ID check, budget four hours. If you have already booked a Friday evening flight home, this plan does not work.
A few things are worth knowing before you sit down. A music chart show is not one group's concert. You watch every act on that day's lineup in order, and your favourite group's turn is over in a song or two. Korean fans hold an eungwongbong, the stick-shaped light each fandom carries, and shout set chants in the gaps between lines; if you do not know them, clapping is perfectly fine. Broadcasters restrict camera equipment inside the studio, so leave interchangeable-lens cameras and tripods behind. If Friday does not fit your itinerary, change the day: M Countdown (Mnet) is made on Thursday, Show! Music Core (MBC) on Saturday and Inkigayo (SBS) on Sunday, each in a different studio.