Climbing Moss

In the deepest darkest arches of Vauxhall there is a special night that happens on the first Friday of every month – K-events London Kpop Night. Self dubbed “The Biggest KPop Night in the World” but what is the reality? See below…

You know we love our K-Pop/K-Culture/K-Dramas/K-Beauty pretty much everything Korea so when we see something pop up in London we know we have to go! That’s where Kevents came in on the First Friday of every month- so we thought why not – we bought our tickets (expensive tickets! £50.00ea) and took a train journey to Vauxhall.

Then found our way to Fire – which is somewhat a daunting journey – under dark bridges and down side alleys, but that was the least of our problems it would soon turn out. Immediately you notice the clientele – not what you would expect (I was thinking Kpop concerts and Cup sleeve events – you know Kpop Stan’s) not the very short neon mini skirts with bikini tops and a multitude of Fboys that greeted me – not a Stan in sight. Even in the queue you can tell that almost every single person is completely wasted – girls staggering to the entrance to get the stamp, boys trying to work out which girl might be up for a one night stand yada yada.

When we finally got to the front of the queue we received a disapproving look from the girl stamping hands (of course my tattoos were in the wrong place how rude of me!) The dirty look was short lived within 20 seconds she had begun doing strange selfie twitches – peace sign, tongue out, then doing a 5 second blast of super shy etc all to a seemingly invisible phone? We observed this strange phenomenon about 100 times throughout the night.

Then we entered – There is a large outdoor space with a semi pagoda like roof for the smoking area – basically a hotboxed outdoor area because of course with the sheer amount of smoke it was impossible to breath fresh air. Now this is where I noticed the sheer lack of anything to do with K-pop.

In the court yard (and this is at the beginning of the night) I noticed the traditional Korean snack trucks filled with Traditional Korean food such as K-chicken and Shin Ramyeon in a medium cup for £5.00 – which are 90p in Oseyo (That was as much as I remember). Then I noticed the drinks and this is what really stole my breath away – does anyone want to guess how much a bottle of Soju was? any guesses? Well I can guarantee you would be wrong – Unless you guessed £50. I mean again this is £6.00 in Oseyo talk about a massive fucking rip off!

You would think this would be enough to put people off – but don’t worry they are too off their faces to even notice the bill. So I went for a beer (still £9) and guarded it with my life – not at one point did I feel safe enough to leave my drink exposed enough to allow someone to drop something in it.

This is when it truly hit me, I have been to Korean events, spent time learning the language, going to restaurants, actual Korean bars and not once have I ever felt unsafe – K’events was nothing like that – this was more akin to a meat market or a sleazy bar, somewhere where you could easily get date raped.

The girls were already falling out of their bikinis and throwing up (within an hour of getting in the club). Boys were already dry humping and hitting on anything that moved. The boys were mostly Chavs to be honest who didn’t know the music and seemed only there for the ‘easy’ girls. I also noticed the sheer lack of Asians (Im used to being in the minority in Korean bars/events) but in this whole venue there was less than a handful and they seemed to only be there to stand on the sidelines looking unapproachably pretty.

Then we get to the music rooms –

Room 1 – You have the world music room (well you would have thought this would all be world music but never mind) which oddly enough seemed to be Rap – nothing foreign about this at all – filled with the lovely (I’m being sarcastic here) Lynx effect song.

Room 2 – Supposedly Korean Chart Hits but seemed to mostly be the Americanised BTS songs (Butter, Dynamite etc) Then moving into the newer Jungkook singles – you know about fucking (seems apt) There was a couple of other songs but think more towards the mainstream western K-pop. Nothing that was currently in the charts in Korea.

Room 3 – I’m not sure what you could call this room – apart from the ear bleeding room – whatever was in there was so crap I couldn’t last more than 5 seconds.

Room 4 – The other Kpop room – This room surprisingly played a couple of decent songs but as soon as you went to the dance area you were immediately followed by a group of men who then proceeded to try and grind on you. When you try and move to the edge to see if they would get the message they follow you to chat about how they are only there for a no strings fuck with an easy girl and how shit the music is.

Eventually I took to speaking in Korean or Japanese and was asked by almost every single person I spoke to “what language are you talking?” or “wow you can speak Chinese”.

Resisting the urge to bitch slap these people – I came to the conclusion that K-events have no idea what Korea is actually like or for that matter what Kpop is. If you proclaim to love Korea etc at least know what the language sounds like. Not have people taking the Korean flag and flossing it through your legs or throwing it on the floor and stomp all over it.

There were other things I noticed – staff taking money in hand for extra perks being placed in VIP, anyone outside that wanted to get in just had to slip £60 pounds and could get in no questions asked. I am pretty sure IDs were not checked as the girls in front of me in the bathroom were celebrating their 16th Birthday. Staff chased people around with cameras taking a pictures of anyone they could corner for the website – clearly trying to promote as much as humanly possible.

All in all I think I saw over 100 people throw up, So many sleazy guys try and proclaim their love for the Korpo (whatever that was) more than a handful of people spending way over £2000 for a round of drinks and a ridiculous amount of people being taken out by security for being paralytic – and for the first time in my life I left early. Making my way through the vomit, the passed out girls with their skirt around their waist and the boys who somehow seemed to have lost their shirts and the never ending plumes of smoke. I eventually escaped and got home in time to watch a K-drama to finally get my Korean fix I had been craving all night. I had honestly never felt so old in my life!

So in closing if you want a Kpop night that actually has anything to do with Kpop go to Soho, Chinatown or New Malden. I personally recommend – Hongdae Pocha for a night out and whilst you are there ask someone where they would recommend or even the Monthly K-pop nights at the Grace – but certainly not K-events.

Of course this is just my opinion – you personally may love it. Also as you can probably tell I didn’t take photos – mostly due to censorship and also I didn’t want to get my phone out.