Kcon NY 2015

This week I attended that first ever Kcon NY held at the Prudential Center in Newark,NJ! Although Kcon has been successfully held in LA for several years, a lot of people were question whether Kcon NY would be worth. So I though I do a little run down of my take of my time at  Kcon.







The Venue
While the concert was held inside of the Prudential Center ( for 7pm on), the actually convention was held in the area outside of the convention from 10am to 6pm. Similarity to the first years of Kcon LA, all the industry and fan booths were set up in tents spread across the venue. Although a lot of people complained about the heat, I actually like the set up as it reminded me of a block party, and was integrated into the city.

The Food

My biggest problem with the location was probably the selection of places to eat around the area. There was your typical McDonalds, Chipotle, and other restaurants and even on-site food trucks but I was highly disappointed in the lack of Korean food options available. Besides the Bibigo and Tours les Jours tents,This is another reason why Kcon would have benefited if it were actually held in NY as there is a really awesome K-Town there that Kcon goers would have really enjoyed.


The Programming

Because there was only one workshop tent and one panel tent, you can probably guess there wasn't a lot in terms of programming. In total there were 5 workshops, and 5 panels, and although it they were interesting, they were pretty hard to enjoy since the tents were a lot of the time to small to hold the amount of people wanting to attend.

Sunny Park during her K-pop Make-Up Panel

The Guests
This was hands down the best thing about the con. I know a lot of people complained about the lack of k-pop diol acts at Kcon NY(Aoa, SNSD, Teen Top, VIXX) in comparison to LA(AOA, Block B, Red Velvet, Zion T and Crush, Super Junior, Got7, Jesus, the KFC mascot, etc), but I thought it was a decent line up for it's first year.(Although, I didn't quite understand why the NY concerts tickets were the same amount as the LA concert tickets as there were less act, however, I'll assume it had something to do with the fact that the convention part of NY was free but it was not for LA.) In terms of non-idols acts, I also thought Kcon NY did a good job. Youtubers are REALLY popular among Kpop fans, and everyone was really excited to run into the likes of JRE, KML, Steph and Richard from Hallyuback, the cast of Drama Fever's "K-trend", the Nutty Nomads and much more!

All in all there is definitely room for improvement but it was a decent effort for the first year. Hopefully next year we'll see  more idols act, more programming, and an improvement in terms Kcon letting us know what's going on leading up to the con.

Gallery