Let's face it, solo K-Pop concerts in the United States are rare. Besides a few boy groups like B.A.P and BTS, most K-Pop bands don't annually venture over the great Pacific Ocean to America. Some groups have only visited us twice, such as BIGBANG, and some only once, like SHINee and EXO. SHINee, an incredibly talented and popular boy band, just had their first and only solo event in the United States in their eight years since debut. It was a fan-meeting in Chicago. Luckily, Chicago is only a four hour long, boring, cow-filled drive from St. Louis and it was May 8th — the Sunday before finals week. My sister and I have been to K-Pop concerts before (B.A.P and VIXX in Chicago in 2014 and BIGBANG in Newark in 2015). It was a trip worth making.

There are many traits unique to K-Pop. I’ve been to other concerts by American artists and I’ve never felt the same sense of unity among thousands of people that I have at K-Pop concerts. If you ever watch a live performance of any K-Pop song, at certain moments in the song the entire crowd yells/sings the same thing. Those are called "fan chants" and the Korean fans have them down.

It can be difficult for American fans to learn fan chants. Sometimes they are long sentences in Korean that are difficult to pronounce, let alone memorize and repeat. The B.A.P and VIXX crowds lacked a cohesive mindset to be able to chant in unison. That being said, the B.A.P fans blew their whistles in incredible synchronization. The BIGBANG concert was just too darn loud to hear the fans unless the members turned the mics to the crowd. These are concerts, though. The SHINee fan-meeting was completely different.

When I found out SHINee had a fan-meeting, I was excited and confused. What is a fan-meeting? I went into the event with low expectations. I knew SHINee was going to be great but I didn’t know what was going to happen. Before the event even started, I knew the crowd was going to be top-notch. Like most concerts, SHINee’s music was playing before the concert started. In particular, "Punch Drunk Love" and "Dream Girl" were played several times. During these songs, the fans perfectly executed the fan chants. When SHINee came out and spoke, the crowd was very respectful and thoughtful of each other. I was sitting about ten feet from the speaker, and I could still hear the crowd in unison. The feeling was amazing. So many people of many backgrounds all had something in common, and it felt like a sacred place. I knew this was as close to a K-Pop event in Korea as I was ever going to get.

SHINee impressed, and I left with the knowledge that K-Pop concerts and fan-meetings have the power to make thousands of people unite to support their favorite group.