Korea’s annual Hanteo Music Awards took place last weekend at Seoul’s Dongdaemun Design Plaza. In attendance was a star-studded lineup of K-pop groups including NCT Dream, Zerobaseone, Ateez, Aespa, and Kep1er.
While lucky fans were able to snag tickets to the show, it was an experience they definitely did not sign up for.
Organisers appeared unprepared to deal with the overwhelming number of fans. Poor space allocation and crowd management resulted in fans shoving and pushing one another, their actions shocking the artistes who had a clear view of the audience from the stage.
A number of X (formely known as Twitter) posts went viral after the show as well, with netizens claiming that someone in the audience had defecated on themselves during the show.
According to one recount from an audience member, an individual in the standing pit did a number two while surrounded by people. The smell was so “unbearable” it caused the crowd to jostle for fresh air.
Clips of the incident were circulated online, and one person could be heard shouting “Please don’t push me to the shit area!”. Another wrote: “I almost went crazy seeing a pile of poo on the floor, I wanted to shout [and tell the other fans] to stop pushing, because I didn’t want to step on the poo.”
If that wasn’t bad enough, another group of audience would later get into an altercation while in the standing pit.
The fight was said to have started because someone had shouted for Zerobaseone member Kim Jiwoong to leave the group. Fans of the group were angered by the remark, and started a physical fight with the person who made the comment.
Many artistes were shocked to see the altercation. Ateez members Kim Hong Joong and Song Min Gi were first to take notice of the situation and Hong Joong was seen alerting the still oblivious security guards.
In short, the whole event has been likened to big pile of steamin’…
Watch some of the idols’ shocked reactions in the X clips below.