Two years and four months after their ‘Ode to You’ World Tour came to a premature end in 2019 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, K-pop band Seventeen returned to the stage, much to the delight of their dedicated fandom, the CARATs. The 13-member band kicked off their Be The Sun world tour at the Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul on Saturday with a concert spanning almost three hours.
The K-pop stage-breakers made their grand return to the concert stage with two sold-out shows of ‘BE THE SUN – Seoul’, which are set to be the largest concert in the city with a live audience since the onset of the pandemic. Day 1 on June 25 was characterised by energetic performances, dazzling costumes and mindblowing stages that Seventeen is known for.
The members talked about missing the experience of performing on stage for so long. “We have really missed you,” the members said while addressing the CARATs after their opening act. They went on to perform songs like March, HIT, Rock With You and Boom Boom in black and gold outfits.
The concert opened with the lead single ‘HOT’ from their latest release Face the Sun, an album which rendered SEVENTEEN one of the only two artists in K-pop history alongside BTS to surpass the 2 million mark for first-week album sales. The show will also included performances of tracks that have never been presented before on stage, as well as fan favorites from the three units (Vocal, Performance, Hip-Hop units) that together complete SEVENTEEN. The performance unit is made of HOSHI, JUN, THE 8, DINO, vocal unit has WOOZI, JEONGHAN, JOSHUA, DK, SEUNGKWAN and the hip hop unit comprises of S.COUPS, WONWOO, MINGYU, and VERNON.
A stage set that visualizes the Sun – a key motif that represents SEVENTEEN’s aspiration to reach new heights, a 3-tiered LED screen and diverse transitions in the set arrangement have been incorporated into the show.
Fans from across the world are also taking part in ‘BE THE SUN – Seoul’ through a livestream of the concert, enabled by multi-view technology, alongside subtitles provided in English, Japan and Chinese.
After two nights in Seoul, the group will be heading to cities like Vancouver, Seattle, Oakland, LA, Houston among others in the US, Jakarta, Bangkok, Manila, Singapore in Southeast Asia and Osaka, Tokyo, Aichi in Japan, to make up a total of 27 shows in 20 cities around the world.
