KCON festival draws big crowds to the Los Angeles Convention Center

KCON, described by the Los Angeles Times as the world's largest annual convention and music festival built around Korean culture, opened Friday in the South Hall of the Los Angeles Convention Center for a three-day run. Fans traveled from as far as Hawaii for the first day, taking in performances on two stages and lining up for free products from Korean beauty brands.

The festival's biggest footprint belonged to the Olive Young Festa market, where beauty brands ran interactive booths built around games and giveaways rather than straight sampling, including one skin care brand's "intern for a day" storyline and a block-stacking race for a chance to win a Manyo skin product. Winners and losers alike still left with free samples.

One line offered a skin analysis: a quick scan of the nose and cheeks that told attendees how oily, dry or sensitive their skin was and recommended a care routine, twenty-year-old Winter Ramilla of Hawaii said.

For sisters Sarah and Anna Draves, who drove up from San Diego, the appeal of Korean beauty brands went beyond the free products. "Their skin care prioritizes overall health, if that makes sense," Sarah said, while Anna added that the American products she'd tried in the past "just kind of ripped my skin off."

The sisters also came for performances by their favorite K-pop boy bands on the Music Den Stage, and Sarah said the appeal was not just the music but the whole performance; Anna added that watching fans trade photo cards and dance together was part of what made it feel like a community rather than just a show. Twenty-one-year-old Nataly Salazar put it more simply: "It's a little community."

KCON runs through the weekend at the Convention Center, and readers can follow other festival dates on the festival tracker or browse more of MusicSuey's pop coverage.