Korea Encounters Hysterical Korean teens greet Cliff Richard in 1969
The Korea Times published this photo on Oct. 16, 1969, captioned, “Under a forest of welcome-pickets, many girl fans of Cliff Richard cheer the British singer at Kimpo Airport yesterday noon. The frantic young fans caused a little chaos when the visiting singer left the airport.” / Korea Times
By Matt VanVolkenburg
The hysterical fandom associated with Beatlemania made its first appearance in Korea on Oct. 15, 1969. On that afternoon, Cliff Richard arrived in Korea to play three concerts. Upon landing at Gimpo International Airport, a throng of 200 female fans dressed in “hanbok” greeted him waving signs. Among them were 100 girls belonging to the Cliff Richard Fan Club and the Cliff Richard Club, the latter of which claimed to be a “nation-wide organization”.
What shocked onlookers was the scene that followed. As he tried to leave the airport, the girls, who had been waiting for hours before his arrival, surged after him, and as The Korea Times described it, “He barely escaped from the frantic fans who swarmed toward him to shake hands or to get his signature.” Korean-language newspapers, on the other hand, described how riot police were dispatched to push back the screaming, sobbing, grabbing fans so Richard could leave the airport, shocking onlookers. Tales linger to this day of wayward lasses throwing their panties at Richard. After his escape, his car headed downtown followed by two buses full of singing “girl fans.”
As The Korea Times reported, Richard's first concert at Citizens' Hall the next evening “made some 3,500 fans, mostly teenagers, frantic with his sweet and dreamy voice.” Fans had arrived hours early to pack the venue. As it was only meant to hold 3,000, it was over capacity and a dozen or more police positioned themselves between the stage and the crowd. MBC's fledgling TV network broadcast what followed.
After a 14-song first set in which the quartet the Shadows backed him, Richard returned to the stage with a six-man Korean band led by Yo Dae-yong and three female singers. A university student cried out “Oh, Cliff, Oh, Cliff,” as he walked on stage, while another fell on her back screaming when he winked at her. By the time he was singing hits like “The Young Ones,” “hundreds of his young fans went almost mad,” and Richard could barely be heard. The “chaos” peaked when Richard threw flowers into the crowd and the girls fought over them, leaving one successful girl clinging to a flower, oblivious to her lost glasses and torn skirt.
A similar response greeted his concert the next night, the first of two evenings at the Ewha Womans University auditorium, where 3,000 “frantic” fans “swarmed” the venue.
The girls' behavior in Richard's presence, so different from the “gentle” response to previous visits by famous foreign singers like Pat Boone and Nat King Cole, drew a great deal of attention. The Korea Times argued that Richard's concerts “fully proved” that “Korean teenagers are no different than foreign youths, at least when it comes to popular songs.” For many, however, this was precisely the problem.
At a YMCA citizens' forum a month later, author Song Jeong-suk found neither Richard's songs nor the girls' behavior “unhealthy,” but Seoul National University psychology professor Han Tong-se disagreed. The professor, known for writing articles such as “Sexual Perversion in Korea,” declared, “A reaction like that by frantic teens is rather unnatural for Seoul,” and pushed for the rejection of a mindset of wanting to ??imitate anything Western.
Even a year-and-a-half later, when a columnist wanted to criticize the lack of “national self-consciousness” and ignorance of traditional Korean music among youth, he described how, when Richard sang at Citizens' Hall, the teen fans “rushed the stage and rained down a baptism of kisses on him,” leaving him surprised and unable to “endure the noise of the land of the morning calm.”
Matt VanVolkenburg has a master's degree in Korean studies from the University of Washington. He is the blogger behind populargusts.blogspot.kr
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