Korea-UAE Festival featuring K-pop and K-content to kick off online from March 31

K-pop girl group MAMAMOO / Courtesy of RBW

By Park Han-sol

An official poster for the Korea-UAE Festival / Courtesy of KOCCA

The Korea-United Arab Emirates Festival featuring K-pop stars and diverse Korean entertainment offerings is being held online from March 31 to April 2, in celebration of the 2020-2021 Korea-UAE Cultural Dialogue.

The three-day cultural event, co-hosted by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the UAE's Ministry of Culture and Youth, will be divided into two parts ― K-pop Festival and K-Content Festival ― under the theme of “Converging Cultures.”

The K-pop festival will host performances of six K-pop acts ― MAMAMOO, B.I.G, ASTRO, NCT DREAM, THE BOYZ and aespa ― as well as Emirati singer Fatima Al Hashmi. Fans in the Middle Eastern country are invited to virtually communicate with members of ASTRO and aespa during the event.

The online concert will be streamed at midnight (7 p.m. UAE time), April 2, via the official YouTube channel of the Korean Cultural Center in the UAE, SBS Medianet's The K-POP and Naver's V Live.

The K-Content Festival, slated for March 31 and April 1, will present a range of Korean entertainment from cartoons, games to immersive technology in addition to food and beauty products through the UAE's social media influencers and virtual business meetings.

The gaming YouTuber Basharkk will play and review Korean games, while hikuri, a channel which aims to inform its Middle Eastern subscribers of different aspects of Korean culture, will show how to cook tteokbokki (stir-friend spicy rice cakes). Beauty guru jannahkorea, with more than 1 million followers, will also put on makeup in the style featured in the popular webcomic “True Beauty.”

Through online group seminars and private consulting, the event will arrange business meetings as well between 24 experts and buyers from the Arab nation and 28 Korean companies in the comics, games and immersive technology sectors. The event aims to provide a better understanding of the local content market and establish a bridgehead in the Middle Eastern region through the formation of K-content networks.

“The Korea-UAE Festival will serve as an event that realizes the true cultural convergence between the two countries through K-content,” Kim Young-jun, president of the event's co-organizer Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA), said in a statement.