.jpg) Singer Kim Jang-hoon reacts as he sets foot on Dokdo Island for his live concert Tuesday. / Yonhap |
Singer Kim Jang-hoon held a live concert in front of several hundreds of spectators on the tiny, rocky easternmost Dokdo Island, Tuesday, the first of its kind.
The singer and some 200 supporters and students from a non-governmental organization, the Voluntary Agency Network of Korea (VANK), left Gangneung Port on March 1 _ South Korea’s Independence Movement day.
They had originally planned to leave Monday, but had to postpone it one day due to the bad weather.
``I’m calm right now, but I tend to get emotional as time goes by,’’ Kim said after arriving on the island.
Kim and his team arrived around 1: 30 p.m. and held the concert around 3 p.m.
The 43-year-old made a name for himself not only as a singer, but also as an avid promoter for Dokdo; islets that have been the crux of a territorial dispute between Korea and Japan.
He has been promoting Dokdo as South Korea’s territory for the past couple of years, advertising the issue in the United States media, including The New York Times.
Before announcing Monday that the plan for the concert was postponed, he expressed enthusiasm in developing this concert into an international festival, the East Sea Festival, in the near future.
``My dream is to promote the festival as one of the biggest music festivals in the world,’’ he told reporters.
Considering the sensitivity of the Dokdo issue in political and diplomatic terms, the singer added that he was going for a more cultural approach and hoped that the music festival will be able to invite foreign artists from around the world to participate.
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