Asia: McCartney Arrives, BTS Sells Out Singapore, IZ*One Petitioned

Paul McCartney, accompanied by his wife Nancy Shevell, arrived in Tokyo Oct. 29 to play four concerts in Japan as part of McCartney’s “Freshen Up” world tour. Local media reported that about 500 fans showed up to greet him at Haneda Airport. 

Among the concerts is one at the capital’s main sumo arena, the Ryogoku Kokugikan, and another at Nagoya Dome, which will be McCartney’s first concert ever in Nagoya, the largest city in central Japan. McCartney last played in Japan 18 months ago. It is his seventh tour of the archipelago.

By coincidence, a week before he arrived, Japan’s Supreme Court handed down a ruling in relation to McCartney’s first-ever visit to Japan as a member of the Beatles in 1966. A group of Beatles fans, who, coincidentally, happen to be from Nagoya, has for several years now been trying to get security footage of the band’s performance at Budokan Arena in Tokyo released publicly, but the National Police Agency has repeatedly refused, and two lower courts have decided for the police.

The footage is reported to be 35 minutes in length, and the police have said they would only release it if the faces of everyone in the audience and on stage except the Beatles could be masked for privacy purposes. The plaintiffs, however, have insisted that the film be released uncensored, pointing out that it would be impossible to identify anyone in the film more than 50 years after it was shot.

However, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court rulings and rejected the plaintiffs’ argument. The plaintiffs’ lawyer was quoted by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper as saying, “[The film] is a document that should be made available from a historical standpoint.”

The footage is supposedly of the final concert given July 2. No other visual document was made of the show. Toru Omura, who has written books about the Beatles’ 1996 Japan tour, which comprised five shows, told the Asahi, “The final concert given on July 2 was apparently electrifying. If confirmation can be made of the existence of footage from that day, there would be huge excitement.”

A new all-female Korean vocal group, IZ*ONE, made its debut Oct. 29 by releasing an album and a single simultaneously. 

As is always the case with new K-pop groups, they are also set to appear on various TV music shows to promote their wares and themselves. However, a petition has been circulating on the Internet to ban the group from appearing on South Korea’s public television channel, KBS, specifically its popular music show, “Music Bank.”

According to Soompi News, the petition started on Oct. 28 on a website called Blue House. The author of the petition points out that “IZ*ONE is a project of Produce 48,” which means it was created as a cooperative venture between Mnet and AKB48. Mnet is a South Korean pay TV channel that specializes in music and which is associated with the powerful entertainment company CJ E&M. AKB48 is the very popular Japanese female Idol collective that has spawned a dozen or so others female idol collectives both in Japan and in other Asian countries.

AKB48 was created by veteran music producer Yasushi Akimoto, who many Koreans say is sympathetic to right-wing ideology in Japan. Many Japanese reactionaries hold negative opinions about Koreans and disagree with their versions of what happened between the two countries during World War II, when Korea was a colony of Japan. The author says that IZ*ONE, which contains three members of AKB48, “should not appear on a national television channel that receives license fees from the public.” As of 2 p.m. on Oct. 29, the petition had 12,000 signatures. At the same time, Soompi reports that other petitions are being circulated in support of IZ*ONE. 

Another joint venture in South Korea is being met with no resistance whatsoever. According to the Yonhap News Service, K-pop’s biggest group internationally at the moment, BTS, will stage a joint performance with American pop singer-songwriter Charlie Puth at the 2018 MGA music awards on Nov. 6 at the Namdong Gymnasium in Incheon, just west of Seoul. Puth is playing two concerts in South Korea Nov. 7-8. Apparently, the two artists have publicly admired each other on social media. 

As predicted, tickets for BTS’ Singapore concert in January sold out within four hours of being made available. And while the police were very thorough in trying to prevent unauthorized sales to third-party resellers and scalpers, a lot of fans have since been shelling out huge sums of money to them for tickets they couldn’t get through regular channels.

Bandwagon.asia reports that BTS tickets on the third-party site StubHub have been going for as high as S$12,888 ($9,300). The original price for a Category 1 ticket was S$348. It’s possible, according to Bandwagon, that scalper tickets may be voided and additional tickets will be put on sale. The concert takes place at the National Stadium Jan. 19.

In related news, Asiaone.com has reported that tickets for Ed Sheeran’s National Stadium concert set for April 26 next year will have the names of the purchaser printed on them to prevent scalping. And if someone is buying a ticket for someone else, they must bring an authorized letter from that person, whose name will then be printed on the ticket. A representative of the concert organizer told media that a person can buy more tickets for family and friends, but those tickets will have that person’s name printed on them and so must accompany the other ticketholders to the concert, where they will be checked at the door.

Reportedly, these measures were suggested by Sheeran himself, who is famously against scalping. He has been known to ask organizers to cancel tickets sold to scalpers, as well as tickets sold on third-party sites. The last time Sheeran played Singapore, scalped tickets were selling for 50 times their face value.