Day 1 + 2: MBC and Studio 2L

By Chevonne Law

Upon arrival, we were warmly greeted by our friendly tour guide, Mr Peter Yoon.

After 6 hours in the air, the 30 FMS students have finally landed in South Korea!

Our first stop was Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC), one of the leading South Korean television and radio network companies.

We visited MBC World, Korea’s first Hallyu Theme Park.

We were first treated with a hologram concert of popular K-pop group Big Bang, and it definitely started the tour off with a bang! They performed their hit songs “Bad Boy” and “Fantastic Baby”, and it really felt like an real-life concert with them singing right in front of our eyes. Afterwards, we were brought to another part of the theme park, where we could immerse ourselves in Virtual Reality (VR) drama sets, music shows and more.

Some of us even tried learning K-pop dances, with K-pop group members give us a dance lesson through the screen!

A few of us also tried experiencing being an anchorman/woman reporting the news with a teleprompter and cameras recording live.

We were also able to see costumes and props from history dramas which was really interesting!

Here we have Daina and Zirah posing with the the King in VR!

Always wanted to take cute couple photos with your favourite K-pop stars? Well, now you can! Many of us posed happily as we took themed photos of a popular Korean reality variety show with popular stars such as G-Dragon, feeling butterflies in our stomachs as though we were actually dating them!

Next, we visited a trick art section, where we could take 3D optical illusion photos. You could be the next member of a k-pop group attending a music show, or replace the female lead of popular k-drama ‘W’ and pose as the main character on the poster.

For our second stop, we visited Studio 2L, a professional post-production studio for feature films who has been established and operating One-Stop-System for VFX, Motion Graphics, Digital Cinema Mastering and Digital Intermediate. Studio 2L has done popular films such as ‘The Battleship Island” and “Master” and more.

The founder of Studio 2L, shared with us his reason behind entering the post-production industry, it was because he was originally from the music industry and he soon came to realise that staying as a guitarist was not practical in the long-term. He then tried venturing out into other industries, knowing that he has a creative eye, he decided on this path and start pursuing a career in visual effects by first taking off to Europe to study there before coming back home to start his company. One of his staff showed us examples of their works, with stills of the before and after of their editing, leaving us in awe of the “magic” they can do with colouring!

Did you know?

The 10,000₩ note has King Sejong on it, the creator of the Korean alphabet, whilst the note with the biggest value, 50,000₩, had Shim Saimdang, the first lady to appear on the Korean notes. She was the mother of the person on the 5,000₩ note, Yulgok Yi. He was a top scholar, and also took up the position of prime minister in his time!