The Slow, Befuddled Spiral of a Trilingual M.C., Part Three

Mr. Jun sent me a message on Kakao Talk telling me to both get a bow tie AND that he would give me one. I got one, just to be on the safe side.

On the morning of the performance, I received a message that I was expected at 11 a.m., three hours earlier than I had been told previously. My travel time to Itaewon would vary from an hour and ten to an hour and twenty, so basically I woke up running late.

As I got on the bus (first leg), I received another message: I had to register and complete some kind of online safety course before I could M.C. at the theater. The link didn’t work. I didn’t give it another thought, and it was not mentioned again.

A script arrived in my email. Apparently, I was now trilingual, because I was expected to read long passages in Korean and Spanish as well as English. My name was wrong (Andrew Trout) and it said that I was a TV personality. Wrong again. I was a classical radio announcer. (The correct information could be found in the short bio I sent.)

In Itaewon, I met three of the singers, all ladies - a Kenyan, a Honduran and a Peruvian. We went with Mr. Jun to the theater/theatre where they were given gift boxes of sugar-soaked ginseng and photographed repeatedly in their street clothes, in front of a sign for the concert. As ubiquitous as the sign/logo for the concert was in the concert hall and on Mr. Jun’s website, there were no posters in the neighborhood, no handbills, nor any other promotion, as far as I could tell.

They were going to miss lunch. They wanted to go back to the hotel and get their makeup and stage clothes. I escorted them. Along the way, we all discussed our various shades of confusion. None of them knew the purpose of the concert, whether there was a cash prize (there wasn’t, turns out), and why their group dinner the night before seemed to be something of a murky real estate pitch. The Peruvian had gotten sick and was ready to go home. They also felt it had been implied that stage outfits would be provided. They weren’t.

More singers streamed in, an Indian, two French, an Ecuadoran, another Peruvian, a Filipina, three Chinese and a Korean. Both sexes.

I met my cohost, Zafira, who was dressed in sapphire blue, as luck would have it, just like me. She had some basic English to go with my basic Korean, and we started editing our script (printed, finally) to make it a bit easier on ourselves, language-wise.

The dress rehearsal was supposed to begin at 2. It began at 4. I learned a few things rather quickly. Mr. Jun VEHEMENTLY objected to my referring to performers, insisting I call them singers. The last names of the PERFORMERS were not to be used. We were not allowed to say which of the PERFORMERS were living in Korea. We were to give the impression that all had traveled hours and hours for the show.

And we learned the PERFORMERS were listed in the wrong order, as were events in the script. So, the dress rehearsal had a lot of tedious repetition. “Just have fun,” Mr. Jun said. Everybody backstage was starting to realize since we had joined his circus, best to enjoy it. One of the French PERFORMERS, Maeve, told me she had participated in 2024 and everything was just as chaotic.

When rehearsal ended, there was no time for dinner. PERFORMERS scurried off en masse to E-Mart 24 to get convenience store booty.

The show started around 7:05, and you know what? The new scripts and list of performers were still incorrect. Zafira got a CIA earpiece so that audibles could be called, and she could signal to me with her left hand. It went pretty well. I don’t think the backstage chaos was too evident to the few hundred in attendance. And the PERFORMERS were all good at what they do — pretty ballads from the East Asians, fun and playful stuff from the Latin Americans, Indian pop from the Indian, and very Frenchy stuff from the French.

(The dream team)

The ending was my favorite: a group sing-along none had been told about. I know you’re thinking “Imagine,” but it wasn’t. It was “We Are the World,” which I am now convinced is the longest song ever recorded. Not one of the PERFORMERS knew it! So, a mad scramble for cellphones ensued, and they sang along with their screens.

Lots of pictures were taken afterwards. I met some Korean-Texans, and even an aging Korean male model handed me a business card...for no apparent reason. Dang it, I felt kind of famous there for a second.

And I started to wonder about the Itaewon tragedy of 2022, and how it sparked this concert, yet was never brought up during the show. But I realized, the music was expected to do the talking and the healing. There were a lot of good-hearted people in the hall that night. I’m grateful Mr. Jun let me join his circus. Whimsy, zaniness, madness and magic are all present in his “Hey guys, let’s put on a show” attitude. But I think the biggest component is his heart, trying to find a way to express the great loss of Halloween 2022 in Itaewon.

Thank you for reading. Your endurance is the stuff of legend.

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Hyperlinks to read Part 1 and Part 2.