Trot singer Lim Young-woong announces more concerts for December

Trot singer Lim Young-woong ended his national tour "Im Hero" with a Seoul concert on Sunday at southern Seoul's KSPO Dome. Lim also announced he will hold encore concerts in December, including one at western Seoul's Gocheok Sky Dome. This makes ..

Trot singer Lim Young-woong performs during the final concert of his national tour "Im Hero" on Aug. 14 at southern Seoul’s KSPO Dome. [MULGOGI MUSIC]

Trot singer Lim Young-woong ended his national tour “Im Hero” with a Seoul concert on Sunday at southern Seoul’s KSPO Dome.

Lim also announced he will hold encore concerts in December, including one at western Seoul’s Gocheok Sky Dome. This makes him the first trot singer to perform at Gocheok, one of Korea’s largest venues, that is best known for K-pop idol groups’ concerts.

Trot is a genre of music popular among middle-aged and older Koreans. Although the genre is not seeing much international popularity, it is commercially successful among older local audiences.

Lim kicked off his “Im Hero” tour in May, starting in Goyang, Gyeonggi and touring cities across the nation like Changwon, Gwangju, Daejeon, Incheon and Daegu. His Seoul concerts over the weekend from Aug. 12 to 14, held at the KSPO Dome in southern Seoul’s Songpa District were the grand finale.

Selling out of all tickets at the KSPO Dome was a major milestone for Lim, as the large venue is dubbed a “holy ground of K-pop.”

“Today is the last day of my national tour,” Lim told the audience during Sunday’s final concert. “This tour started in spring when flowers were starting to bloom. Now, summer is passing us by. I want to use this moment to thank you all. I owe [the tour’s] success to all of you.”

Lim performs during the final concert of his national tour "Im Hero" on Aug. 14. [MULGOGI MUSIC]

Lim has been a trot sensation since he won TV Chosun’s hit audition show “Mr. Trot” in 2020, which revived the music genre in Korea. Since winning, Lim has achieved record-breaking accomplishments. In 2021, he won first place on a major television music show; the first for a trot song in 16 years. His first full-length album “Im Hero,” which dropped in May, sold over 1.1 million copies in the first week fo its release.

This was the highest CD sales number ever recorded by a Korean solo artist, breaking the previous record set in 2021 by Baekhyun of Exo, a popular K-pop boy band. Lim is also one of the most popular figures on television and in advertisements.

The concert saw audience members from eight-years-old to elderly fans in their 90s who gathered to see the 31-year-old. The Seoul concerts were also livestreamed for fans who couldn’t get their hands on tickets.

“I actually tried to get a ticket myself and went online,” Lim said. “It said there were more than 600,000 people waiting, and I was later told that number went up to 810,000. [The website] told me to wait over 153 hours!”

Lim performs during the final concert of his national tour "Im Hero" on Aug. 14. [MULGOGI MUSIC]

For three hours, Lim and a live band entertained the crowd with his hits from his first album, as well as other trot numbers he popularized while competing on “Mr. Trot.”

Lim also added words of consolation for those affected by heavy rains and flooding that swept Korea last week.

During Sunday’s concert, Lim surprised fans by announcing his plans for encore concerts in December. They will be held at the Busan Exhibition and Convention Center (Bexco) in Busan and Gocheok Sky Dome in western Seoul, which can house an audience of approximately 20,000 people.

BY HALEY YANG [yang.hyunjoo@joongang.co.kr]