Fan Event For Girl's Day Member Hyeri Cancelled After Organizers Deem Venue Unsafe Due To Overcrowding
A fan event for Girl's Day member Hyeri was cancelled earlier this week due to overcrowding in the venue.
After several major accidents rocked the Korean entertainment industry this year, officials seem to finally be taking safety concerns seriously.
On November 23, a fan event for Lee Hyeri, the youngest member of K-Pop girl group Girl's Day, was cancelled after officials determined the venue was too crowded to safely proceed.
According to a report by news outlet Dispatch, a fan signing event connected to Hyeri's endorsement campaign for Hungry App, a Korean smartphone application similar to Seamless or GrubHub that allows users to order food from a variety of nearby restaurants, was cancelled due to overcrowding.
The event, which was organized in conjunction with the ongoing G-Star 2014 summit at Busan's BEXCO events center, was called off within the first three minutes when a large number of fans reportedly surged into the venue at the same time. Organizers for the event said that the decision to cancel the fan meeting came when it became clear the safety of the attendees was at risk.
Immediately following the cancellation, Hyeri took to Instagram to extend her apologies. "I hope no one is hurt," she wrote as a caption to a disappointed selfie taken in the car as she left BEXCO. "Thank you and sorry." The 20-year-old singer also included the hashtag "saddened" to express her disappointment at how the event turned out.
The cancellation of the fan signing comes after growing concerns over safety measures in South Korea, particularly when celebrities and their fans are concerned. On October 17, sixteen fans were killed during a 4Minute performance when they fell down a ventilation shaft after the grate they had been standing on collapsed. In September, two members of the group Ladies' Code were killed in a traffic accident that police later revealed was caused by their manager's careless driving.
The South Korean public has been especially concerned with safety issues since a Jeju Island-bound ferry carrying more than 400 high school students on a class trip capsized, killing 304 of the passengers. It was soon revealed that the students had not received proper instructions on what to do in the event of an accident.
