HÀ NỘI — Four young people and 15 bands will compete at the K-pop World Festival’s country round at the Việt Nam Youth Academy (VYA) tomorrow.

The winner of the contest will represent Việt Nam at the K-pop World Festival 2018 in Changwon, South Korea this September.

The contest’s regional preliminaries are held annually in Việt Nam. The festival organisers will set up a new band from the winners, which will be trained by Vietnamese and Korean professionals before attending the K-Pop World’s final round. It is the 8th K-pop World contest to be held in Changwon, dedicated to all those K-pop lovers around the world.

"This is the first time I’ve joined K-pop fans in Việt Nam," said Park Hy-jin, director of Korean Cultural Centre in Hà Nội. "I see such passion from the Vietnamese to perform on stage at the semi-final round."

The contest is held by the centre from May 10 to 13, as a part of the K-pop Festival in Việt Nam, which also includes a K-pop exhibition showing collections and productions by Vietnamese fans from K-pop clubs. The exhibition was held from May 10-12 at Korean Cultural Centre.

A K-pop fair and ’cooking with idols’ event will take place from 1pm to 6pm at VYA, No3 Chùa Láng Street to celebrate the contest.

Vietnamese singer Trúc Nhân and Korean b-boy Gamblerz will perform at the final night on Sunday. Trúc Nhân is a talented singer who emerged from first season of The Voice of Việt Nam in 2012. Nhân is in the top 8 at the contest and has several hits such as Bốn Chữ Lắm (Only Four Words) and Thật Bất Ngờ (It’s Very Surprising).

Gamblerz is best known for winning first place at Battle of the Year in 2004-09, which is one of the four biggest contests in the world for B-boy break dancers. Gamblerz was known simply as Gambler, before founding members Music, Sebin, Darkness and Laser left to form another crew also titled Gambler; his crew was then renamed Gamblerz.

The eight-member set will treat local audiences to extravagant, international-standard performances throughout the night.

Last year, dance troupe Oops Crew was the Vietnamese representative to attend the final round in Korea. They won the Audience’s Choice award. — VNS