Lee Seung-gi feeds lucky fan popiah at KL fan meeting

Every fan who’s watched their favourite oppa on a cooking show must have daydreamed of him feeding her the food he’s just cooked. For one lucky Lee Seung-gi fan, that dream ultimately came true at his recent fan meeting in Kuala Lumpur.

Let’s take it from the top and start from the first segment – no, make that the opening performance. At a little after 7pm on 30 November 2019, lights flooded the darkened stage as Seung-gi finally made his long-awaited appearance, crooning the ever popular ballad “Because You Are My Woman”.

After the song ended to thunderous applause, the singer-actor was then joined by emcee Owen Yap, who first made Seung-gi strike poses for his fans (as the crowd was not allowed to record videos or snap photos once the show’s segments begun) before they dove into the first segment, “Big Data: Update Talk”.

Three keywords were displayed on screen and photos or videos related to each would be displayed too. Staring off with the keyword “fan meeting”, the star was shown photos from his “Vagabond Voyage” fan meetings in other cities. The 32-year-old was then brought back to the last time he met with his Malaysian fans, which was seven years ago! Photos from the 2012 fan meeting were displayed, showing him having a good time with his fans.

Displayed on screen: one of the photos taken during Lee Seung-gi’s fan meeting in Malaysia seven years ago.

The second keyword was “Variety”, showcasing his talents in Korean variety shows. Following his completion of the mandatory military service in Korea in October 2017, he has been busy catching up in the entertainment world, rewarding his fans with various variety show appearances for the past two years.

The last keyword, “Vagabond”, referred of course to his latest drama of the same name that has recently finished its run. 

Regarding the drama, when asked if doing action stunts – which he did do a lot of – or acting in romantic scenes with co-star Bae Suzy was harder, he bashfully picked the latter. “It’s harder to act emotional scenes,” the award-winning actor explained, “I have to make you (viewers) feel the emotion, too.”

“Plus, there would be about 20 people in the room, scrutinising your acting. It was not easy to get the emotion,” he added, after emcee Owen jokingly brought up the fact that romantic scenes might show only the two characters onscreen but behind-the-scenes they were in fact surrounded by so many other people such as the filming crew.

Proceeding to the second segment, “Entertainment Corner”, a reel of his variety show stints was played, making the crowd laugh at his onscreen antics. All his hard work accumulated to his Daesang (Grand Prize) win at the 2018 SBS Entertainment Awards, and the video ended with him receiving the award as the crowd applauded him.

Following this, he had to prove his variety skills by playing a mini basketball game on his own. He then picked 10 lucky numbers to give away the 10 autographed posters as prizes to his fans.

Lee Seung-gi was happily reciprocating fans’ love, who love him so much, they were waving around heart-shaped light sticks during the fan meeting.

Finally, we’ve reached the third segment, “Date with Lee Seung-gi”. After changing from his all-black attire to a black and white ensemble, he re-appeared on stage. Adding an apron to his getup, he proceeded to prepare a “picnic meal” for his date. By that, we mean he cooked a simple snack and packed it up for one lucky fan to bring home. 

With Malaysia being the last country in his Asia tour, which has taken him to other cities such as Tokyo, Taipei, Manila, Bangkok and Singapore, he decided to make it a little more special by cooking a local food instead of Korean food like he did at the other cities. His local food of choice? Popiah (spring rolls).

His ingredients were a little questionable (“This is my style!” he insisted), not the typical stuffing seen in Malaysian popiah, but of course fans were more than willing to eat any meal the star conjured up.

And a certain Miss Peggy from Taiwan had the honour of getting to taste the Lee Seung-gi style popiah. Not only that, she was even fed a piece of it by Seung-gi himself! She got to take home not only the remaining popiah but also a Polaroid photo of the two of them, which he even kindly signed for her and wrote her name on it. Now that’s some good Daesang-level fan service.

After that, Seung-gi played a guessing game against 14 randomly picked fans, divided into two teams of seven. The screen in front of the players would display two different poses and each player had to pick the same pose as Seung-gi did in order to win. 

Team A ultimately won but it wasn’t just the players who had the chance to get close to the star, as he proceeded to walk offstage to the left seating zones (where the Team A members were seated) and took a photo at each zone, from VIP to CAT 2. This caused quite a frenzy as even fans on the right side of the hall were standing up and taking videos of the star as he walked past them. 

Lest anyone forgets, Lee Seung-gi is an award-winning singer who debuted at age 17 in 2004.

To wrap up the show, Seung-gi sang three more songs before bidding his fans goodbye. He first sang “Return” and followed it up with “Delete”, showing off his powerful vocals. For his last stage, fans got on their feet to dance along to the upbeat medley of “Smile Boy” and “Let’s Go On a Vacation”.

Fans who have missed Seung-gi’s singing will be happy to know that he is working on an album now. However, he said that he doesn’t want to release an album with just two or three songs, so he is working hard on recording more songs for the upcoming album. He admitted that he was still not sure of the album’s direction but added with a laugh that it will definitely not be anything under the dance genre – since he likes to claim that he is awful at dancing (though fans would disagree).

Whatever it is, Airens will no doubt be anticipating the talented Seung-gi’s singing comeback!