The Korean Student Association put on their annual K-Night event for a sold-out audience of 270 students, families and alumni on Jan. 31.
K-Night is held to celebrate and educate about an aspect of Korean culture to many people of all ages and backgrounds. This year’s theme was “Game On,” focusing on Korean sports culture.
“When it comes to sports, people think that, y’know, sports is the same in every culture, but I think with Korea, it really comes with a sense of pride and how proud we are as Koreans,” Saan Chang said, KSA president and lead organizer of the event. “I wanted to bring that kind of vibe and bring that kind of culture to OSU.”
The night began with a drum performance of a popular Korean World Cup song, during which the audience clapped and chanted along, followed by the Korean national anthem.
Chang then took the stage and introduced the event in both English and Korean.
The first major performance was a live demonstration of Taekwondo, a Korean martial art, from the American Sports Academy. The performance featured a large group of young students who broke boards, spun nunchucks and showed off their skills, all to the rhythm of music.
The performance concluded with the students bouncing off of their instructor’s leg to kick the head off of a flower in mid air, and a table of attendees winning a prize for cheering the loudest.
Between the events, the KSA emcees talked about elements of Korean sports culture, taught the audience a Korean sports chant and invited guests to come on stage to play mini-games for raffle tickets and medals.
The first mini-game was board breaking, where attendees were challenged to give their loudest yell and break a board in two even halves.
The second was called “gimme-gimme,” a scavenger hunt where contestants were told an item to grab, like a phone or a hat, and bring it back to the stage.
Throughout the event, attendees got to enjoy a selection of Korean food provided by the KSA. The full menu included odentang, a Korean fish cake soup, and tteokbokki, rice cakes simmered in gochujang-based sauce.
According to Flora Joo, the KSA event coordinator and food lead for K-Night, this menu was specially made in line with the sports theme.
“We were trying to get Korean food that they usually sell at sports events, like (a) street food kind of thing,” Joo said.
The emcees took the stage again to teach the audience about the importance of cheerleading and dance during sports events in Korea, explaining how sometimes the halftime shows are more impressive than the games.
This led into the next performance, a live dance by Oregon State University’s K-Pop dance team, Anomaly.
Anomaly entertained the audience with choreography and coordination that kept attendees clapping along to their rhythm. The group performed to a variety of pop songs, ending with a dance to the song “Soda Pop” from the movie K-Pop Demon Hunters.
During the final song, the KSA officers and interns surprised the audience by joining Anomaly on stage and dancing with them.
Following the performance, competitors were challenged to hold a planking position for as long as possible as the audience cheered, with the winner taking home raffle tickets and a medal after holding an eight-minute plank.
The event concluded with a raffle for a variety of prizes and some final words from Chang, thanking attendees for coming and everyone who helped set up and run the event.
Newton Babphavong, an attendee and board member of the Lao student association, expressed the importance of events like K-night for bringing people together.
“Events like this… really help (people) get to know each other better, you know?”
Students who are interested in more of KSA’s events should keep an eye on OSU’s events calendar or follow the KSA on Instagram @osu_ksa.
