Lotte Duty Free Goes Ahead with This Weekend’s Family Festival Event with Lee Min Ho and Park Shin Hye

The Sewol ferry sinking tragedy in South Korea is undoubtedly the center of news coverage and public concern in South Korea. Since last Wednesday, all networks have cancelled their variety show and drama broadcasts and that preemption extended into the weekend programs as well. Music events were also scuttled such as comeback showcases and fan meetings and anything that could be rescheduled for a later date got pushed back due to a combination of somber concern in the aftermath of the tragedy and the entertainers not being in the mood to be merry right now. Of course life goes on and the entertainment shows will all return one by one likely this week, but over the weekend one scheduled event wasn’t rescheduled and it has caused a tiny bit of chatter about it. Lotte Duty Free had scheduled a Family Festival three day fanmeeting event and this weekend’s guests were Lotte spokespersons Park Shin Hye and Lee Min Ho. This event had already been planned well in advance and reportedly over ten thousand attendees were coming from overseas and had already booked flights and hotel rooms. After conferring with Park Shin Hye and Lee Min Ho, Lotte decided cancelling it outright would be hard on the attendees who had spent time and money on coming so a decision was made to go ahead with the first event date while the second and third event dates have been cancelled. The first event was also downsized down to one hour long only and the program changed from singing and dancing performances to a more solemn prayer session leading to an the two stars being interviewed and having an answer and chat session with fans. I think the organizers tried their best to handle this event while Lee Min Ho and Park Shin Hye were true professionals in attending despite the whole nation residing in a state of mourning.

Last week Lotte also released wallpapers featuring this year’s star line up so here are the ones for Park Shin Hye, Lee Min Ho, Jang Geun Seok, and Kim Hyun Joong.