At some Korean festivals, paper now waits in line

Paper markers are used as stand-ins for real queues, but not everyone is amused

At some festivals in South Korea this fall, a piece of paper can apparently do the waiting for you.

A trail of A4-sized sheets of paper, each taped to the pavement, stretched for hundreds of meters along a sidewalk leading to the entrance of the Busan International Rock Festival on Friday, the first day of the three-day event.

The sheets were marked with dates, phone numbers, the number of people in each group and notes indicating that the spots had been claimed.

A similar scene unfolded in Incheon, where the Korea-Japan music festival XMF was held at an outdoor venue at Paradise City over the weekend.

The paper markers even made their way to a military festival.

At this year’s Ground Forces Festival, an annual military culture festival hosted by the Republic of Korea Army, paper placeholders lined parts of the sidewalk, drawing complaints from pedestrians, news reports said.

The festival kicked off Thursday for a five-day run at the Gyeryongdae military airfield in South Chungcheong Province, featuring military equipment displays, hands-on activities and performances by soldiers.

Hundreds of K-pop fans from Korea and abroad flocked to the event to watch performances by members of idol groups currently serving in the military.

These makeshift queues were organized by fans themselves as an alternative to waiting overnight, which event organizers had prohibited for safety reasons.

"The organizers didn’t allow us to line up overnight, but they did allow us to set up our own queue outside," Lee So-jeong, who visited the military festival to see K-pop star Kang Daniel, who started his military service in February, told The Korea Herald.

"Everyone came back to the spot they had marked with their own piece of paper and lined up again before entry. There was no cutting in line or anything like that."

Some see the trend as K-pop fandom’s informal queuing culture making its way to the broader festival scene.

Fans say paper queues have long been common at some K-pop events, particularly those where entry is on a first-come, first-served basis.

For paper queues, one or two fans may serve as unofficial line managers, assigning numbers and keeping track of the order so others can return to their places later.

The practice has drawn criticism for causing disruption in public spaces.

"Some fans were even complaining that people had stepped on their paper, when they were the ones taking over a public walkway in the first place. They don’t even remove all the paper afterward. It creates more trash and wastes labor on cleanup. Something needs to be done before this practice spreads further," one online user wrote.