Performing at the Olympic Gymnastics Arena in Seoul is the dream of all K-pop groups, but how fast groups get to accomplish this greatly differs from artist to artist.

In the world of K-pop one of the biggest milestones in a group’s career obtaining opportunity to perform at Seoul’s Olympic Gymnastics Arena as it is an indication of the artist’s success and popularity.

While for some groups this milestone has taken years of dedication and an abundance of hit singles, other groups have gotten the opportunity to perform at the arena at a much faster rate.

Though the rate at which groups got the opportunity to perform on that stage does not indicate superiority over other groups, it is still interesting to see how long it took some of K-pop’s most iconic groups to perform on that stage.

Girls’ Generation (2011): 4 Years

The road to success for Girls’ Generation has never been an easy one. Despite now being South Korea’s number one girl group, it took the group a lot of effort to achieve this feat. Having debuted back in August of 2007, the girls did not get the opportunity to headline at the arena until 2011 during their Girl’s Generation Tour.

SHINee (2011): 3 Years

Following in the steps of their seniors, SHINee carefully built their popularity with a series of hit singles such as “Replay”, “Ring Ding Dong” and “Lucifer”  and were able to perform at the Olympic Arena in 2011 as part of their SHINee WORLD tour that started off with two sold out shows in Japan.

2NE1 (2012): 3 Years

YG‘s iconic girl group, 2NE1, kicked off their New Evolution Global Tour at the Olympic Gymnastic Arena in 2012. This marked the first time the girls headlined at the arena with an audience of 20,000 since their debut in 2009.

BEAST (2012): 3 years

The boys of BEAST also took their time to perform at the Olympic Arena as the group debuted in 2009 and did not perform there until 2012 for the opening stage to their Beautiful Show tour.

INFINITE (2013): 3 years

INFINITE is a group that had to really make their way to the top as they came from a small company and were not as well known to begin. Their hard work finally came to fruition as they performed at the Olympic Arena in 2013 for their 1st world tour, “One Great Step.”

EXO (2014): 2 years

EXO is one of SM’s few groups to perform at Olympic Arena in less than the standard 3-4 years taken by the majority of other groups. The group had an impressive number of 42,174 attendees at the venue for their EXO from Exoplanet #1 – The Lost Planet tour.

BIGBANG (2006): 0 Years

Unlike most groups that debuted back in the early 2000’s and slowly built their fandom before performing at the Olympic Gymnastics Arena, BIGBANG went straight for the kill and performed to an audience of 12,000 on December 30, 2006. Considering the group had only debuted back in August, the 5 month period was an astounding feat for a rookie group.

iKON (2016): 0 years

Another one of YG‘s groups that made an impressive feat by quickly performing at Olympic Stadium is iKoN. The group debuted in September of 2015 and performed at the Olympic Arena on January 30th, 2016 for their Koncert 2016: Showtime Tour. The group even beat out BIGBANG’s record of 6 months by performing there in a little less than 5 months.

Source: Koreaboo

YG Entertainment is one of Korea’s most successful agencies, and the agency’s cafeteria is no different. The company arguably has the most famous cafeteria amongst all agencies.

YG Entertainment has its own in-house cafeteria in their building at Hapjeong, western Seoul. Obviously, the cafeteria isn’t open to the public, but rumors about its delicious meals have been rampant amongst the general public.

The menu is mainly focused on Korean food and two cooks, and a nutritionist prepares the weekly menu. The cafeteria is open to the employees and artists of the agency, and they serve lunch, dinner and late-night meals until 3:00 AM.

The area is not large but can hold up to around 20 people at any given moment. Another fun fact about the cafeteria is that it is entirely free for employees and artists.

“Everything served here is free and no other Korean entertainment company has such a cafeteria as far as I know”

– YG Entertainment Employee

Sandara Park is a frequent visitor of the cafeteria and vouched for the delicious taste of the cafeteria’s food.

On a tweet made on Dara’s personal account, she posted a picture of herself at the cafeteria with the following caption:

콘서트 준비로 바빠도 밥은 잘 챙겨먹어야죠^_^ 랙잭이들도 다들 밥 잘 챙겨먹고있죠?! 점심시간에 식당은 북적북적~ 줄이 너무 길어요~ 하지만 맛있는 밥을위해서라면~ >.< pic.twitter.com/7C1neetMvI

— Sandara Park (@krungy21) February 11, 2014

Besides Dara, many other YG artists such as G-Dragon, Sean Ro, Yoo Byungjae, Se7en, PSY, and T.O.P have been spotted eating there.

PSY and G-Dragon actually ate at the cafeteria with Justin Bieber when Justin Bieber visited Korea in October 2013. Justin Bieber, along with his concert staff ate the meals and claimed to have loved the food.

BIGBANG‘s T.O.P was previously criticized for being too honest and saying that the food wasn’t that great on “Happy Together.” However, he cleared up the accusations on BIGBANG’s episode of “Radio Star.”

T.O.P said he only said that because everyone kept raving about the cafeteria so he thought it’d be funny to say it wasn’t good.

Lee Jong Suk, an actor part of YG Entertainment also was criticized for saying the food wasn’t as good as he thought it would be. He did praise the spicy, stir-fried pork, though.

Even though there were some artists that said it wasn’t that good, the majority of people praised the Korean food served at the cafeteria.

WINNER‘s Seunghoon and Jinwoo can be seen enjoying the food immensely.

G-Dragon has a lot of catching up to do because Daesung ate everything else but his soup.

Check out actual photos of the many different Korean dishes the cafeteria prepared right below!

Source: Instiz Korea Times via Koreaboo