My Insane Korea K-Pop Haul!
May. 28th, 2025 10:43 pmRight, finally, here's my promised post with the haul from my Korea trip! The K-pop haul, at least--I bought some snacks and some other random things beside this, but this is the centrepiece of my trip's haul. Twenty-two albums in all (including three platform version albums) plus one season's greetings. But first, let me tie up some loose ends regarding the rest of my trip.
I actually did get to check the last item off my Korea bucket list before leaving--eating ramyeon! In Incheon Airport, I found this restaurant in the food court that sold ramyeon, which I had some of for my breakfast/brunch/first lunch/time zones are weird. It was really good, albeit so spicy I had to eat it slowly and so I couldn't finish it before we would miss our flight.
We had an extra-long day on the 22nd, and we even saw two sunrises! Since we were flying "back in time", so to speak, and hit early morning darkness somewhere over the Pacific. In total the day lasted about 36 hours or even a bit more! So we left Korea at 11AM and arrived back in Missouri at 6PM, despite travelling for most of 24 hours in there, including a layover in San Francisco where my mum and I split an almost-twenty-dollar airport quesadilla.
I watched Wicked on the plane ride back! I thought it was pretty good. Not the best movie of all time, but I can see why people like it so much. Ariana Grande and Cynthia Ervo have really great voices that meld well! Unfortunately I did sleep through the part of the movie with "Popular" in it, though, and that was the only song I knew from Wicked because Ariana Grande did that remake-type song of it back in 2013 or so, which is so full-circle!
And so now the past few days have been me unpacking my trip stuff and college stuff and trying to organize it all, and also dealing with jet lag. Let me tell you, people, waking up at 5AM and not being able to get back to sleep is hellish.
But anyways, not for the haul! Here's the photo:
My main haul was Verivery: from left to right, on the top row, we have:
I actually did get to check the last item off my Korea bucket list before leaving--eating ramyeon! In Incheon Airport, I found this restaurant in the food court that sold ramyeon, which I had some of for my breakfast/brunch/first lunch/time zones are weird. It was really good, albeit so spicy I had to eat it slowly and so I couldn't finish it before we would miss our flight.
We had an extra-long day on the 22nd, and we even saw two sunrises! Since we were flying "back in time", so to speak, and hit early morning darkness somewhere over the Pacific. In total the day lasted about 36 hours or even a bit more! So we left Korea at 11AM and arrived back in Missouri at 6PM, despite travelling for most of 24 hours in there, including a layover in San Francisco where my mum and I split an almost-twenty-dollar airport quesadilla.
I watched Wicked on the plane ride back! I thought it was pretty good. Not the best movie of all time, but I can see why people like it so much. Ariana Grande and Cynthia Ervo have really great voices that meld well! Unfortunately I did sleep through the part of the movie with "Popular" in it, though, and that was the only song I knew from Wicked because Ariana Grande did that remake-type song of it back in 2013 or so, which is so full-circle!
And so now the past few days have been me unpacking my trip stuff and college stuff and trying to organize it all, and also dealing with jet lag. Let me tell you, people, waking up at 5AM and not being able to get back to sleep is hellish.
But anyways, not for the haul! Here's the photo:
My main haul was Verivery: from left to right, on the top row, we have:
- Liminality EP:Love - Over version
- my favourite aesthetic-wise, I think
- Liminality EP:Love - Shy version
- this version, inside the sleeve, actually has a cardboard texture on the photobook to match the paper bags that they wear in the photobook! Which is really cool, although the paper bag thing probably sounds really strange if you don't know what I'm talking about with the photobook.
- Face Me - official version
- this is one of my favourite albums from them so I'm excited to finally have the physical version! It also includes a lenticular photocard, which is where pictures are printed on triangles so you see a different picture depending on the angle you look at it from--look it up if you don't understand because I don't know how else to exlpain it! LOL
- Face You - official/normal version
- Liminality EP:Dream - Plan version
- I already have the Play version, which is the other version.
- Veri-Chill - official/normal version
- I can't believe I don't already have this one! This is the coolest, I think--the photos are all really good, and some of them have glitch effects that are totally epic. Plus, there are photocards of the members with transparent backgrounds! I don't know why, but that's pretty cool. This album also makes me nostalgic because this is the first Verivery album where I clearly remember the hype of the buildup, teasers, etc. I was in a KakaoTalk group chat for Verrers (Verivery fans) back at the time and we were all super excited! I wish I could find my old account and see that chat again.
- Liminality EP:Love - platform version (Over concept version)
- This is my first platform album! Basically, for people who don't know what platform albums are, it includes a QR to download the music (instead of a CD), usually through some crappy app instead of something like iTunes. Besides that, it might have a little booklet, but it's mostly just photocards--made so people can collect photocards without generating as much waste through getting a lot of identical CDs, photobooks, posters, etc. In return these are significantly cheaper than normal versions.
- TWS - Sparkling Blue - some platform version
- I really thought this would have a CD--it's bigger than a CD and the girl working the counter in the store thought it would. Knowing that, I would've bought the official version, especially since me buying the rest of the album besides the one song I already had on iTunes--because if I buy an album, I want the music--cost a good chunk of the difference between this version and the normal version. But oh well.
- The Boyz - Phantasia Part 1 - I think it's the Eric version!
- This was cheaper since it's a member-specific version as opposed to the standard version, but thankfully still had a CD. I just wanted it for the single Lip Gloss and also for the hope that the other songs would be good--I haven't listened to it yet, though.
- Waker - Vanilla Choco Shake - normal version?
- I heard the single on-line and liked it enough that I figured the rest of the album would be good too.
- Zerobaseone - Blue Paradise
- I love the single "Blue"! And I'd like to get more into ZB1. Actually, this album has a board game inside, complete with little cardboard game pieces of a few of the members! You also get random challenge cards for the game from the members, so each album's game is different. Sadly, the non-member-created challenges are mostly boring stuff like "stream the music video five times", "tell three" and similar--which makes it seem like it's just a way, albeit a creative one, to further promote the album that someone's already bought. I think they could've made more creative ways to still promote the album, but in a way that's actually fun and game-like. For example, you could have a challenge be to, instead of doing the normal choreography on Tik-Tok, make up your own dance to the song and put it on Tik-Tok! Or take a picture of the little cardboard game pieces of the members in somewhere blue and post it on-line--bonus points if it's somewhere extra creative or weird. See? It could be so much better!
- The Wind - Hello: My First Love - Love version
- This album is so cute! :) And it includes film strips inside in addition to photocards
- EVNNE - Hot Mess - one of the members' version
- I really like the song! And they're a junior group in the same company as Verivery, so I feel a sort of connection to them. And to their fans, because their company (Jellyfish Entertainment) is arse.
- The Wind - Beginning: The Wind Page - Youth version
- I bought this album on iTunes ages ago and didn't expect this concept for the physical album! It looks way different from the digital album cover. But it's pretty cool in a way! But anyway, this might be my favourite album of theirs musicwise--I'm not sure.
- TWS - Try With Us - Mini-CD edition
- This is insanely cool! I've never seen a mini-CD of a K-pop album before--actually, I don't know if I've ever seen one at all. The retro tech resurgence keeps winning! Although sadly I don't think it'll fit in the CD tray on my computer or in my car, because they're both slot-loading.
- The Wind - Hello: My First Love - Keychain platform version
- This one was so cute I had to buy it! It has pictures of each of the members included that you can out in the little photobook keychain thing. This is dangling off my purse now!
- NCT Wish - poppop
- This was such a cute album design--the bits of confetti move around if you shake the album! And I like the title track pretty well, as well as the b-sides!
- Girls' Generation - 2025 Season's Greetings
- I kind of bought this on a whim because it was the last one in stock and I wasn't finding any Girls' Generaiton stuff. I like it nonetheless!
- SMTown 30th Anniversary - The Culture, The Future
- This was a pretty cool album overall, although of course Girls' Generation's cover of "My Everything" by The Grace is my favourite song. I actually even managed to pull a photocard of Seohyun from GG! Which made me very happy. :) Although the lady at the store also gave me some sort of bonus photocard--but it seemed to be lost in translation, until she just asked me if I liked Jaehyun from NCT. I said sure, and she gave me an extra photocard of him and bid me on my way--but if I had known she would ask that I would've asked for a member of Girls' Generation, probably Sunny. But oh well!
- Eunhyuk from Super Junior - Explorer - keychain platform version
- I thought this was such a cool version! There's something like four keychains inside, all different kinds, and one of them has the NFC chip you need to load the album digitally--which I'll have to try one day, because apparently it has special behind-the-scenes content or something. I love all these extra inclusions in albums these days! Although I did just end up buying the rest of the album on iTunes anyways, music-wise.
- Then we have a set of three:
- NMIXX - FE304
- Loossemble - One Of A Kind
- Viviz - Summer Vibe
- I got all three of these from a super-cool store in Myeongdong called K-Mecca! They had random album grab boxes for about $15-20 with three albums inside, which is really great pricing! I guess it's probably to get rid of old stock. Sadly, the boy group version was sold out, but I got the girl group version! I would've gotten one of both anyways. I haven't listened to any of these yet, but I like Viviz's title track off the Summer Vibe album--I bought that song on iTunes back when it came out. Anyways, this was a pretty cool box!
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