R16 Korea (B-Boy World Championship) 2013

On 13th and 14th of July R16 Korea (B-Boy world championship) was held at Olympic park stadium. The biggest event in B-Boy field, organized mainly by Korea Tourism Organization (KTO). It was a 2-day event, the first day, July 13, being the solo battle championships for B-Boy dance, locking, and popping. July 14th was crew battle day. Countries that represented included Korea, Japan, Australia, Russia, USA, France, China, and Taiwan.
On Saturday, I went with two of my Korean friends, Hyeonsook lim and Hogeun kim. A big thanks to KTO for providing us free tickets to the show. On Sunday i went with another Pakistani friend.

This event was the 3rd event of B-Boy series, first was Freestyle Session three months ago at KTO headquarter and the R16 National Qualifier Competition in Uijeongbu two months ago. But this time it was World championship so i was more than excited.

When we arrived at the venue we saw many crazy b-boy, popping and locking lovers from different parts of the world to attend the R16 World B Boy event of 2013. Before the start of show, we took our tickets from KTO booth. It was raining but even the bad weather couldn't stop us from reaching the R16 Korea event.

The year 2013 is the 7^th year of R16 Korea, first time I heard about it two years ago when the organizers and the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) stepped up their campaign to promote this international bboy competition. I first attended R16 Korea in 2011 when I got a free ticket from KTO, and then in 2011 when I again got free ticket from KTO under K-Performance supporters program. So this year was my third consecutive year again under K-Performance supporters program.

At the end of the first day, Bboy Issei of Japan was the solo B-Boy champion, Nao of Japan was the solo locking champion, and Hoan of Korea was the solo popping champion.

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Second day of R16 Korea was more exciting. I always loved crew battle and "Morning of Owl" as my favorite crew was there. Morning of Owl was the winner from Korea to participate in this championship.

In the start all 8 countries crew have presented team performances. and all of them was amazing. Later on they went for quarter finals for B-Boy championship 2013. Each team had shown great team work with excellent performance. in the end there were Body carnival (Japan) and  Morning of Owl (Korea) in the finals. 

For the winner award ceremony, President of KTO was there. He asked about how was the show and whether we want to see this happening again in Korea or not... OF COURSE...!!!

 For the Team performances, Japan's Body carnival won the first award and it was not finish for them, they were in finals so they were expecting to have won the title as well.

KTO president announced the B-Boy world championship winner by raising his hand to the Morning of Owl side. wohoo, Korea won against Japan. my favorite team has won :) 

 At the end of R16 competition, Jap Park who is the ambassador for R16 Korea, came up the stage and sang his new song which was composed for only B-Boy competition. He got amazing round of applause from the audience.

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R-16 KOREA 2013 Competition

On 25th May 2013, i went to watch R16 Korea competition. I get the chance of watching this awesome show because of Korea Tourism Organization who is one of the main organizer for this competition.
This show was not in Seoul this year instead it was in another city north of Seoul named "Uijeongbu". the show was really awesome as usual. More interesting thing was that this show was not just B-Boy battle show, in fact this competition has three categories; popping, locking and crew battle.

Here is the MC for the R16 show, i am watching him for consecutive 3 years ^^).

 POPPING:

 In the picture below you can see three judges for the popping category and all of them performed before sitting there on stage. It was actually knock out competition. two competitors came on stage and performed two times before judges raise their hands for the qualifier. This year girls also participated in the popping category.

 LOCKING:

 Yup, these three are locking judges. of course they also showed their skills before other competitors. same rule were for locking as for popping. In this category girls were dominated and final was also between two girls. they really made good performance.

 

CREW BATTLE: 

This was my favorite part of the show, many teams prepared themselves for the R16. Few of them had performed in 3:3 freestyle competition at KTO headquarter. Rules for this category were very strict like, originality, execution, battle, dynamics (i forgot the 5th). My favorite team was "Morning of the owl" and they won the crew battle. Pocket was always their master card which they used at the end to put fire on the stage. haha. "Pocket" has shown enormous energy and made audience really happy.

 WINNERS:

 Well, here are the winners for all three categories, I forgot the name of the guy winner of popping. Luna was the winner for locking solo and morning of the owl was the winner for crew battle.

 

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