K-Pop Landed at Gardaland. We Were There.
- CZMOS Redazione
- 44 minutes ago
- 5 min read
On June 13 and 14, 2026, CZMOS was at the Gardaland K-Pop Festival with press accreditation. Two days, three evening shows, four interviews, and the clear sense of witnessing something that had never happened in Italy before.
Major names in Korean K-pop didn't land in a Milan club or at an indie festival. They landed inside an amusement park on Lake Garda. That's not a logistical detail, it's a statement about who the K-pop audience in Italy actually is today: not a niche anymore, but large enough to fill a resort with three hotels.
Here's what we took home, day by day, artist by artist.
Day 1, Saturday June 13
The crowd was large, mixed, curious. Not just declared fans: people who simply stopped to watch, drawn in by something they didn't expect to find in that setting, and ended up staying all evening listening to artists they were hearing for the first time.
Three interviews in one day, three completely different approaches to the same underlying question: who are you today, compared to who you thought you'd become.
KISU
In 2019, KISU did something few manage to pull off: he changed his name, rebuilt his artistic identity from scratch, and ended up with a fanbase in over thirty countries without a label behind him. Just him, his music, his personality.
At Gardaland he was the weekend's true entertainer: you could tell how much he loved being among the crowd, putting himself out there, living off direct contact with the audience.
We asked him what's changed over the years to connect this deeply with an international audience.
"Before, I was a group singer, a member of a group. When I started working solo, I started feeling a lot of depression, loneliness, because before I was used to working as a group, and at some point I found myself working alone. At some point, I started to realize that I wasn't on stage alone, I was on stage together with all my fans too. I started working with this strong feeling of belonging to you."
What he said confirms what was visible live: for him, the audience isn't a spectator, it's the company that replaced the group.
ROCKY
In ASTRO, ROCKY was the main dancer, the one who moved better than anyone else. As a soloist he chose a different path, one where composition, production, and artistic direction matter as much as choreography.
Of the three artists on day one, he had the strongest background, and it showed: his performances carried a technical attention the others didn't have yet, which makes sense for someone who was main dancer in one of K-pop's most followed bands.
We asked him if there was a specific moment when he realized dance alone wasn't enough anymore to say what he wanted to say.
"Right now I think I've found the way to fully express myself in this moment."
A short answer, but one that showed up on stage more than in words. Dance remains his territory, he just uses it now to say something more.
PARK MIN-KYU
Park Min-kyu didn't reach Italian audiences through an entertainment agency. He reached them through Single's Inferno, the Netflix reality show, but before that he spent eight years in the Korea Coast Guard Special Rescue Team. A job where mistakes aren't recoverable. In person, you could immediately sense a disciplined background paired with a shy character, almost in contrast with what Italian audiences saw of him on TV.
We asked him how being in front of a camera changes when you come from a context where almost nothing can be redone.
"Before and right now, my life completely changed. I did 8 years in the rescue team, I did my best. Right after Single's Inferno I didn't want to leave my job, so I did 8 months more. But actually I was afraid. So many of my friends got injured, and somebody died. After all of that I have trauma and PTSD. But because of Single's Inferno I could find other really good opportunities. Right now I'm meeting you, acting, influencer, other good chances came to me. Even now, I quit the coast guard 2 years ago, but still I'm not used to the influencer things. Right now I'm so awkward, but I'm trying to do my best and also taking new good opportunities."
Eight years doing a job that leaves a mark, in the most literal sense. And then a reality show that changes everything, not because it's the solution, but because it opens a door when the previous one had become impossible to keep open. Park Min-kyu isn't a constructed persona. He's someone still figuring out who he is outside the uniform, and he says so without filters. We're glad to see this new career already starting to give him the space he deserves.
Day 2, Sunday June 14
The second day confirmed what the first had already suggested: Italy's K-pop fanbase isn't just present, it's motivated. People came from all over Italy, not just the north, specifically for this event. Two artists, two opposite ways of being on stage, the same honesty in their answers.
LIGHTSUM
LIGHTSUM returned to Europe after a single appearance in 2022, and at Gardaland they showed up exactly as you'd expect from a Cube girl group: composed, polished, a clean stage presence with nothing left to chance. Cute, almost doll-like, the classic Cube style delivered on stage without a single flaw.
We asked them how they'd describe their sound and identity today compared to how they imagined it at debut.
"At first I wanted to become a kind of friend in this industry, and I managed to, and now over time I'm also learning to feel more emotions toward the audience and to receive a lot of love."
From wanting to be "a friend" to listeners, to learning to receive that same affection back: it's a journey visible in the way they move on stage too, always perfectly in sync with each other, but increasingly open toward whoever is watching.
HYUNY
Raised between Vienna and Korea, HYUNY brings to the stage an aesthetic that blends genres and cultures without trying to force them to coincide, hard to label with a single word.
We asked how he lives this double artistic identity.
"For me, my whole life it's always been a problem to figure out what my identity was, whether it's Korean or Viennese, and even now in my music I still have a bit of this identity gap. In the end I decided to stop playing a Viennese or a Korean, and just be myself."
An answer that goes straight to the point, and is maybe the most sincere one collected over these two days: not a forced synthesis of two cultures, but the choice to stop choosing one.
CZMOS point of view
There's one detail that ties all the artists together more than anything else: each of them had prepared Italian words and phrases to use during their performances. A gesture that might seem small, but says a lot. No one took it for granted that simply being there was enough.
This, more than the lineup, more than the venue, is what stays with us from Italy's first official K-pop festival: not a stop on a world tour that happened to pass through Italy, but a real attempt, from both sides, to meet halfway.
Even if only for one evening, even inside an amusement park on Lake Garda. Photo and videos: CZMOS Editorial and Nicole Biasiolo Interviste: CZMOS Editorial
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