Photos from ILLIT’s encore concerts in Seoul have ignited an uncomfortable online debate: was the venue really as empty as the pictures suggest? The girl group performed their PRESS START Encore concerts on October 17 and 18, but circulating photographs appear to show noticeably vacant sections — and netizens are asking whether the group overestimated its domestic drawing power.
ILLIT (Credits: BELIFT LAB)
The images show unoccupied seats toward the outer corners of floor areas and scattered gaps throughout parts of the venue. A screenshot of a reservation page shared by a netizen and dated October 15 showed that as the concert date neared, more seats opened up due to cancellations, with a bulk of floor seats still available. The team also offered free upgrades to better floor sections — a move that, depending on who you ask, either shows smart fan service or signals soft demand.
Questions About Domestic Popularity
The discussion is pointed precisely because of who ILLIT is: a high-profile HYBE group under BELIFT LAB that exploded onto the scene with their debut single “Magnetic” in March 2024. For a group of that stature, rows of empty chairs were enough to trigger questions about the size of their Korean concert-going fanbase and whether ticket sales fell short of expectations. Some fans counter that camera angles can mislead and that encore concerts naturally draw smaller crowds — but the optics have been hard to ignore.
A Rough Week for the Encore
The empty-seat chatter caps a difficult run for these shows. The encore concerts were already overshadowed by a string of on-stage injuries among the members — including Wonhee performing through a bleeding knee — and earlier controversies over ticket sales and stage outfits. Taken together, the week has become a PR headache for the group, turning what should have been a celebratory encore into an ongoing conversation about the state of ILLIT’s domestic popularity.
Source: Koreaboo — read the full story there.
