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When FISM 2018 went to Korea, I knew I must go because it was a great chance to catch up with many magic friends!

Kien with the FISM trophy

I became very interested in Korea after a visit back in the year 2000 with my family. Thereafter, I founded a business distributing soft toys from Korea to give me a reason to return to Korea more often. I stopped going when I left the company but my interest in the country never waned.

FISM Busan

Busan is the port city of South Korea. Known for its beaches and seafood (a lot of my Facebook magic friends posted videos of them eating live octopus! Eeeek!!!), the city has a lot of accommodation in the area which makes the cost of staying very affordable. The convention centre, Bexco, is connected by the subway. Taxi is inexpensive. There are numerous food choices around and the organisers even added food trucks midway through the convention to cater to magicians who just wanted a quick snack.

Some magicians commented that this year’s program was not as packed as previous. I felt the schedule was just nice! It gave us some time for magicians to catch up over lunch and dinner! (NB. This is only my 3rd FISM and I haven’t attended a magic convention for the past decade partly because of my children.)

The schedule started at 8:30am in the morning and didn’t end until 12:30am! Magic overdose? No! A lot of the magicians continued to hang out to eat and talk magic!

The Convention of Shows maze

This convention had the greatest number of shows I had ever seen. There were 5 one-man shows and 5 theatre shows, not including the contests and award ceremony!

Some magicians put together shows not seen before. For instance, Shoot Ogawa and Simon Colonel created this 2-man show exposing the small chats and ego challenges that went on backstage while magicians rested!

Eun Gyeol Lee opened the first gala with his illusion show; his showmanship was impeccable. This was the first time he had done this show in English and his hard work shined through the performance.

There were different directors for each show so we saw totally shows of different styles. The best for me was Korean Night.

Korean Night – Magic Show of Peace

Magic show of Peace by Korean magicians

The acts were top notched, showcasing Korean acts which had won past FISMs, but with twists and surprises.

The North (DPRK) and South Koreans were supposed to put together a show called the Magic Show of Peace. However, 3 days before the event, the DPRK magicians said they couldn’t come. Many spectators were crying along with An song U, who coordinated with DPRK, when his story was told. (An Song U, who also go by the name of Yuji Yasuda, taught magic in North Korea and is a Korean descendant living in Japan.) Magic was supposed to transcend language, religion, culture, and politics; eventually, it will…

Considering that, the South did a fantastic job putting up such an amazing show in such a short time.

Yu Ho Jin did a great emceeing job, a side that we seldom see. I appreciated how he went into the audience to perform and ‘interview’ a spectator. How he stopped someone eating in the theatre, who turned out to be a magician performing with packets of potato chips. The finale was his award-winning FISM act and he attested to the audience why he was the first Asian to win the Grand Prix. The music stopped halfway. The audience gasped with him as he continued with his act. You can hear the breathing of the spectators with him as make it through like a professional. My opinion? This was brilliant! I was sure those who attended FISM saw his act before. How could he bring his act up a notch? How can he make people remember it for years to come?

The Korean Night was a show that many magicians would continue to talk about for years.

The lectures and …. sections?

with Cyril Takayama magician

What were the sections? I think they were discussion panels. For instance, Tina Lenert talked about how she got inspiration for her Mr Mopman act, Mr. Maric shared his journey of how he became a star in Japan.

The learning materials were fantastic for professionals. Magicians continuously dreamed of new principles, which we had never seen before so there were still so many things to discover. Quite a number of them touched on the performing aspect of magic or developing a concept and not just on learning a new trick, which these opportunities were usually lacking in a magic convention. I was really happy that most were well attended by many magicians.

Eun Gyeol Lee did a 3-day seminar on the theory of magic which he had researched intensively on. My opinion was that the pacing was a little slow because of the translation, some of the concepts were rather subjective. Nevertheless, it was very insightful to see it from his point of view, his passion for magic, and how he had transformed the landscape of Korean magic. I was sure his seminar gave a lot of food for thought to the magicians.

Avner’s lecture on audience management was invaluable. Star magicians like Will Tsai, Cyril Takayama, and Lu Chen shared their inspiration for creating magic for television. From what I understood, some of the sections were put together just several days before, but attendees could never tell from the professionalism that the panelists demonstrated in these discussions.

I wish I could attend all the lectures and ‘sections’ but most overlapped with other programs so attendees had to make choices of what they wanted to watch or learn!

FISM was a convention for professional magicians; I must say the organizer did a fantastic job choosing the right mix of lectures and seminars.

The Magic Competition 

The quality of this year’s competition was high, very high. Although there are only 39 close-up magic contestants, I feel the board of directors did great work to choose the best in the preliminary for the final round. When you thought you had seen one of the best acts in a magic competition, the next topped them again! It was an eye-opener!

The overall artistic level of the magicians was extraordinary. The jury probably had a tough time scoring and choosing the best among the best. In the end, I felt everyone who competed was winner. This year’s Grand Prix for Stage magic is Miguel Muñoz from Spain and Close-up magic went to Eric Chien from Taiwan.

A competition of a different kind called the ‘Odd Contest’ happened in the dealers’ room. As the name implied it was rather… odd. There were games in which contestants competed to pick up exactly X number of cards or to grab the most confetti in the air. The energetic host, Kim Min Hyoung, did a great job getting everyone excited. The performance competition consisted of mainly comedy acts; one of which was really strange: A male performer, dressed as a lady, spinning handbags like pois.

Magic Dealers

There were more than 70 dealers which is lesser than usual at FISM since a lot of the Europeans or Americans magic shops probably found it a hassle to travel so far. But overall, there was a good mix of different dealers catering to different genres of magic.

Kien at the magic deal booths

The Bastrakov family were selling their fish (and a few snakes), Vladmir’s money machine was amazing to be seen done live, and Seo Magic’s latest item in their inventory called Rainbow card was the talk of the town. There were a number of Korean dealers peddling very creative magic inventions. One notable one was from Lukas in which he had a modular system for building machines for your props; eg. You could magically open a box or make your teddy bear shake its head. There was quite a few magic that utilized technology and phone apps.

The Magic Fellowship

Kien with David Kaye and the Evasons

Priceless! I got to meet our then SAM National President, Ron Ishimaru. David Kaye and I discussed about our kid’s columns. I shared with The Evasons about my trip to North Korea and discussed how children magic should be given more emphasis in magic conventions.

Many Asian magicians whom I knew from magic festivals and conventions were there. I was surprised Lu Chen remembered me. I caught up with many Korean magicians whom I had not met for 15 years!

More importantly, I made quite a few friends! My new goal is to attend more magic conventions!

Best magic convention ever

Kudos to the audience: They were very appreciative and encouraging; it must be a joy performing on those stages. Topas said: this was the best audience he ever had, and I totally agreed! The audience would sometimes applaud at small nuances during the performance and in turn, the stars gave us more energy.

Every FISM seemed to be clouded in some sort of controversy or some bad organisation (especially the gala dinner). I did not experience any this year.

The management of the ‘gala dinner’ was brilliant; it was replaced by a buffet dinner in which everyone was given random tickets on the day to go. Much easier in logistics than to feed more than two thousand hungry magicians all at one go.

When a lot of people couldn’t get into the close-up magic contest room, television screens went up immediately the next day.

The volunteers did a great job helping the delegates. The organising committee worked tirelessly to ensure everything went on well and made all the magicians feel at home. Eun Gyeol Lee worked through the night with his team to ensure an excellent delivery of the seminar and show; the spirit of Korean magicians shines through and maybe that’s why they had been winning lots of FISM prizes in the recent decade.

Magic is a continual learning journey because it encompasses so many areas of study which it is difficult to learn all in our lifetime. This convention inspired me to come up with a lot of new ideas and improve my magic.

FISM Busan 2018 was probably the best ever magic convention, at least for me. My only wish? Children magic is given a certain emphasis on such an international stage.

Kien is a columnist for the MUM magazine for the Society of American Magicians. This article first appeared on MUM in Oct 2018, Volume 108 Number 5