Local Blinks and BTS army rejoice! A new K-Pop store is coming to Old Montreal, promising more than just albums from your favourite bands. Owners are also teasing South Korean drama OSTs, DVDs, magazines, stationery, concert lightsticks specific to each fandom and eventually, K-pop dance workshops and events for the community.

This project was made possible through the cooperation of four fans of Korean pop culture who bonded over the struggles of being international stans: overpriced albums, shipping fees, lost packages and a language barrier.

"We met Jo [Toronto-based co-CEO] at a fanbase event in Montreal. He owned a company of Korean cosmetics and we discussed with him the idea of creating events to make the foreign culture more accessible and enjoyable to Canadians," Laurie Dumais, the Montreal-based co-CEO at LightUpK told MTL Blog.

The group first launched an online store and in June 2022, the first LightUpK shop opened in Toronto, just one minute from the Woodbine TTC Station. Now the team is stepping it up again; the Montreal location promises to be bigger than its Toronto counterpart.

Under construction at the time of writing, the store is located just two minutes from Square Victoria and five minutes from Place d'Armes at an as-yet-undisclosed address. It will open its doors to the public in January 2023.

COO Victoria Hope Najar told MTL Blog that the team also came up with a novel community-built photo card trading wall. Montreal's LightUpK will have a selfie corner and plenty of room for visitors to open their purchased albums in-store and trade the idol photocards found inside.

K-pop fans can apply to work at the shop, too, but the team is already drowning in applications.