Inje fest aims to revive 'real' rock festivals in Korea
Yoon Do-hyun, center, and his YB bandmates / Korea Times file
By Jon Dunbar
A new rock festival aims to restore the country's waning rock festival industry.
Starting this Friday,
will provide three full days of live music in Inje County, Gangwon Province, east of Seoul.
Like most other music festivals, it mixes local and international acts, but the lineup of Koreans is outstanding, with the three days headlined by Pia, Jeon In-kwon and YB, respectively. Of the 20 other domestic bands, some standout names include Crying Nut, Wiretap in My Ear and Vassline.
All these bands have been active since the 1990s, with the 64-year-old Jeon debuting in the 1970s, showing this festival is aiming for heavy hitters who have witnessed and been part of better days for Korea's rock scene in the past.
“We believe these 1990s bands have strong power,” Oh Byung-chul, a PR representative for the festival, told The Korea Times. “Music has power: that's the strong belief of our planners.”
According to Oh, the chairman of the festival Kim Seung-han has been planning to have this festival this year for the past 10 years. Kim is also the head of
, an eclectic music festival started in Seoul but now expanding to other parts of Korea, including Donghae last month and Gyeongju late next month.
At Greenplugged Seoul in May, the festival offered two stages with live music playing concurrently, which often put bands in competition with each other. With punk legends Crying Nut playing at the same time as early K-pop boy band g.o.d, most attendees gravitated toward the idol group.
Kim had a talk with folk singer-songwriter Jeon and YB frontman Yoon Do-hyun, questioning how this happened.
Jeon In-kwon / Korea Times file
“Why has rock music become less popular than other music?” Oh asked. “They decided it was time to revive and boost up our rock music.”
They agreed on the need for a “real” rock festival, and focused their efforts toward the planned festival in Gangwon Province.
This led to the current design of the festival, with the headliners being veterans of Korea's music scene, and the international acts serving more as support.
“International bands do have plentiful time for performing,” Oh said, “but they agreed with our idea because they would like to support Korean rock bands and they would love to contribute to the main purpose of our festival, which is the revival of Korean rock.”
Representing seven countries, the 13 international bands include Don Broco and Deaf Havana of the U.K., China-based Nan Band, Hungary band Junkies, U.S. band Born of Osiris, Turilli / Lione Rhapsody of Italy and Stratovarius of Finland.
As well, six more bands ― Asterism, Locofrank, COCOBAT, 04 Limited Sazabys, Heysmith and NAMBA69 ― come from Japan. Although relations between Korea and Japan remain low at the moment, the music scenes of the two countries have agreed the show must go on.
“This is an international rock festival,” Oh said. “We do not want to separate certain countries. We're communicating through music not politics, so we think we should focus on the music.”
He cites Incheon Pentaport Rock Festival which also booked several Japanese bands earlier this month without
trouble. He says Gangwon Rock Festival organizers have taken care to discuss the situation and how to deal with any contingencies.
“Communication is important for bringing Japanese bands,” he said. “They are artists so they don't let politics get in the way.”
The local and international bands ― representing rock, punk, heavy metal as well as reggae and ska ― will be at Inje County this Friday for the festival.
“Inje and Gangwon Province are the backbone of the Korean Peninsula,” Oh said. “The Baekdudaegan mountain range has a special energy for the Korean people. We would love to have a rock festival which is a very energetic event in that place.”
There are shuttle buses available to the festival grounds as well as camping sites on location.
range from 60,000 won for Friday to up to 150,000 won for all three days.