Hongdae indie spirit gutted

By Jon Dunbar

If a controversial plan to form a tourist zone in the area around Hongik University, colloquially abbreviated as Hongdae, is enacted, it will be a death sentence on Korea's small but vibrant indie music community. The plan has met passionate resistance from Hongdae musicians.

The tourist zone designation would provide subsidies for the tourist industry and super tall buildings and allow the opening of casinos. It would certainly drive up land prices and rent for small businesses to fatal levels.

Hongdae doesn’t need casinos.

Hongdae has been the beating heart of Korean live music since before live music was legalized ― in 2000. It's likely that every modern musician in Korea you've heard (who didn't come up through an idol trainee program) has gone through Hongdae's live music community.

The "Korean Cool" talked about these days would be far less cool if it weren't for the members of punk band Crying Nut picking up guitars, drumsticks and accordions and playing shows inside Club Drug in 1995. This kind of music was ridiculed at first for sounding amateur and unruly, but it convinced thousands of kids that they too could chuck their textbooks and make music. Shortly after I arrived in late 2003, Club Drug was taken over by younger rivals, morphing into Skunk Hell. Were it not for the warm welcome I received there from kindred spirits, I doubt I'd still be in Korea now.

The area has provided a refuge from the ubiquitous dominant pop culture, and still serves as an antidote to its consumer capitalist excesses. But the live music culture there is being lost amid the sensory overload of bright lights and loud noises of encroaching gentrification.

The past decade has seen the disappearance of concert halls, piercing parlors, affordable restaurants and other necessities of a thriving live music community, to be replaced by luxury brand shops, premium cosmetic stores and churro shops. Young people rush there to consume Hongdae's distinct culture, but walk away only with expensive new shoes and bags of makeup samples.

The cultural sickness that washed over Hongdae, coined "Kangnamification" by blogger King Baeksu, started from the center and spread outward, leading to an ever-expanding outer ring of "authentic Hongdae" as Hongdae businesses and patrons relocate to the outskirts where rents are lower and crowds are thinner. Five years ago, Yanghwa-ro 6-gil, where the venues Yogiga, Ruailrock and Rolling Hall were found, was part of this narrow ring. But today, the street is a Disney version of itself and only Rolling Hall remains. That familiar Hongdae community feel can now be found in southern Sangsu-dong, Hapjeong-dong and Mangwon-dong. In a few years, encroaching gentrification may push them into the river.

This phasing out especially hurts, as the shops rushing to open there wouldn't have chosen that area if it weren't for the distinct indie culture established there by, you guessed it, Korea's most passionate music makers and lovers. Businesses generating tourism money are set to win big through subsidies, which is a foreign word to Hongdae’s culture creators. In many cases their biggest financial impact is that they made area property owners richer.

Something precious and rare in Korea is endangered, though I wouldn't expect sympathy from the central government, which appears happier to blacklist politically conscious artists for exercising their right to free speech.

The loss of this unique culture would mean the loss of the country's most creative artistic community, of the one viable alternative to K-pop's cultural hegemony, of a local hybrid culture where young Koreans pioneered cultural globalization here.

Taking Hongdae away right now would be a death sentence to Hongdae's ― and all of Korea's ― independent music community.

Yet this has been inevitable for years, and the exodus has been underway since at least 2010.

The changing character of Hongdae became harder to ignore around the turn of the decade. On Christmas Eve, 2009, the noodle restaurant Duriban was violently evicted by hired goons. Owner Ahn Jong-nyeo fought back, finding unlikely allies in Hongdae's music community. All of this was captured by filmmaker Jung Yong-taek in his 2014 documentary "Party 51." After the case was settled, the Independent Musicians' Collective (Jarip), which was birthed in the Duriban struggle, looked outward for new parts of the city where they could re-establish the music community.

The Korean live music community desperately needs to come together and agree on a new location to set up, to call home, to come together at. Currently Mullae, a waning metalworking neighborhood, is the frontrunner, but with a concentrated effort anywhere that can accept concert halls and musical miscreants will work fine.

The Hongdae tourist zone plan is awful, but it's unlikely the people can stop it. There are still a few live music venues left in Hongdae, but how many can we lose before Hongdae sheds its reputation as the mecca of Korean indie music? Club Ta, the latest to shut down, had to leave when its monthly rent was doubled ― from 3.5 million won a month to 7 million won. Under the tourist zone plan, it's likely rents would increase across the board, ensuring that only the most financially stable ― in other words least creative ― businesses have a place remaining for them in Hongdae.

Once the few remaining venues pull out, maybe then city planners will realize that what made the area unique, what made it worth going to and developing in the first place, has departed. But if that's the only way to show the live music community is essential to the area, for it to be taken away, then so be it.

Jon Dunbar is a copy editor of The Korea Times and has been part of the Hongdae community since 2003. The longer version of this article is available on The Korea Times website.