'Hongdae doesn't need casinos'

Crying Nut bassist Han Kyung-rok, or Captain Rock, celebrates his birthday with a cake-slathered performance in Yes24 Muv Hall in Hongdae, on Feb. 11 this year. / Courtesy of Jon Dunbar

By Jon Dunbar

The front door of Club Ta laid open, but without the usual inviting guitar chords wafting from within, or lighting of any kind. One afternoon on a walk through the area around Hongik University, colloquially abbreviated as Hongdae, I passed by the beloved concert hall and curiosity got the better of me. I pulled out a flashlight and descended, only to find the room gutted ― stage and bar pulled out, exposing the room's concrete shell.

That fate awaits the entire Hongdae live music community, if a controversial plan to declare the area a tourist zone is enacted. The plan has met passionate resistance from Hongdae musicians, many of whom have been hanging out, making music and vitalizing their own community since long before today's latest K-pop stars were born.

This 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.

A prerequisite of tourist zone status is that the ratio of land not directly relevant to tourism must be less than 10 percent. This seems problematic in Hongdae, still a highly residential area. Going by total floor area, the ratio would be much higher than 10 percent. However, by measuring by land, a mixed-use high-rise apartment building with restaurants on the main floor could certainly be counted as directly relevant to tourism.

Originally a residential neighborhood surrounding an art university, Hongdae has been the beating heart of Korean art and live music since long 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 come into contact with Hongdae's live music community ― going to shows, networking with other musicians and performing there.

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 churros. Young people rush there to consume Hongdae's distinct culture, but walk away only with expensive new shoes and bags of makeup samples. Transportation infrastructure has increased, especially with the new Gyeongui and AREX tunnels, though I guess it was naïve to ever think they were being added there for the local community's benefit, as the transport hub brought in more tourists and increasingly high-end hotels for them to stay in.

This has not gone unnoticed by Hongdae musicians. In summer 2010, members of the punk bands Rux, Swindlers and ...Whatever That Means teamed up in an attempt to revive the waning live music community. They put on free concerts in Hongdae Playground under the name Purge Movement, attempting to "purge" the area of unwanted new elements that were competing for room and consideration in the area. But by then change was as inevitable as the tide.

In 2012, Korean-American singer-songwriter Paul Brickey wrote the song "Hongdae Streets" for his band Heimlich County Gun Club in which he sang about the changes already coming to the area.

"Gentrified, crucified like many before

The place that I once called home has been painted into a whore

To every trend and fashion and fickle disease

There's fewer standing here that can remember the scene

Fake plastic class spreading out of control

Contagious affulenza and it's taking its toll

Contaminated, epidemic that no one can stop

the gullible masses swallow every last drop"

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 areas like Yeonnam-dong ― itself included in the tourist zone boundary ― plus 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. Profitable 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 effect 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.

Honestly, live music has never been particularly welcome in Hongdae, as long as there have been neighbors who don't like the loud noise or scruffy-looking ruffians hanging around. Yet somehow the nightclubs playing canned music have been better tolerated, even though they tend to be louder and result in more fights every weekend. As well, a place has been made for buskers, who disrupt pedestrian traffic with often subpar acts, while also cutting into the likelihood that any one person would feel the need to pay entry into one of the flagging live music halls for a live concert by quality musicians.

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, who tossed out servers and customers, tore apart the restaurant interior and shuttered it off with metal fencing. Owner Ahn Jong-nyeo fought back, finding unlikely allies in Hongdae's music community. They staged a free music festival in the barren redevelopment zone around Duriban on May 1, 2010, joined by 51 bands. A year later, their fight still going strong, 51+ Festival was held for the second year. After a 531-day sit-in protest, Duriban won a resettlement fund and reopened somewhere else in Hongdae. All of this was captured by filmmaker Jung Yong-taek in his 2014 documentary "Party 51."

The Independent Musicians' Collective (Jarip), which was birthed in the Duriban struggle, now looked outward for new parts of the city where they could re-establish the music community. Members of Jarip took their fight to Cafe Mari in Myeongdong. Later, they established concert venues such as Lowrise in Mullae-dong, south of the river, and DGBS in a basement room at Korea National University of Arts.

But these places have been unable to attain the critical mass that turned Hongdae in the mid-'90s into a cultural flashpoint. Lowrise is gone but newer venues in Mullae like GBN Live House and Skunk Hell (in its third location) struggle on.

Won Jong-hee of punk band Rux excites the crowd at his new venue, the third Skunk Hell, in Mullae-dong, southwestern Seoul, in May last year. / Courtesy of Jon Dunbar

The Hongdae tourist zone plan is awful, but it's unlikely the people can stop it. 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.

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 will city planners realize that what made the area unique, what made it worth going to and developing in the first place, has departed. By then, Hongdae will be a white-hot mess, the Gangnam of the north, the Myeong-dong of the west, all tour buses and conspicuous consumption and no soul. 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.