A Very Brief History of Korean Punk

By Julian Earl (@the_sound_j.e)

When we think of Hongdae, we picture the epicentre of youth culture in Korea. We envision the seductive, fluorescent red lights of enough bars to blind you. And we imagine a culture where there is an unspoken code of conduct built within the structure of anticonformity. That is Hongdae. But behind this curtain of "hipness," bands and artists are struggling to see a glimpse of those lights beyond the basement level dives; venues that are holding on for dear life due to waning interest in the same culture that first brought us the Hongdae that we know today.

This is the story of the unsung heroes of Hongdae. A glimpse into the studded lens of the Korean punk scene.

It is 1994, and both the culture and economy of South Korea are growing. Hongdae, though, is still just an underdeveloped area with jocks, art students and outcasts wandering its streets. You will have to travel to the outskirts of the neighbourhood to find the single most important club in Korean rock history, where a new sound for an undermined youth is developing. This club is called Drug.

Drug was a dive bar, and it was falling apart in the most literal way. Here, bands now regarded as being the forefathers of "Chosun Punk" were beginning to make the sound of an outcast generation.

Crying Nut and No Brain are two of these bands who, in 1994, were bringing loud, youthful, anger-filled sounds to a slowly growing scene of school uniform-wearing, troubled kids. Together, they would drink, smoke and fight against their common enemy: the oppressive, conservative culture of South Korea.

Photo taken from the cover of No Brain’s 청춘구십팔 (1999)

Fast forward to 1998. South Korea is experiencing an economic catastrophe and barely surviving the infamous with the society that surrounds them, become even more disillusioned. The following year, a song and a compilation album that encapsulates these emotions are released. These two releases both capture and reflect the sense of disassociation that was becoming particularly endemic among the youth of Korea. The song was No Brain’s 청춘98 and compilation was called 조선펑크 (Chosun Punk).

As its popularity grew, the punk scene started to attract more disaffected young people, and a second generation of punk bands, including GumX, Lazy Bone, and Rux, began to emerge. These bands helped to popularise this growing subculture, as well as to widen its audience.

By 1999, Chosun Punk had surfaced as the voice of the Korean youth, and its popularity was at its peak. Festivals, such as DongDuChon Rock Festival, Ssamji Sound Festival, and Triport (now Pentaport) Rock Festival, hosted punk, rock and international bands, with one shared goal: fighting back against Korea's conservative culture.

But this peak in popularity also signalled the start of harder times, and the gentrification of Seoul's by now alternative haven, Hongdae, was on the horizon. The government sought to rid Hongdae of its "unfit clubs", which were seen as dangerous and unsanitary. Their goal was to build a new, "clean" tourist area reflective of changing times in South Korea.

Naturally, the bands of this era refused to give up without a fight. They fought tirelessly to save their home, which by the early 2000s housed more than 20 live venues for the underdog youth of the new millennium. Nonetheless, their efforts were in vain, and Hongdae was lost. Over the following years, Hongdae would slowly transform into the sea of fluorescent reds that we know today.

During this period, two major events would change the direction of the Korean punk and rock scene. One of these would be the final nail in the coffin for punk's popularity in Korea.

The first of these events took place in 2001 at Japan's premier rock festival, Fuji Rock, where No Brain shocked audiences with an attack on Imperial Japan: the band wanted to educate their Japanese fans on the re-written history taught in their textbooks.

Frontman Lee Sungwoo asked the crowd what they thought about their textbooks and told them how they were being wrongfully educated on Japan's 1910 invasion of Korea- and the subsequent colonization, which lasted until 1945. In front of a confused and riled up crowd, Lee Sungwoo brought on an Imperial Japanese flag and proceeded to tear it apart with his teeth. No Brain then began their set with the Korean national anthem. Afterwards, they would be chased out of Japan by an incensed Japanese public. The band returned to South Korea as heroes for fighting for a cause that, to this day, has still not been rectified.

This event became a pivotal moment for the punk movement in Korea, showing the public that, although brash and at times unreasonable, punks had the capacity to fight for what was right. Riding this wave of public awareness in 2005, the punks of Korea were now to shift their attacks to domestic concerns, with a showcase on South Korea's top music show of the time, MBC Music Camp.


The band Rux were invited to perform on a live broadcast of the show. To make their performance more engaging, the band also brought along some of their friends from the alternative community, who joined them on stage. At the time, there was no love lost between the punk scene and the station, and, after years of friction, a number of those on stage decided to pull their pants down and give a collective middle finger to the suits and ties. During the performance, two of the band's friends took off their underwear and started bouncing around on stage with their bottom halves completely exposed.

There is some debate about the intentions of the two half-naked punks. Some say that their original plan was to only strip to their underwear, but that this plan backfired, with one of them accidentally removing his underwear, too. Following this cue, another of those on stage stripped completely, exposing himself. Others suggest differently and say that the entire thing was intentional and that the two men, knowingly and happily, got their stuff out.

Regardless of intent, the backlash was of biblical proportions. The two men were given prison sentences. The broadcasting centre, government and general public were mortified, which ultimately led to tighter television restrictions, censorship, and the rise of the view from the general public that punks were scum, and unfit for Korean society. Audiences turned on rock music, and, since 2005, it has been difficult for punk and indie bands to receive any exposure on a national platform.

This marked the point when the tide began to shift against alternative music in Korea. With the public in a state of shock and feeling contempt towards rock music and with platforms unwilling to take a chance on punk bands, these subcultures would now struggle to find an audience. This event, in July 2005, would go down in history as the incident that caused the death of the underground rock scene. It eroded the ideals that the scene had been built upon, from the early days of challenging economic hardship to the incredibly risky Fuji Rock incident. Despite almost 20 years having since passed, bands still speak of being harassed by broadcasting centres whenever they perform on television.

With this, the fall of Hongdae and its underground heroes was inevitable. The gentrification of Hongdae was successful, bands were not allowed on television, and the general public became uninterested in the "scum" of Hongdae.

Despite these events, the underground scene of Hongdae is still clinging on, with a handful of venues surviving to this day. The scene still fights for a glimpse of light and to prove its worth to the Korean public. It continues on with some of the clubs that kickstarted the scene. Venues like Sharpe, GBN and the recently established Bender – located at the same site formerly home to the iconic venue Drug – host punk and rock bands in the hope that the scene will be accepted once more.

Even through its many incidents and difficulties, the punk scene continues to grow, waiting for a second chance to show the nation that they are the unsung heroes of Korean subculture. To show that they are the voice of a still oppressed youth.

This was a brief history of the punk scene in South Korea, the ones that brought you the Hongdae you know today, the ones that still scream as loud as they can beneath the streets of seductive "Hongdae".