Seoul wants to become a premier tourist city, on a par with Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore, but that ambition clashes with Korea’s conservative, sometimes xenophobic culture. With hordes of World Cup football fans soon to arrive, the Seoul Metropolitan City Government has been promoting the Hongdae entertainment district as a place where tourists can party till dawn, if they like. In Hongdae, a neon-lit enclave north of the Han River, many young Koreans like J. do that now. They gather in small basement clubs to dance to techno music. But the local police, unhappy about foreign influences, take a dim view of the the partying. On the pretext of cleaning up Seoul before the World Cup, they’re cracking down on the clubs–arresting patrons on drug charges, fining club owners for zoning violations, throwing some people in jail. The growing tension between the police and the clubs–as well as between two arms of the Seoul city government with opposite views of the bar scene–threatens to suffocate Seoul’s most vibrant entertainment district on the cusp of Asia’s biggest sports party ever.
One reason for the dispute is that Korea’s bar and zoning laws are archaic. There is no legal designation for clubs in Korea. Dancing is illegal unless the club pays for an expensive “cabaret” license. The large Korean nightclubs (mostly gangster-controlled) can afford the license, but it was never designed for the small underground scene. So the clubs in Hongdae–which is still partly a residential and university neighborhood–get restaurant licenses as a compromise. Sometimes that satisfies the police and the Mapo district government, but it leaves the clubs vulnerable to the whims of officialdom. Periodic police shakedowns are a fact of life. “The police are the mafia here,” says one Hongdae bar owner who routinely pays patrolmen to keep his business open. “You either pay them, or else they send in licensing officials.” The fines start at 500,000 won (about $350) for a first offense and go up. Even worse, officials can force a club to shut down–for one month, then two, then three. Several clubs have been told to close.
Whereas most of Seoul shuts down at midnight or shortly after, the clubs in Hongdae buzz all night. Hongdae attracts mostly university students (in their early 20s) along with a few U.S. soldiers, tourists and expats. They come to drink beer and hang out in the evening. After midnight, the hard-core partyers arrive to hit the techno clubs. Dressed in baggy pants and revealing tops, with glow-paint makeup and their hair teased into sculpture, they’re easy to spot. Undercover cops often enter the clubs looking for possible drug users. They tend to watch Koreans who speak English or wear glow paint, and those who are drinking water (a possible sign of ecstasy use). The officer may try to buy drugs from them or add their names to an informal list of suspects. “It’s lifestyle profiling,” says Bernie Cho, a music-TV producer and TV personality. “It’s like stopping a black man driving a nice car.”
The Mapo district cops have made occasional drug busts for years, But in 2000, South Korea ratcheted up its anti-drug campaign. Sensationalist drug stories are now a staple for Korean newspapers and TV networks. They’ve reported that 60 or 70 percent of the people in Hongdae techno bars use drugs. Club owners and patrons don’t deny that some patrons take ecstasy or crystal meth, but they argue that the problem has been exaggerated. They contend the Hongdae scene is much cleaner now than it was a year ago. But the stigma remains. Sickboy Productions, the first rave-party promoter in Korea, found it nearly impossible to book a site for a Fatboy Slim concert to kick off the World Cup. “Five venues turned us down because of techno’s reputation,” says Morgan Wilbur, one of Sickboy’s founders.
The club owners are angry and fighting back. Ten of them got together and started Club Day, a major monthly party. All the clubs’ profits from the night go to a lawyer working to get Hongdae designated as a special tourist zone. The Seoul city government is an official sponsor of Club Day. The mayor and vice mayor have both toured the Hongdae clubs. But even with those endorsements, it will be tough to find sympathy within the city’s hidebound bureaucracy. Says Choi Jung-han of the Mapo Culture and Sports Center, an organization affiliated with the Mapo government that’s helping the clubs: “The reason club culture in Korea has been repressed is because the older generation, in administrative control, is unreceptive to the new indie culture of the younger generation. They’re adhering to old laws that are behind the times.” Club owners, and some of their patrons in Hongdae, seem pessimistic. “There are no laws,” says model J. “The police do whatever they want.” Some owners fear the legal fight could spark retribution from the cops. That’s not what Seoul needs with global football fans getting ready to kick up their heels.
