Comments on: Karaoke to Noraebang?

By: Muninn » 2006 - Year in Review

Muninn » 2006 - Year in Review — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 08:40:09 +0000

[…] Most of the summer of 2006 I spent in Korea, continuing my study of the Korean language at Seoul National University’s intensive summer program (I did level 3/6 in 2005, and 4/6 in 2006). I stopped in Tokyo on the way to Seoul and stayed a week there at the end of May. I should have been relaxing but I spent much of the time cooped up in my friend’s apartment trying to finish a lit. review paper that my orals preparation had kept me from writing. Sayaka joined me and we lived in a very small apartment near Naksŏngdae station, which is about half an hour walk or a short bus ride from campus. The summer was wonderful, though, even if I feel that my Korean did not improve as much as I would have liked it too. I think that after attending many language programs in China, Japan, and Korea, I’m getting worse and worse at concentrating completely on language study. I hope to give formal study of Korean a last chance this coming summer, however, and the rest I’ll have to pick up on my own as I go. I made a number of blog postings while I was there (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11). Sayaka and I visited a lot of museums, met with friends, went on long walks around the back-streets Naksŏngdae, and spent a lot of time in coffee shops. I often regret that the fact I don’t drink alcohol and my strong sensitivity to cigarette smoke has made it almost completely impossible for me to socialize to any great degree in Korea, but until smoke-free bars catch on in Seoul it is something I will have to live with. […]

By: Antti

Antti — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 14:24:15 +0000

Funny that we should both write an entry on noraebang on almost the same day (here’s mine). The general wisdom is that noraebang appeared first in Busan in 1991; Weekly Donga has been able to track down the origins in some detail:
(cut and paste from my own entry, borrowing the Donga Weekly article)
—————–
It was Mr Hyôn Ch’ung-dan, who kept a game room (oraksil) in front of the Donga University in Busan. He used to visit Japan often in search of new electronic leisure gadgets, and in early 1991 he brought a song accompaniment machine to Korea. He put Korean songs by himself in it, and installed the machine in his game room in April 1991. It was a glass box for 2-3 persons. Mr Hyôn was already busy at that time developing “multivision” effects, and with the release of the “Assa Panjugi” (앗싸 반주기), developed with Yeongpung Electronics, which showed lyrics in a monitor, the road for the popularity of noraebang was opened. It took one year for the noraebang boom to reach Seoul from Busan via Masan and Daegu.
—————–

Interesting to hear that the teacher presented the student-style singing together as the “older” style replaced by noraebangs, while I guess it could be argued that it may have been a recent development of a modern Korea as well. Now if Keith Howard of SOAS was reading this he might have a word or two to say, but let me just suggest that it should also be possible to maintain that noraebang reproduces the Korean tradition of singing alone.

By: Micah

Micah — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 20:17:12 +0000

Konrad! I’ve been reading your postings, particularly the ones about your study in Seoul this summer, with great interest. I especially sympathized with this one. My experience with those narratives of “national virtue” was that they often result from feelings of being threatened, and that when people start to feel more relaxed, they are less likely to feel the compulsion to lecture.

At least in the cases of Japanese and Korean classes I’ve taken, though, the classroom runs the risk of becoming a place not for instruction in a language but for the performance of normative ethnonational belonging. I guess that I have just learned to “read through” or “read around” performances of that sort, and not to challenge or probe unless I think there is a chance of getting somewhere.

Having said all that, it’s great that you’ve got a language instructor who’s willing to be so open and to tell you what’s on her mind. Reading her account of groups singing in restaurants reminded me of the first trip I made to Seoul. A friend took me to a 茶房, and we sat there enjoying our tea. The group next to us was enjoying some cake and before we even knew it they had put some on a plate and sent it over to us. It’s hard to imagine that kind of use of public space in any large city in the US.

It seems to me that if you don’t like alcohol or tobacco, then the best thing to do would be to look for other people who share your tastes. Incidentally, in Korea, I found that even time spent in chain coffee shops could be educational. I remember going to a very poorly patronized 도토루 in Seoul (are there still any there?) and watching a fascinating clash of cafe cultures at work: The middle-aged male patrons that day showed strong resistance to the idea of waiting to pick up their own orders and clearing away their own trays, and finally a staff member had to do these tasks for them.

By: Derek

Derek — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 17:45:49 +0000

Ditto for me here. Those of us that refuse to drink, smoke, or be around those doing the same will never be able to experience a major sub-set of whatever culture we happen to be living in. Them’s the breaks, kid. I actually think I might enjoy karaoke if could be completely separated from the alcohol/tobocco, but it can’t/won’t so I’ll just have to live without it.

The part about ‘our culture has a unique love of music/singing’ made me laugh. I hadn’t heard that about Koreans, but I’ve heard that same comment from Chinese, Hawaiians, and probably half a dozen other nationalities.