Punk Bands From Across Asia Converge in Gwangju, South Korea

Gwangju, South Korea isn’t New Haven. But on a Saturday night in the Buk district, inside a basement punk club called Club Boojik, the energy felt familiar in ways that mattered.

Yang Hong-Joon, the frontman of local punk band Dirty Rockhon, opened his set by telling the crowd he’d been thinking hard about how to live. He’d landed on an answer: money. His suggestion to everyone packed into the neon-lit room was to go buy lottery tickets after the show. Then he paused and turned the question back on the room: could foreign visitors even play the lotto in South Korea?

Yeah! the crowd shouted.

Not that it changed anyone’s plans for the night.

A Punk Community That Travels

The bill at Club Boojik on April 11 ran seven bands deep, pulling in acts from Gwangju alongside visitors from Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. JEMSON came from Malaysia. KrankyDoodle made the trip from Singapore. The Pandan Wangi came up from Indonesia. The local lineup included Dirty Rockhon, Monkey Pee Quartet, and TWOFIVE.

Mior “Myo” Luqman Hakim of JEMSON spent set breaks headbanging through glam rock riffs and lobbying for an afterparty, despite having a show the next day in Seoul. That’s the thing about nights like this one. Some shows feel like a stop on a schedule. Others feel like something you don’t want to leave.

This was the second kind.

Kim Hee-Jong of Monkey Pee Quartet struck a chord and let the sound bounce off terraced bench seats and decades of band posters. One poster on the wall dated back to 2015, featuring Monkey Pee Quartet’s name. That’s over a decade of the band playing Club Boojik specifically, which gives you some sense of what the venue means to punk subculture in this part of South Korea.

Kim, speaking in Korean into the mic, told the crowd that the local acts weren’t the main event tonight. Not false modesty. Practical math. The visiting bands had plane tickets to pay for.

They Played Like It

An hour before showtime, Club Boojik felt low-key. Band members joked across language barriers and passed around snacks. Someone would start humming a riff, another musician would pick it up, and for a few minutes the whole room was a loose, multi-lingual jam session. Air filters buzzed in the background. It had the feel of a house party that hadn’t started yet.

Then the stage lights came on.

Whatever easy calm had filled the room earlier burned off fast. Sweat flew. The sound technician moved through the stage area like he was chasing something, adjusting levels until the mix landed exactly right. The air filters were still running, presumably, but you couldn’t hear them anymore. The music drowned everything that wasn’t the music.

KrankyDoodle’s Razmy Moh and the rest of the visiting acts clearly understood the assignment. When you’re a band that’s flown across borders on what’s probably a tight budget, you don’t pace yourself. You go all the way in, every set. The Southeast Asian punk and indie scene has grown steadily more interconnected, and nights like this one show why: shared stages build something that persists after the show ends.

The reporting from this piece originally appeared in the New Haven Independent, written by Jisu Sheen, who recently relocated from New Haven to Gwangju and is covering arts and culture there for the Independent and Midbrow.

What It Means From Here

New Haven has its own version of this scene. The DIY music ecosystem that produces nights like the one at Club Boojik doesn’t require much infrastructure. A basement, decent sound, and bands willing to travel will do it. What it does require is a community willing to show up, and crowds willing to stay until the last band packs up.

Yang Hong-Joon, back in his Bob Marley tee, probably didn’t need lottery winnings to feel like the night was worth something. The room told him that part.

The visiting bands caught their flights. Club Boojik is still there, in the Buk district, poster from 2015 still on the wall.