Seoul · Mapo
Hongdae live houses
A student district with dozens of basement rooms, four bands a night, a few euros a ticket
Friday and Saturday, when the streets themselves become a stage
The area around Hongik University has been Seoul's music district since the 1990s: dozens of basement live houses within a few hundred metres, booking indie, punk, hip hop and electronic acts, most of them cheap and most of them programming four acts a night.
This is the upstream end of an industry the rest of the world consumes as a finished export product, and hearing it in a room that holds two hundred people is an entirely different proposition.
The detail
Good to know
- District
- Around Hongik University
- Venues
- Dozens of small live houses
- Tickets
- Usually under 25 euros
- Weekends
- Street performances from about 20:00
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