myKOREA with James Lee
As part of our myKOREA series, we’ll be asking someone on the local scene to share their journey through Korean culture by naming their favourite musicians, movies, and artists. We’ll also be asking them to tell us about one more thing of their choosing.
Taking part in this week’s myKOREA is community artist James Lee. James used to run the Hongdae venue Goinmool (Hippytokki). He is interested in all things indie and most recently wrapped up the Delay Relay Shoegaze Festival 2025, an indie music festival focused on the local Korean indie/underground shoegaze scene.
Here, he shares his favourite things about Korean culture.
Music: CLUB BBANG/Channel 1969
Since I used to run a venue, I will go with my favourite venue. The last weekend of the Delay Relay Shoegaze Festival was wrapped up on Feb 1st and 2nd, 2025, so I want to mention the two venues freshest on my mind, Club Bbang and Channel 1969.
Club Bbang is pretty much the oldest live music venue in the Hongdae scene (est 1994) and has been part of the local shoegaze scene from the beginning. All shoegaze-y teams should play here at least once! Bbang features all varieties of music on a Wednesday through Sunday schedule and accepts new artists, so you can get a pulse on what younger musicians who are interested in the live music scene are playing these days. The sound here is solid, and the venue can fit 100+, although the crowd varies from day to day. What's great about Bbang is that a show here can be hit or miss, which makes it more old-school. You have to dig to find what you like, and you don't always find it ㅡ that's life!
As for Channel 1969, this is also a fantastic venue. We spent the last day of the Delay Relay Festival, plus the festival afterparty, here. Shoegaze sounds amazing here. It's got a larger bar section and the venue does a lot of deejaying as well as live gigs. It's got a more scene vibe to it, and they always seem to be exploring new live programming or event planning. Really a fantastic venue in Yeonnamdong, Seoul. I also want to give a shout-out to all the venues that participated in Delay Relay: Senggi Studio, Club Ilmare, Infinity Club and Baby Doll. These are all great venues, and they all have their own respective style and character, which makes the live club scene here in Seoul so much fun when checking out a show.
On-Screen: Life is Beautiful (2002)
I was going to say Skibidi Toilet but that's not Korean, although there are a lot of universal themes that show up in it. There was a time that I wanted to make a musical and was watching just musicals, and this one is solid: Life Is Beautiful (2022), director Choi Kookhee. It's about looking back and searching for something that you feel you missed out on, like a choose your own adventure book where you get to reread it and choose another path. Well, not choose another path, but just kind of curiously peek into what happened to those who were a significant part of your own personal history but aren't any more...a kind of "What did I miss out on? I want an update!" curiosity that I think a lot of people can relate to.
Art: Buncheong
So, this is a type of traditional Korean ceramic. What is great about this style is it has a more earthy quality to it compared to more visually refined styles of ceramic, so is possibly more appealing to those with more alternative approaches to aesthetics??? Possibly... The subtle skill required to make something whimsical and unassuming that's what I like about it. Art (like anything) acquires skill over time, but what can be lost with an increase in skill (or what may even be described as the crutch of skill) is that freshness, that awkwardness that gives something its charm. 분청사기 balances the garage-y aesthetic (to borrow from popular music) and technical virtuosity, so I think it's a good
One more thing: Gandharva
There is this band, Gandharva. I heard they will be playing at the 2025 anniversary show at 작은물 (을지로, tentatively SAT 3/29/2025). This is really just an amazing Korean psychedelic rock band. They rarely play (hopefully that will change in the future) but have a sound that feels like meandering through the misty mountains, collecting twigs and chopping dry branches with a small handheld axe, or searching here and there for wild mushrooms...something like that. The Korean strands of mysticism and psychedelia that inform and weave through the history and culture here make for an enjoyable trip, so any time you can get a glimpse of that, I really recommend it. It's something Korean that you won't get anywhere else except in Korea, especially when considering aspects that are rooted in the physical land itself, a kind of (borrowing from Gaston Bachelard) poetics of space. Enjoy!