An essential playlist: charting the rise of Korean indie music
With popular culture blooming under the social relaxation ushered into South Korea as their Fifth Republic’s military rule passed into President Roh Tae-woo’s liberal Sixth in 1987, Seoul’s Hongdae area west of the city became the country’s epicentre for street art and emerging club culture, owing in large part to the local Hongik University’s prestigious Fine Arts programme and the ensuing creative culture that flourished in the neighbourhood. Music bloomed too. A generation of Korean indie artists taking advantage of the cheap rents and affordable living across the ’90s put the general Mapo District on the national cultural map, spearheaded by Sister’s Barbershop and the more punk-oriented Crying Nut.
A nostalgic romanticism colours this fruitful time in South Korean popular culture. As today’s artists and bohemians look back enviously at Downtown Manhatten’s historic, vibrant creative scene or Camden’s once great organic pull of London’s misfits and mavericks before ruthless corporate developments replaced venues and art spaces with luxury apartments, so too does Hongdae’s halcyon legacy loom large for the current crop of budding musicians smattered across Mangwon-dong, forging their art as best they can against the bitter tides of gentrification and deepening cost of living.
One such artist is Parannoul. A focal point for South Korea’s indie renaissance and headliner for 2022’s lauded Digital Dawn event at Mapo-gu’s Rolling Hall, Parannoul initially crafted his post-rock jangle in bedroom isolation with little idea of the influential sound he’d beckon, producing as many as an album a month during high school.
Receiving poor CSAT results, the standardised tests taken by students required before entry into Higher Education, Parannoul nearly packed the music hustle in to focus on his studies, deciding to offer one last album before turning his academic standing around and dropping ’21’s To See the Next Part of the Dream.
Parannoul’s ‘final’ album struck a chord with disaffected teens who similarly had to navigate the country’s high-pressured schooling expectations and endure the ‘jaesusaeng’ stigma of underachievement. With his lyrical self-deprecation and frank explorations of low self-esteem, the downbeat subject matter and lo-fi capture of his slacker emo, all produced on old music software and vocals recorded with his Samsung Galaxy S5, unwittingly unleashed an inspiring pointer to other budding indie artists who harboured the same sentimental affection for the old Hongdae scene.
First hearing his music while studying in California, Della Zyr cut her musical teeth crafting Parannoul covers on YouTube before wielding her characteristic long-form dream pieces to explore the messy ambiguity of grief on ’22’s Nebulous You, a melancholic but lifting wash of shoegaze folk and boasting Parannoul’s vocals on select tracks.
Shin Gyungwon’s musical foundations reach even further back. Learning the ropes in the city’s hardcore punk scene in ’15, Shin has cycled through various local bands and aliases, including Dead Chunks, Moth Pylon, and FØG, before establishing their most recognised Asian Glow. A myriad of pseudonyms and projects reflects Shin’s disparate hues that bob and ebb among his digital indie haze, capable of harnessing terse bouts of pop cheer as well as blasts of screamo rage. Shin, too, knows the strains that the South Korean school system places on creative ambitions, their musical outlets forever delayed by academic commitments, telling Pitchfork last year: “It’s hard to be in a band: gathering people, finding time, renting practice spaces, rehearsing, it’s all so exhausting.”
Orbiting the likes of Parannoul, Zella Dyr, and Asian Glow is a host of eager indie acts who form the Digital Dawn’s venerated alumni, Brokenteeth, Wapddi, and Fin Fior all instrumental in thrusting their online indie community ‘IRL’s venues and spaces, creating a veritable Seaol music community over a mere ‘scene’. With the rich alternative happening that’s seized the cultural life of Mangwon-dong and beyond, hopefully, the bright rise of South Korean indie may invoke the old days of Hongdae’s pioneering creative spirit.
An introduction to Korean indie music
- Parannoul – ‘Painless’
- Parannoul – ‘Beautiful World’
- Parannoul – ‘Analog Sentimentalism’
- Parannoul – ‘Polaris’
- Asian Glow – ‘m0numental’
- Asian Glow – ‘1110011’
- Wapddi – ‘6v6 Pt. 1 : Thank you for the 7 years’
- Della Zyr – ‘여름: 모호함 속의 너 / 2악장 / 놓아줄 때가 되면 놓아주기 (Concerto)’
- Della Zyr – ‘Pale Blue Dot (지구 혹은 천국)’
- Fin Fior – ‘Am Scared’
- Fin Fior – ‘Moth, to the Moon’
