Our Nation: A Korean Punk Rock Community (review)

The Korean punks in this film by Timothy Tangherlini and Stephen Epstein outwardly resemble punks found in other parts of the world: bleached spiky hair, dog collars around the neck, studded wristbands, thrash-boots, ripped jeans, anthemic T-shirts, and other forms of punk rock style. But what lies beneath the surface of these traditional punk trappings that makes Korean punks different from punks in Olympia, Washington, New York City, Tokyo, or any other place in the world? What is the relationship between punk rock and the formation of a community of young people that inhabit the music venue known as Club Drug in the art school district of Seoul called Hongnik? This film explores these issues, allowing the fans and musicians that comprise the "Club Drug family" to share their experiences and viewpoints, with minimal narration from the filmmakers. The film is nicely shot, with excellent editing, interesting vignettes, and catchy visual effects that are well placed and not overbearing. Tangherlini is a veteran of this sort of edgy ethnographic filmmaking, having produced a previous film that provides insights into the daily lives of paramedics (Talking Trauma: Storytelling Among Paramedics [1994]).

Our Nation also deals with the pressures of life in an urban setting, focusing on the constraints and expectations placed on young adults in contemporary Korean society. The film begins with the drummer of punk band Crying Nut, Yi Sang-hyok, explaining that the Korean punks at Club Drug call their music Choson punk instead of just punk. The film then quickly cuts to shots of a typical, monolithic, Seoul apartment building, as the Crying Nut's signature track is played in the background (Mal tal lee ja [Let's Ride the Horse]). This opening scene resembles footage from the beginning of the film Rude Boy (1980), which featured the British rock group The Clash and explored the importance of the original punk movement in the lives of British youth in the late 1970s. (Rude Boy was the official British entry in Berlin Film Festival of 1980.) Like postwar British apartment buildings, the buildings in Seoul are frighteningly indistinct and convey the alienation and anonymity of urban existence. Similar to Rude Boy, Our Nation attempts to capture the appeal of punk culture from the dual perspectives of those who play the music and of the fans. By focusing on Club Drug and its bands and clientele, the film shows how the club is a source for a folk community, a microculture amid the often dehumanizing and frenetic swirl of modern Seoul. This sense of the club as an oasis of camaraderie and understanding for youth is emphasized by the use of interviews with young people about their lives and scenes of them interacting at the club, interspersed with contrasting shots of endless traffic, soaring commercial and residential buildings, and huge crowds packed into the city's shopping districts.

In addition to the views of fans and musicians, Our Nation adds a third perspective of what might be called "interested outsiders," which include Yonsei sociologist Cho Hae Joang, who was conducting field research on Korean underground music at Café Pang near Yonsei University when I was a student there in 1998 and 1999. At the time, it was somewhat surprising to find punk rock in Korea, because the huge business conglomerates known as chaebol dominate the music and fashion scene there in such a way as to promote a homogenized aesthetic. Pressures to conform to societal norms also would seem to impede the sort of individual expression punk embraces, so the existence of a Korean underground music scene drew me to investigate Café Pang and Club Drug. I found that young Koreans were not only playing Western punk rock, but that they were writing and performing their own songs as well.

As Our Nation shows, Korean punks especially enjoy the atmosphere at these...