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Published: November 13th 2006
Street in Seoul
There's bound to be several Norebong signs in this picture.Alright, so karaoke is huge over here. Maybe some of you knew that, maybe some of you thought you knew. Karaoke isn't just for a random Tuesday night at a Mexican bar like Amigo's with cheap Tequila shots and townies doing their impressions of Barbara Streisand and Ray Charles. Oh no, my friends, one need not wait for Karaoke Night at the local dive just to "mix things up a bit." Karaoke is its own business around here. Any night of the week, at practically anytime. And, no, you don't have to know which bars have karaoke, all you need to do is walk to the closest Norebong which are more common than 7-11s.
A Norebong is a venue set up strictly for the karaoke "lover". I put lover in quotes because I'm not sure the limits on the usages of Norebongs. Since there's not such a thing in America (that I'm aware of) the closest thing I can compare a Norebong to is a hotel/motel. Some hotels are cheap and run down. You can get a room for under $30 bucks and you get what you pay for. Other hotels are very nice. Rooms run upwards of $100 plus,
Korean Bacon
Basically pork that they cut up and grill in front of you. Dipped in a little salt, this stuff tastes delicious! and you need walk no further than the hotel lobby to make an educated guess at the price of the room. Well, Norebongs are very similar in this respect. You can get a cheap room for 15,000 or 18,000 won (~ 15-20 dollars), bring your own Soju and beer, and sing along to the midi instrumental versions of your favorite songs on beat up yard sale furniture. Or you can go to a nice Norebong, with a fancy lobby (think of a smaller version of the inside of a Ritz, or Hilton), pay 35,000 to 40,000 won and get a comfortable sized room where you're not allowed to bring in your own alcohol, but you can sing along to better versions of your favorite songs with homemade Korean music videos playing on a big screen, while your friends play complementary tambourines lounging on plush couches surrounding a marble table (no seriously, a giant marble table). Don't worry, any Norebong you go to will provide you with your own private room, 2 microphones (for duets of course) and a standard disco ball hanging from the ceiling... standard.
Well this past weekend, SLI (the school where I work) hosted a staff dinner for all the employees. All the Korean teachers and supervisors were there along with all the foreign teachers and the boss paid for the whole thing, though he failed to make an appearance. It was a lovely dinner of Korean bacon, kimchi, cabbage salad, sesame leaves, and a bowl of cold noodles that one of the supervisors bought for me because he said I needed to try it (it also had a hard boiled egg, some green stuff, some red stuff, and tasted a little like vinegar - but ultimately didn't taste to bad, though the noodles were a bit more chewy that I'm used to). Afterwards most of the gang all headed to... where else, but a norebong! There were so many of us we had to split up into two rooms, and somehow it became the Koreans in one room and the foreign teachers in another. My buddy Warren did not like this segregation, so he promptly joined the Koreans in their room. I liked the idea of moving around, so I joined him. I listened to a couple of the Korean girls sing some K-pop songs complete with Hangul (Korean alphabet) on the screen (so I couldn't even
try to sing along). Then all of a sudden I see the next song is "Anarchy in the UK" by the Sex Pistols. Warren grabs a mic, stands up, and starts belting the lyrics at the top of his lungs! "I wanna BE anarchy!!" Screaching "anarchy" out as long and as loud as he can! I look over at the Koreans, all but one of whom have ridiculous looks of disgust on their face while plugging their ears. I crack up laughing as Warren finishes up his torture, calmly says Thank You and then returns to the room with the foreign teachers. I stay for a couple songs, plug in a Boyz to Men song to sing in an attempt to calm the Koreans letting them know that we all don't scream when we sing. I realize I don't know the tune, and can't sing anything but the chorus despite the lyrics on the screen. They smile and clap at my attempt and I bow out gracefully to return to the foreign teachers room.
Well probably the sweetest thing about these norebongs, other than the privacy and the lack of caring going on, is that at the end of the song they give you a score on how well you sang the song. Most of the scores I had seen were 86's, and 89's with a couple of the better singers getting 94's and 95's. Well towards the end, the new guy, Torre, (who actually worked at SLI last year, went home for a couple months, got bored, and came back to teach again at SLI), grabs a mic and I see that he's about to sing Muse - Time is Running Out. Well, without hesitation I grab the 2nd mic to join him and together we belt out a perfect score of 100. Yeah, we nailed it. I felt like jumping up and declaring "Now THAT'S how you effing NOREBONG!" while slamming the mic on the floor... but I didn't. So now you have an idea about Norebongs in Korea, and no, they're not weird. For some reason they make sense in Korea. They make sense.
You can't push it underground...
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Klass
non-member comment
My karaoke hero!
I can totally picture you representin' at these Norebongs. You're so hilarious! Keep the great updates coming Shawn Lo or should we call you Cee-Lo on the mic?