Bang Culture

Bang is the Korean word for "room" and it's a word that dominates and pervades Korean life. It's used as suffix and is connected to places where locals and (sometimes ESL teachers) like to have all kinds of weird fun. It's pretty hard to come to Korea and not become immersed in bang culture.

Da-Bang: I have yet to go to one of these places but they're basically coffee shops where you pay extra to have the waitress flatter you. It's unusual in cities like Incheon or Seoul but it is a pretty common way for young ladies to make money in the countryside.

DVD Bang: This is a room with wipe clean sofas, tissues, a large TV, and an extensive movie selection. Sometimes it's used by those who just want to catch a flick, but more often than not it's used by young Korean couples eager for alone time outside of the watchful eyes of parents and guardians. Kind of sketchy.

PC Bang: These are twenty-four intenet cafes. People come to these for gaming marathons(usually Starcraft) and at least a few times a year people die from exhaustion in a PC Bang. Basically they play until they quite literally can't.

Game Bang: Just a giant room open twenty four hours a day where you can choose from any number of board games(including scrabble and snakes and ladders). These are cheap and because they're open at all hours, many ESL teachers choose to crash here on a night out.

Jimijibang: I love these! These are Korean saunas. You walk into a Korean sauna, pay eight dollars, and for twenty-four hours you can stay in the jimijibang. Many broke travellers sleep on the floor or the benches of a jimijibang rather than shell out money for a hotel or hostel. Picture three steam rooms and five or six different flat pools of water with orchids floating everwhere. Each pool of water is a different tempature and you're supposed to change pools every so often.

Nore-Bang: Twenty-four house Korean Karokee joints. Anytime I've gone out up for dinner with my Korean Co-teachers they always want to go sing at nore-bang after. The songs that you can choose from at Nore Bang are always English songs, but they're really random and weird English songs. Songs that were maybe played for three months on the radio in the Western world are Karokee classics here. It can be very weird to hear your Korean co-teacher suggest a sing along to a band like Marcy Playground.