A Night in Bukchang-dong

The first translation we bring is a true tale of woe, wherein we find a once-proud rock of the Korean drinking establishment laid low, and finally done in by a truly dirty deed.

Thanks go here to the Munhwa Ilbo.

Midnight on the 2nd. Seoul’s once-representative pleasure street, the packed-with-drinking-houses Bukchang-dong, which used to be busier at night than in the day, now has no partner to equal it in boredom. As far as the oft-heard phrase ‘Bukchang-dong style’ goes, the bars here, which used to carry so much competitive power, have lately had many fruitless nights. It’s a place where taking a day off is the usual state of affairs. As every day the total price of businesses for sale is over W1,000,000,000, [~$1,200,000] the once prosperous Bukchangdong has been hit by a typhoon of depression, economic stagnation, and the ‘affair of the chaebol director’s revenge’.

It’s nearly impossible to find customers here. This writer went to Bukchang-dong at about 11:30 on the 2nd. Just as in the days of old, it was the time for boozers across the city to gather together for the first round, but the street was silent. A street barker, gone out on the street in the hopes of somehow pulling in the nowhere-to-be-seen customers, caught my attention. To the people who occasionally passed by he said ‘come have some fun’ and waved his hand to invite them, but there was nobody who took even one step towards the bar.

As the location of Hanhwa Group chairman Kim Seung-yeon’s violent revenge is being discovered to actually be in Bukchang-dong, the street here is filling up not with drinkers hunting for a bar but only by reporters looking for a story and police officers on patrol. Recently, police patrols from the squads in this jurisdiction have become frequent, and in addition, in search of a story about the police coming out to search the area, reporters are busying themselves through every street. This is understood to be the reason that people off for a drink are wary of Bukchang-dong, which is trying to attract the eyes and ears of society. In the face of this failure, a few establishments are thinking outside the box to present themselves as “discount stores” but it is beyond their ability to pull in customers.

Kim, 27, a worker at establishment “B”, complained that “these days in Bukchang-dong it’s half reporters and half cops” and “finding customers is really tough.” Park, 32, at establishment “N”, said, “being on TV like this, I wonder who would come” and “with no business turning up there are many times when we close the doors all day.”

Born in the 1980s, there was a time when Bukchang-dong was Seoul’s top spot for pleasure-seeking. Starting in the late 1990s the ‘Bukchang-dong style’ type of nightlife gained widespread fame. In fact, on either side of the year 2000 Bukchang-dong had achieved the feat of being crowded with over 100 bars. A representative of one such establishment said, “When business was good every place was in the black and recording sales of 5 to 10 million won a day,” and “as business slowly decreased there are now only 17 places left.” It’s not only drinking establishments as regular restaurants are also feeling nervous. They are fretting, worrying over whether there will be repercussions on their businesses from the ‘Hanhwa Affair’.

Also, as Seoul has set a target of attracting 12 million foreign tourists, and even though foreign tourists can already eat in cheap stores, support is coming out for the administration of a “Korean Food Zone” and as it may or may not have positive effects the atmosphere is tense. Chinese restaurant owner Choi, 58, worries that “with the changing of Bukchang-dong putting such stress on the commercial power of the drinking establishments this will be the area’s deathblow.”