Seoul is one of the largest cities on Earth and as such has parties happening almost everyday. As a Yonsei student you will be given several opportunities for free admission to clubs and also chances to interact with club promoters to run the city. Here are some of the top clubbing promotion networks I encountered while in Seoul:
Krome Entertainment: Organized in 2010 and also constantly planning parties all around Seoul
Sky Events: Social Korea Youth, connecting students from all the Universities in Seoul
Some friends and I heard about Club Day in Hongdae (홍대): a college town near an art school called Hongik University. Club Day is an event that occurs in the last Friday of each month and on this night you can get a wristband that allows you to club hop all night long.
We decided to take the subway to Hongdae and boy was it crowded. Riding the subway at night is way more busy than during the day and all the club goers made it even more crowded. We literally had to push to get on and some lady actually fell over when the subway started moving. Luckily, Hongik University is just one subway stop away from Sinchon.
The first club we went into Harlem was pretty big. Nothing like Barfly. This club had two floors. Oddly, many of the people inside weren’t dancing. They were just standing around or shuffling. We didn’t care though we came there to party and get loose haha so we jumped in the middle of the dance floor and started dancing. My friend immediately drew a crowd and throughout the night many locals would come observe us and then join in and dance for a few minutes. I had a blast!
It was pretty awesome hearing K-Pop songs in the club even if we were the only ones dancing to it. One cool thing about clubbing in Korea is that they don’t discriminate against guys. Guys pay the same cover charge and you even get a free drink. That never happens for guys in the U.S.A. The drinks were pretty good too!
After we had our fun in Harlem we walked across the street and entered NB I with our wristband. It was a Hip-Hop club as well, but this club was fully packed.
We had fun in there as well. This club was even bigger than Harlem, but way more busy. The crowd was fun and somehow all our friends from campus ended up here as well and before we knew it we had almost 20 friends in the club. The crowd here was also more lively and actually dancing so that was cool as well.
We danced and danced until our feet hurt so much and we grew tired and decided to leave and head home. Getting home wouldn’t be easy though. It was past midnight so the subways were closed. Grabbing a taxi driver from Hongdae to Sinchon is hard because the distance isn’t too far away so taxi drivers don’t want to drive you. Another issue was that we were a group of five and taxi drivers hate taking lots of people because they get less money this way.
I learned a valuable lesson this night though. If a taxi cab is vacant just jump inside and tell the driver where to go. If you make it inside they are less likely to refuse your request and will most likely take you to your destination. This could have saved us hours on a ride back home so I thought I would put that piece of advice on here. We ended up taking a courtesy shuttle home and were lucky our friend was feeling generous and picked up the tab.
Overall it was a great night though. I look forward to the next Club Day in Hongdae 🙂
Carlos Travels 