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Once the sun goes down and city lights start to go on, it becomes apparent how few lights are on behind the windows of apartments lining Sinheung-ro, the main road running through central Seoul's Haebangchon (HBC) neighborhood. Gentrification is hitting this area, and many of its residents are worried.
After more than 26 years in its current location, Phillies is moving out and reopening nearby. The restaurant-pub has undergone ownership changes many times and gone through a few rebrandings and expansions, but it has been a fixture of central Seoul's Haebangchon neighborhood since opening in 1997.
The year of Bovver has come to an end. The British skinhead, known to his friends only as Bovver, a Cockney word for violence, has left the country after a whirlwind year here. He shook up the local underground music scene, helping to energize it as it emerged out of the pandemic while also making plenty of friends and enemies.
Jennifer Ward has been popping up more frequently all over Seoul's underground music scene lately. She plays guitar for the bands Sour Mango and Oily Rag, but her own project, Lucy Valentine, is also gaining a lot of attention.
American singer-songwriter Geoffrey Lewis is three quarters of the way through his “Unions” series of EPs, with the third volume having been released at the end of June. “I wanted to make a proper album, which to me is 12 songs,” he told The Korea Times. “These days people just put out singles or small EPs, but I wanted to accomplish 12 songs that are meant to be together, creating what I consider to be my first full album.”