[Korea Encounters] Korea Times goes go-go dancing in 1971

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Korea EncountersKorea Times goes go-go dancing in 1971

Posted : 2018-05-01 17:33

Updated : 2018-05-02 13:47

A March 21, 1971, photo in The Korea Times shows two long-haired dancers, describing the male as "in a trance, far from reality and absorbed in his own special world." / Korea Times file

By Matt VanVolkenburg

In the 1950s Western-style social dance gained popularity in Seoul, but, lacking experience with such contact between the sexes, many Koreans perceived it as lewd and decadent. After Park Chung-hee's 1961 coup, numerous men and women of the "dance tribe" were paraded before the public and prosecuted by military tribunals.

By 1969, however, restrictions had lifted and a variety of venues for listening to live music appeared in Seoul just as American-influenced rock and soul music began to gain popularity. The freestyle dancing that accompanied this music had evolved at the Hollywood club Whisky A Go Go, where crowds were led by dancing "go-go girls," a practice that first appeared in Korea at clubs for U.S. soldiers.

The first Korean go-go troupe, The Spookies, was formed in April 1968 and, after meeting "godfather of Korean rock" Shin Joong-hyun, began performing on US military stages. They were unveiled to Korean audiences at a series of Shin's concerts in October 1969 where they "shook their whole bodies like someone having a stroke."

That November, TBC-TV introduced a show featuring young bands and dancers called "1,2,3,Go." It soon acquainted Koreans with The Rhythms, a seven-member go-go dancing troupe of teenage girls from Yongsan Garrison's Seoul American High School.

Referred to as "no-touch" or "soul" dancing in the media, the program's "violent shaking of bodies" was criticized for its suggestiveness, and in late March 1970 it was cancelled.

Go-go dancing continued to flourish at concerts and developed in tandem with the live music scene, however. In April 1970 weekly magazine Sunday Seoul showcased The Rhythms at a three-day-long "Go-Go Gala Party" at Seoul Citizens' Hall, but it was in Seoul's nightclubs that go-go dance truly thrived.

The entrance to the go-go club Tomorrow, shown in The Korea Times in March 21, 1971, is decorated, "to make people feel as if they were entering a world of fantasy." / Korea Times file

In February 1970 the Cosmos Room started a "go-go time" on Tuesday nights while the Midopa Cabaret opened a "go-go room"; both preceded their transformation into go-go clubs by May.?The Las Vegas club soon advertised psychedelic lights, "Explosive music!" and a dancefloor where customers could "work off the pent-up frustration and anger of youth!"

Despite high entrance fees, the new experiences go-go clubs offered drew customers, particularly young entertainers, who by summer 1970 were gaining media attention for dancing all night, raising the ire of their elders. A crackdown on long hair in the late summer of 1970 expanded to briefly include go-go dancers as well, but despite this go-go clubs flourished.

Amid criticism that most clubs did not offer a "true" go-go experience, in January 1971 the Chosun Hotel opened a lavishly decorated all-night go-go club called Tomorrow. Two months later, The Korea Times visited the club, which it described as "un-Korean" and a "very unusual world."?

The entrance was decorated so as to make people feel "as if they were entering a world of fantasy." Inside, the Filipino band Wild Five "elevate[d] the mood with electric sound almost dazzling." The author concluded, "Such places must be the paradise for youths who want to escape from the unwanted intervention of their elders."

Some enjoyed it, with one quoted as saying, "I think it's good to come here when you are depressed." Conversely, one girl, almost sobbing, said that she didn't know why she had come, crying "I really don't want to be a bad child."

The music stopped at 3 a.m., followed by an hour of waiting for curfew to lift before most customers went to the haejangguk restaurants of Cheongjin-dong to eat.?

Ironically, it may have been coverage by several newspapers of Tomorrow, full of dancers ignoring the curfew as it was, that led authorities to order it and other clubs to close earlier in order to stop the all-night revelry. So began a struggle between authorities and all-night dancing that would last decades.

Matt VanVolkenburg has a master's degree in Korean studies from the University of Washington. He is the blogger behind populargusts.blogspot.kr.