It was a year ago last November, while checking out the skunklabel site for show information that I happened across a little blurb: "Rux, The Patients, The Great Van, Going Merry Punk Rock Club Daejon."

I couldn't believe it. After making the abyssmal mistake of moving to Geum-san 'for a change' I'd put myself an extra 45 min. out of Seoul from where I'd been in Cheong-ju and my new schedule made it almost impossible for me to make it out to the Sunday night MFCrew shows. Weekend shows in Daejon, a mere 40 minutes from where I was, would be perfect.

To my misfortune I found out that this show had been the previous Friday. Curious but still uncertain as to whether this was a one-night thing or something looking to become a permanent fixture in Daejon I made sure to be there the next Friday night at 7ish with no idea what, if anything, would be going on. Sure enough my hopes were confirmed and it turned out to indeed be a punk rock club. I managed to check out The Great Van who later that night I would discover to be a re-named Burning Hepburn (the name they have returned to earlier this year). They played a few originals and mixed in some Rancid covers ('old friend', 'roots radicals, and 'ruby soho') for the ten people there. All of which were Korean, except me - a fact which, after some bad experiences in Geum-san, was a little unnerving. Not sure how I'd be welcomed when the music ended I decided to grab a few 2000W cafris and hope for the best (I think these moments may have been the first time in my life when seeing a 'SHARP' banner was actually a comforting experience).

As it turned out they were all super friendly and between my shit Korean and the little English (along with some help from one or two people there that spoke English pretty well) we managed to talk, hang out and get plastered for almost the whole night through. As a note to foreigners living outside of Seoul, if you happen to see a show in your town, don't worry about how they'll react to you being the only foreigner there-most of the times they're just happy to see some new faces, whatever colour they might be.

Throughout the year I saw a number of shows there and had quite a few more of those cheap cafris. Good times all around. Unfortunately most of those shows had really poor sound quality and almost zero attendance. It was without surprise then, when in mid-October Jong-ro (The Sweet Guerillaz) told me one night at Pearl Jam in Cheong-ju that they'd be playing at Going Merry's final show in two weeks. To be honest, by this time e-mails from the people I had met there about future shows and parties had become so irregular and sparse that several times over the course of the summer I had assumed that they'd already folded.

So then weeks before they would have been celebrating their one year anniversary if the dice had landed the other way, I boarded the bus to Daejon once more for what would be the last show at Going Merry. Rux, Burning Hepburn, The Sweet Guerillaz and Noize(y)(?). I can't say I was super enthused. As much as I loved the place and the people their, GoingMerry shows had been nothing to get excited about. If anything I was more looking forward to getting drunk with everyone after. I think the only two really successful shows they had were the first one and the Hat Trickers show in February.

As it turns out this would be one of the most fun shows I've been to all year. The place was surprisingly full, a fact I attribute to Rux being one of the few bands still located in Hong-dae that can draw outside of Seoul based on reputation alone (and the new album.) I'd say the majority of the people there were there for the first time, a sadly ironic twist of fate.

Noize turned out to be a solid emo-core band, and local at that, marking maybe the second band out of Daejon (that at least I know of). They had a lot of people bobbing their heads and singing along as well. They ended up closing with a decent Hi-standard cover whose name I forget.

The Sweet Guerillaz were a big surprise. I had seen them many times in Cheong-ju since their inception in January (?), and watched them grow from a fairly shitty MFCrew opener to a solid punk rock band and, after this show, I think one of the best pop-punk bands to come around in Korea in a long time. Their set was really high energy and got the floor going with mosh and circle pits, sing-alongs and stage dives. It was weird, because as crazy as some of the shows in Cheongju have gotten this year I think they got a better reaction there than I'd ever seen in their own hometown.

It's hard to measure who were the heroes of the night, Burning Hepburn and Rux both tore the place up. Burning Hepburn/ The Great Van had been pretty lacklustre in times gone by, and while I like them a lot they wouldn't normally rank as one of my favourites in Korea. But they were incredible this night. It was like seeing 13Steps in Cheong-ju for the first time, hometown heroes playing on their own turf and the kids just eating it up. If you've never seen them, they can be somewhat reminiscent of Rux (albeit with a more skacore element) in that they intersperse their sets with a lot of really catchy, melodic anthems. The crowd lit up to 'Punx not Dead', 'No Punx, No Life' and especially to 'Forever Citizen', a Daejon- FC fight song that apparently is or was the official song of the local football club. Nobody stopped moving for any of their songs and in between songs you could hardly hear what the singer was saying as 'Burning Hepburn' and 'Goingmerry' chants/handclaps kept going up, each time getting progressive louder, by the time it finished we were sweaty as hell, hanging off each other and stil chanting 'goingmerry' almost right up until Rux started. You almost forgot that most of the tables and chairs, the foosball table, the beer cooler and all the kitchenware had been sold off, making it a somewhat sobering experience walking back in there for the first time in a few months. They really looked as if they could've carried the weight of a Daejon scene on their backs for years to come.

Rux is a band that as much heralded as they are, and as much as they are probably my favourite band ( or at least one of them) has been hit and miss with me live. Maybe I just have bad luck but I think I've seen them give some of the worst, most disinterested shows of any band in Korea. On the other hand I've seen them put on, hands down, some of the best, their big show at Rolling Hall in the summer of 2006 is one that keeps coming to mind. Their performance on this night was squarely in-line with the latter category. From the first few notes to the minute they ended the shit flew and didn't stop. In classic Rux show style almost everyone there was singing along to every word, even while carrying stage divers and jumping all over each other. The set consisted mainly of the older classics with the only song from 'Ruckus Army' being 'Our Stage, Our Life'. I think it was truly the best I've ever seen them. If there was any doubt about why they have the respect and stature that they do, they were completely washed away. Afterwards Jong-hee signed a few copies of 'Ruckus Army' for some of the straight looking girls that had been there. Cool guy that he is, he didn't even put his shirt back on before signing. Afterwards eveyone headed out for some samgyeopsal and soju, marking the end of the experiment that was Goingmerry on probably the best note it could have gone out on.

It's probably necessary to say a few things about why it went under so quickly. The obvious answer is that if SkunkHell, with the reputation and 'indie' cred that it has, set in the heart of Hongdae often struggles just to get by, then a punk rock club anywhere else is going to have a hell of a time getting enough people in the door to keep it open.

If you're looking for something more specific there are a few things that you might want to consider. First, GoingMerry was set up as a live music venure primarily and a bar second. The seating was uncomfortable, there was little to no menu and not much selection for alcohol, meaning that if it were to survive, it would have to do so solely through money made on shows. Unfortunately there is all of two punk bands that I know of from Daejon, Burning Hepburn and Noize. As someone who from time to time has put on shows in Cheongju I can tell you first hand that it can be quite a pain in the ass trying to find bands from Seoul who are willing to leave Hongdae for a night and play to a smaller, less-familiar audience. In short, making ends meet by putting on shows is pretty difficult if you don't have bands to play them.

Promotion-wise Daejon is a logistically difficult city. Unlike other Korean cities that have one or two centers of nightlife geared towards young people, Daejon has about 5 or 6, each more than a 5000\ cab ride from each other in a city without a subway system. This can make getting people, whether fans or just curious, in the door pretty hard.

At any rate, as I said if skunk has its problems where it is, even had the aforemention problems had been different the outcome may have stayed the same. I think in all fairness, a live venue outside of Seoul probably has to be functional and competetive as a bar first and a place to have shows second. Take nothing away from the guys (and girl) in Burning Hepburn though, they staked a lot and took a huge risk on something that from the start everyone knew was going to be an uphill struggle and that's about as 'punk rock' as it gets, even when it doesn't pan out. Some of the Daejeon boys at a show in March 2007.