Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Been There, Taught That]

Been here a month and haven't been to one. Every second business is a realty office or a norae bang, but I haven't had a chance. Split shift and all.

Well, now, if I went and I helped pay for it, let's say, what's the going rate? Does it depend on the number of people? Is it different 60 minutes outside of Seoul than in Seoul? And of course the most important thing to know before going: Are all Noraebangs the same?

[Yaya]

Noraebangs are not the same, some of the more lavish ones have the big screen TVs and better facilities.

The going rate can be anywhere between 12,000 won an hour to 50,000 won an hour depending on size of room and neighborhood.

[crossmr]

12,000?
around konkuk most of them advertise around 7000. Shop around.

[DCJames]

[BS.Dos.]

Noraebangs are not all the same, but the contents of the crappy laminated song books seems to be. Also, don't eat the little fish. They're disgusting. They're only put there so that you can hide some in your friends coat pockets when they're up singing. Just imagine how funny they'll think it is when they find them a week later. Oh yeah, they have yellow tambourines too.

[Rapport]

I just went for the first time last week and it was really fun. 15 dollars for an hour, but they kept putting more time on the clock. There was five of us, so the money was no big deal.

There's couches, and you can order drinks too (beer).

[ChinaBoy]

I always have to sneak in my own as I insist on being completely annihilated to either sing or listen to karaoke.

Aren't these also called "nudie bars"? I seem to remember a Korean saying that. Imagine my disappointment when given the choice of two activities I immediately scream out "nudie bar!!!" only to be taken to a noraebang.

[Yaya]

[Been There, Taught That]

[crossmr]

some of them near konkuk appear to be 24 hours as I'll often see couples piling out of them at like 7 or 8 am, unless they close later in the morning for a few hours, but that might seem strange.

[losing_touch]

[Been There, Taught That]

In an evening's walking tour of many, many noraebangs in this little town (Dongducheon--amazing how many of these places can survive in a town consisting of, at most, two main streets east/west and two north/south, each not more than four blocks long), my companion and I found them all to have little plaques on the wall and to be uniformly priced--not one difference--at 10,000/1/2 hr, 15,000/hr. I thought that was a little high. But, we did go into two of them for about an hour each, between midnight and 2:30 AM, on a Wednesday night and those two, except for different looks of the rooms and lobbies, were not one whit different from each other. These were totally separate managements, too, nothing to do with each other.

Similarities
Room
1. Big screen on one wall, little screen on the other, small table in the middle.
Room stuff
2. Books had the same covers, same colors, same songs, same numbers on the songs, same colors to differentiate languages
3. Remote device looked exactly the same
4. Same two tambourines, same colors (we looked for a song the tambourines could go with. Never found one).
Onscreen
5. The Karaoke was exactly the same (we repeated some songs), even down to wrong spellings or wording.
6. Backgrounds were the same for each song and never had anything to do with the song. There wasn't even video continuity throughout each song, most times, as if the some severely video production-handicappped individual had been let loose to put them together.

The first place we went, we did go an hour and 15 minutes and didn't pay extra.

So, cosmetics aside, I think all the important things you go to a Noraebang for are going to be the same from place to place. I got the feeling these were designed for Koreans, and concession has been made for Westerners. Fine, but make more concession and expand the songbook, because I have to think, since we saw two other Western faces leaving as we were going in, that these places get their fair share of nonKoreans.

I don't know why the charge was so much, unless all the different places are conspiring against us, or foreigners or some other target group (quite unlikely, IMO), or the prices have gone up recently across the board. Or the only thing these places don't coordinate on is pricing (except in this city, they seem to).

That's especially uncomfortable since I found the song selection tragically lacking in number and variety (not one song even close to any kind of country music, and plenty of old stuff I can't imagine any foreigner being interested enough to sing). You just have to get rich or imbibe much ( we heard plenty of people in the latter state; those rooms are definitely not soundproof).) before you think about going on any regular basis. Now I know.

[Bondrock]

There is a button on the remote to change the background. there are 4 choices. standard, singers, nature, and porn.

[Been There, Taught That]

Thanks. I might never have known and pushed the 'wrong' button while my wife and I were in there together. She hates porn.

I suppose there's little chance of making a mistake, though.

But really, porn? Soft, I hope, because parts of those windows have transparency.

[i4NI]