Research and data · 연구와 데이터
How Seoul’s night gets measured.
The DJ Diaries runs its own survey of Seoul’s club goers, keeps a dated history of the city’s rooms and checks every venue on its maps. This page gathers that work in one place, with the method behind each piece, what you can download, how to cite it and where we log our corrections.
Quick answer. Our main dataset is the Seoul Nightlife Experience Study 2025, a bilingual survey of 343 people run from 1 February to 16 March 2025. Its results are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with credit to The DJ Diaries. The Club Time Machine, the venue maps and the Seoul Tonight listings are the other sources we maintain, and every correction we make to a fact is dated in the corrections log.
Our own research
What we collect
Four sources the rest of the site is built on.
Seoul Nightlife Experience Study 2025
A bilingual online survey in Korean and English with 40 questions, shared through social media and nightlife community channels from 1 February to 16 March 2025 and compiled in fall 2025. 343 people answered and left about 600 written answers, which were read in both languages and grouped by theme by hand.
Read it as an engaged online sample, not a census. The 40 and over group is the largest at 29.7%, partly because the survey travelled through the researcher’s own network, and the Korean or expat choice leaves out gyopo (교포, Korean diaspora), long term immigrants and visitors. The next edition will fix that category.
The full report → The short citation page →Seoul Club Time Machine
70 Seoul rooms from 1957 to 2026, each with the year it opened, the year it closed where there is one, its type, the music it played and the source that dates it: news archives such as the Korea Times, magazines and Namuwiki (나무위키, namuwiki) where nothing better exists.
Dates are years, not exact days, unless a source gives a day. 26 of the 70 rooms point to a general source list rather than a direct link, and we are replacing those as we find better sources.
Open the Time Machine →The venue registry behind the maps
Every club, bar, listening room and record shop on our neighbourhood maps sits in one shared dataset, with its Korean name and address, its district and its type, alongside subway stations and their last trains. The map data was last updated on 27 October 2026.
Every map and district guide on the site draws on this one set, so a fix made there shows up everywhere.
Seoul nightlife maps →Seoul Tonight listings
Every club night, party and rave in Seoul for the next two weeks, gathered every Monday and Thursday from Resident Advisor and from organisers who list their own nights. Ages and prices are what the promoter posted. When no price is confirmed, the listing says so rather than guessing.
See what is on →Research we cover
Outside benchmarks
The Nighttime Culture Index 2026
The first Nighttime Culture Index scores six cities, and Seoul comes fourth at 50.0 out of 100. Its research used a 767 respondent online survey in four languages including Korean, six focus groups with 67 people, 14 expert interviews and desk research covering 3,073 venues. Our write up sets it against our own survey.
Read our coverage → The index itself →Published figures we lean on
Industry figures, market sizes and press coverage we cite across the site, each linked to its original source rather than repeated.
Dance Music by the Numbers → The press library →Downloads
What you can take away
| File | What is in it | Licence |
|---|---|---|
| Seoul Nightlife Experience Study 2025, headline figures (CSV, 7 KB) | 125 rows of question level percentages and vote counts, exactly as printed in the report: sample, music, neighbourhoods, events, safety, getting home, the night out, food and drink, spending and discovery. Columns: section, measure, group, value, unit. | CC BY 4.0 |
Respondent level answers are not published, because written answers could identify people in a scene this small. Cross tabs are available on request. The questionnaire is not yet published as a file.
Methodology notes
Five questions for each dataset
| Dataset | Who and when | How | What it cannot tell you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nightlife survey 2025 | The DJ Diaries, 1 February to 16 March 2025 | Bilingual online survey, 40 questions, 343 respondents, written answers coded by hand | Self selected sample, skewed to the researcher’s network and to people 40 and over. Shows direction, not population shares. |
| Club Time Machine | The DJ Diaries, updated as sources turn up | Rooms dated from news archives, magazines and Namuwiki, one source per room | Years rather than exact dates. Small rooms that left no press trace are missing. |
| Venue registry | The DJ Diaries, last updated 27 October 2026 | Venue names and addresses in Korean, districts and types, kept in one dataset for every map | Rooms open and close faster than any map. Check a venue’s own channels before you go. |
| Seoul Tonight | Updated every Monday and Thursday | Resident Advisor listings plus nights organisers submit themselves | Only nights someone listed. Prices and ages are the promoter’s own. |
Licence and citation
How to cite our research
The survey results are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence (CC BY 4.0). Use them in charts, articles, teaching and research, with credit to The DJ Diaries and a link. Articles, maps and the rest of the site follow our citation policy.
The DJ Diaries (2025). Seoul Nightlife Experience Study 2025. n = 343, fieldwork 1 February to 16 March 2025. https://thedj-diaries.com/seoul-nightlife-report/
The DJ Diaries (2026). Seoul Club Time Machine: 70 Rooms From 1957 to Now. https://thedj-diaries.com/seoul-then-and-now/
Corrections and how we work
When we get something wrong
Corrections log
Every change to a fact a reader might have relied on, with the date, the page, what changed and why.
Read the log →How we work
How AI tools help with research and illustration on this site, and what stays with the DJ.
Read the statement →Report an error. Email hello@thedj-diaries.com with the page and what looks wrong. We check it, fix it and record the change in the log.
한국어 요약
연구와 데이터
The DJ Diaries는 서울 클럽 문화를 직접 조사합니다. 대표 자료는 2025년 2월 1일부터 3월 16일까지 한국어와 영어로 진행한 서울 나이트라이프 경험 조사(응답자 343명)이며, 결과는 CC BY 4.0 라이선스로 공개합니다. 출처로 The DJ Diaries를 밝히고 링크를 남기면 자유롭게 인용할 수 있습니다. 주요 수치는 CSV 파일로 내려받을 수 있고, 클럽 타임머신, 지도 데이터, 오늘 밤 서울 일정의 방법도 이 페이지에 정리했습니다. 사실 정정은 날짜와 함께 정정 기록에 남깁니다.