My family and I went to the music dabang (음악다방) at Donuimun Museum Village (돈의문박물관마을), the city run recreation beside Gyeonghuigung (경희궁). On weekends a veteran DJ sat behind the glass with the records and read out slips from the tables. Then the city closed the whole village at the end of August 2025, dabang included. It was sad to see Seoul do that to one of the last places where you could watch the format working.
The request itself never went away. It just lost the paper. Nobody hands me a slip anymore; people walk up to the booth and show me the song on their phone, typed into a message. Same gesture, same hope that the DJ will play it. The paper slip was how a whole generation of Koreans talked to the person in the booth, and sometimes to the person at the next table.
A Slip, a Story and a Voice Behind the Glass
In the classic music dabang of the 1970s and 1980s, every table had memo paper. You wrote the song title, often with a short story or a dedication, and a server carried it to the DJ booth, usually a glass box at the front of the room. The DJ read the best stories aloud between records, which is why so many Koreans of that generation remember the DJ’s voice as much as the music. The Seoul city account of the Donuimun room describes the same routine, with 500 LPs and DJ Jang Min-wook (장민욱) reading slips on weekends.
The DJ’s value was partly access. Imported records and deep knowledge of foreign music were scarce, and the good DJs were followed like radio hosts. Because the whole room heard the slip read out, it worked as a way to send a message to someone nearby without addressing them directly.
I didn’t live through the golden era. It peaked before I ever landed in Korea, and what I know of it comes from Korean press coverage, from the people who documented it, and from one working DJ who never stopped. What I did catch was the tail end of its habits.
The Slips Were Still Around in the Early 2000s
When I first came to Korea in the early 2000s, a lot of listening bars and LP bars, and even a couple of clubs, still ran on request slips. You wrote down the artist and the song and handed it over, and if the DJ had the record, they’d try to play it. Some clubs had their own version: you wrote your request and pushed the paper through a little slot by the booth. I remember doing that at Hodgepodge in Hongdae (홍대).
It was a small ritual, but it said a lot. The DJ was the person behind the glass who might, if you were lucky and they had it, play your song next.
The Request Lost Its Paper, Not Its Point
There’s no single request I remember above the rest. What stays with me is how often people get it right. You’d be surprised how many times someone understands what I’m playing and asks for a song that would fit naturally into the set, rather than shouting for a genre like hip hop. When that happens, it feels like a conversation with the room, which is what those paper slips were.
How a Request Reached the Booth
The same gesture across three eras
신청곡, 그때와 지금
| When | How you asked | What came back |
|---|---|---|
| 1970s dabang | Memo slip, carried by a server | The DJ played it and read the story aloud |
| Early 2000s | Slip through a slot by the booth | Played if they had the record |
| Now | The song on your phone screen | Maybe, if it fits the set |
The ruleThe format changed. The hope that the DJ will play your song never did.
If you want to make a request, my advice is simple. Be kind, don’t be rude, and don’t push. I might play it. I might not. And please don’t ask for hip hop if the DJ isn’t playing hip hop.
Seoul Closed One of the Last Working Rooms
The Donuimun dabang was a recreation, not an original, but it was the easiest place in the city to see the whole ritual: the slips, the booth, the voice. Its loss wasn’t about the dabang at all. In July 2024 the city announced a historic park of about 136,000 square metres around the Gyeonghuigung site that takes in the village, and the village stopped operating at the end of August 2025.
The closure is still contested. Kyunghyang Shinmun reported in November 2025 that a lawsuit over it was under way, that local creators’ businesses there had been halted, and that a Seoul city councillor was calling for the demolition plan to be reconsidered, arguing the wider park plan had effectively stalled. Back in 2023, the city said no decision on demolition had been made.
A handful of original style rooms hold on around Jongno (종로), now the heartland of retro Seoul, and the modern LP bar scene is a direct descendant. The slip itself survives mainly on community radio, where 동작FM still reads listeners’ slips on air.
Watch, Listen, Read
For anyone who wants to see and hear the format rather than read about it, these are the best places to start.
- Seoul Metropolitan Government on the opening of 추억의 음악다방 (2021): the city’s own account of the Donuimun room, its 500 LPs and DJ Jang Min-wook reading slips from the tables on weekends.
- 전성기 magazine: 44년째 ‘DJ 오빠’ 장민욱 씨의 마이웨이: a Korean profile of the booth DJ who never stopped, and the clearest first hand account of how a request was handled.
- 동작FM, 추억의 음악다방, episode one (YouTube): a Seoul community station that still reads request slips on air, the nearest thing to hearing the booth today.
- Busan Museum of Modern History webzine on the 1970s and 80s dabang: a reminder that the format was national, with its own stars outside Seoul.
- Seoul Urban Life Museum: Seoul’s Youth and Popular Music (2024): the record of a show that traced where young Seoul went to hear records, from Jongno and Myeongdong onward.
- Korea Pop Music Museum, Gyeongju: a museum devoted to Korean popular music history, worth the detour to see the records of the era up close.
- From Music Dabang to Rock Cafe to Club: our history of how the dabang booth became the club booth.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was a Korean music dabang?
A coffee house built around music, common in Korea from the 1960s through the 1980s, with a professional DJ working from a glass booth full of vinyl. Customers paid for coffee but came for the records, and the DJ played requests written on paper slips at the tables. It was the main youth hangout of its era, decades before cafes, clubs or the internet took over that role.
How did the request slips work?
Each table had memo paper. You wrote a song title, often with a story, a dedication or a message underneath, and staff carried the slip to the DJ booth. The DJ chose when to play it and often read the story over the microphone. Because the whole room heard it, a slip could send a message to someone nearby without addressing them directly.
Do music dabang still exist in Korea?
A handful survive. Seoul’s recreated music dabang at Donuimun Museum Village closed with the rest of the village at the end of August 2025, and the closure is being contested in court. A few original style rooms hold on around Jongno, the LP bar scene is a direct descendant, and 동작FM still reads listeners’ slips on air.
What music was played in Korean music dabang?
A mix of Western pop and rock, which was otherwise hard to hear in Korea at the time, and Korean pop of the era, including the Pearl Sisters, Shin Joong-hyun and the folk generation. Part of the DJ’s value was access, since imported records and deep knowledge of foreign music were scarce.
Sources, Archives and Listening
The people and the rooms. Kyunghyang Shinmun on Jang Min-wook, 45 years in the booth · OhmyNews on the last analog DJ · Wonnews retro column on dabang DJs · Donuimun Museum Village music dabang (closed August 2025) · KTV on the revived music dabang · KTV on the 7080 dabang revival
The closure. Kyunghyang Shinmun, Seoul councillor calls for Donuimun Museum Village demolition to be reconsidered, November 2025 · Seoul Metropolitan Government, explanatory note on Donuimun Museum Village, September 2023
Old photographs of the rooms. Search 다방 or 음악다방 in Seoul Photo Archive (서울사진아카이브) and Seoul History Archive (서울역사아카이브) for coffee house interiors from the sixties onward. e영상역사관 national archive photography has the newsreel era street photography that shows what the outside of those buildings looked like. Seoul Institute, Seoul in Photographs is the easiest of the three to browse by decade.
The soundtrack. 커피 한잔 by the Pearl Sisters, written by Shin Joong-hyun in 1968, is the dabang record: the 1968 original on Bugs and the song’s background. Play it before you read anything else here.
A note on the photographs. The archives above are places to browse, not images I’ve reproduced. Korean public sector archives publish under the KOGL system (KOGL / 공공누리), and the permitted use is marked item by item, so check the marking on anything you want to reuse and ask the archive. On this site the rule is simpler: I link to the archive and shoot my own photographs.
Picture credits. The booth image is a period recreation made for this article, standing in until real photographs are shot. Historical images on this site are used under the licence stated for each file. If you hold rights in any image here and believe it has been used in error, get in touch and it will be removed.
Written from Seoul, by someone who has been in the booth for more than twenty years. More on the site, or book a DJ.
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