The short answer: the questions that protect you are not about music taste. They are about power, timing, backup gear, and who is allowed to make a decision at 11pm when the schedule slips. Ask those four and you will filter out most of the people who cannot actually deliver your event.
I have been DJing in Seoul since the late 1990s, and I have been on both sides of this conversation: the one being hired, and the one brought in late to rescue a room where somebody else was hired badly. What follows is what I would ask if I were booking me.
The questions most people ask, and why they are not enough
Almost every enquiry I receive opens with three questions: are you free on this date, what do you charge, and what kind of music do you play. Those are reasonable. They are also nearly useless as filters, because every DJ alive can answer them in a way that sounds fine.
Availability tells you nothing about competence. Price tells you nothing until you know what is included. And “what do you play” invites a list of genres that any working DJ can recite. The person who is going to let you down can answer all three perfectly.
The four questions that actually filter
1. Walk me through your load-in and setup timing
A good answer sounds like: “For a 7pm start I am on site by 4:30, set and line-checked by 5:30, and I stay quiet until doors. If your venue has a loading restriction or a lift I need to book, tell me now and I will call them this week.”
A bad answer sounds like: “I will get there about an hour before.” An hour is enough time to plug in. It is not enough time to plug in, discover the venue’s house system needs an adapter nobody mentioned, and fix it before your guests walk in.
The reason this question works is that it cannot be faked. Someone who has done a hundred of these has a routine and will describe it in specifics. Someone who has not will describe it in vibes.
2. What backup do you carry, and what happens if it fails mid-set?
Good: “Two players plus a laptop with the same library, a spare controller in the car, duplicate cables, and my music on two drives and offline. If a deck dies mid-track, you will hear a slightly early transition and nothing else.”
Bad: “That has never happened to me.” It has happened to everyone who has worked long enough. Confidence is not the same as redundancy, and a DJ who has never had a failure is usually a DJ who has not had many bookings.
3. Who owns the running order on the night?
This is the question nobody asks and everybody needs. Corporate events and weddings drift. Speeches run long. The CEO arrives late. Somebody needs the authority to move the first dance, cut a track, or hold the floor for ten more minutes.
Good: “Send me the run sheet a week out. I will flag where it is going to slip. On the night, name one person who can make the call, and I will take direction from them and nobody else.”
Bad: “Just tell me when to start.” That leaves you improvising in front of your guests.
4. What do you need from the venue that I should confirm now?
A professional will immediately hand you a short list: dedicated power, a table of a certain size, where the speakers can physically stand, whether there is a sound limiter, what time the noise restriction begins. An amateur will say “just a plug.”
The sound limiter one matters enormously in Seoul, and I cover why in the piece on how Korean venues actually run.
The things clients almost never think to ask
These are the ones that quietly decide whether your night works.
- Power, seriously. A DJ rig, a lighting rig and a coffee urn on the same circuit is how you find out what a breaker sounds like. Ask what is already on that circuit.
- Where the speakers physically go. Sound aimed into a low ceiling or a glass wall behaves completely differently. The right position matters more than the size of the box.
- The volume conversation, in advance. Decide before the night whether this is a room where people talk over music or dance to it. Most disappointment traces back to nobody agreeing this in advance.
- Do you need an MC, or just a DJ? They are different jobs. Announcements, bilingual or otherwise, should be agreed and scripted, not sprung on the DJ at 9pm.
- Language. In Seoul this is real. If half the room works in Korean and half in English, someone has to handle both, and it should be decided before the invitations go out.
- The do-not-play list. More useful than a request list. Every company has songs that will land badly in that particular room, and only you know them.
- Meal and break. A five-hour set with no break is a fifth hour that sounds like it.
- Who is paying and when. Deposit, balance, overtime rate. Agree the overtime rate before the night, not at 1am when everyone is having a good time.
How to read the answers
You are not testing knowledge. You are testing whether this person has a system. Specifics, times, named equipment and a willingness to tell you something inconvenient are all good signs. Reassurance without detail is the warning.
The single best question, if you only ask one: tell me about an event that went wrong and what you did. Anyone with real hours has a story and will tell it plainly. It is the fastest way to find out who you are dealing with.
How we work
One more thing worth saying plainly: I work for Korean clients and international ones in equal measure, and a lot of my nights are both at once. If your room is mixed, say so early. The music and the announcements can carry two audiences comfortably, but only if somebody plans for it rather than discovering it at eight o’clock.
For most events it is me in the booth. For larger or multi-room jobs I bring in DJs I have worked with for years and I stay responsible for the night. You are dealing with the person who plays, not an account manager who passes you to whoever is free.
If you are planning something in Seoul, tell me about it here. Even if I am not the right fit for your event, I will tell you what to ask the person who is.
Written from Seoul, by someone who has been in the booth for 25 years. More on the site, or book a DJ.
Stay in the Loop
New writing on DJ culture, electronic music, and the Seoul underground — delivered when it matters.
