Gwangju Punk Band Dirty Rockhon: Seeking Out Happiness in a Dirty World

By Jon Dunbar

It’s been about 15 years since Dirty Rockhon played its first show.

The Gwangju-based punk band first started playing shows under the name “Pping,” which its frontman Yang Hong-joon explained was a term for a flashbang grenade in first-person shooter video games. “We wanted the name to mean our music would blow out your senses,” he told the Gwangju News.

But after they started playing shows, people suggested they change the name, pointing out it also means stealing other people’s money. The band members were open to a name change, and they settled on Dirty Rockhon, derived from the phrase “happy souls even in a dirty world” (더러운 세상에도 즐거운 영혼).

It’s a name that stands out, even if it doesn’t roll off the tongue (unless you’re familiar with Hanja), but it fits the band’s style well.

The band describes its music in online bios as “seomin punk,” with seomin meaning “the commoner class or ordinary people.” But it’s not to be confused with working-class pride, a common theme among many other punk bands.

“It would be more comfortable to think of it as empathy or support for ordinary people who are slaves to money. They make money to afford the basic needs of life, but there are many different things they want to do in the end,” Yang said.

But Yang also doesn’t want to think too much about genre or take genre boundaries too seriously. “I think music genres are a good thing for intellectuals, so I don’t want to be limited by genre, although our songs are punk,” he said. 

“I just want our songs to be heard by people who are struggling with life. The lyrics of our songs express emotions we can feel in everyday life, such as misery, reflectiveness, or whipping ourselves, without hesitation, and the overall atmosphere aims to create a pleasant vibe. We want to express ‘music is fun’ rather than ‘I am good at music.’”

Yang first got into this music in 1998 when he was in the second grade of middle school, after seeing a video on TV of Crying Nut’s infectious hit song Ride a Horse.

“At that time, the internet was not as popular as it is now, so I went to the record store to buy a Crying Nut tape,” he said. “I couldn’t buy a CD because I was a student.”

A year or two later, Yang got to see Crying Nut perform in person when the band came to Gwangju for a rock festival on May 18.

“When I was young, I had family problems, and there was only anger and social dissatisfaction in the world, and I started to rediscover joy in life through music,” he said.

Yang’s own music bears some similarities to Crying Nut’s sound, that sort of tenacious now-ness that can be seen as eccentric or the work of specific personalities, depending on who’s looking and how in touch they are with real day-to-day life. Dirty Rockhon’s songs feel like a soundtrack to a mundane life, at least in the more self-aware and cathartic moments. It’s punk music, which can get a bit aggressive at times, but it’s also down-to-earth and approachable.

By 2006 when Dirty Rockhon began to take shape, Yang said music culture was starting to shift away. “Hip-hop music was already prominent in Korea, but band culture was not dead yet, so there were enough people coming to shows,” he said. “Although EDM music is popular now, I want to keep alive the rock band culture of my school days and youth.”

But since then, things have only gotten worse for the local scene. 

“It is no exaggeration to say that the band scene in Gwangju is dead,” Yang told me in a 2018 interview, adding that Gwangju bands are playing more shows outside the city than in their hometown, and not enough Gwangju citizens know about the local scene.

“I would like to tell the citizens of Gwangju about the diversity of culture, that is, musical diversity, but it is not easy in Gwangju,” he said. “Nevertheless, we are singing today, dreaming of the revival of the local scene in Gwangju.”

In 2015, Dirty Rockhon began the Sagae (Four) Rock concert series, organizing a show timed with the opening of every season, four times each year, hoping to build momentum. The Sagae Rock shows moved around to different venues each time, and invited Gwangju bands as well as promoting local bands to play in other cities and bands from other cities to come to Gwangju. 

Unfortunately, the environment for live bands has continued to deteriorate, especially during the pandemic, which for the last almost three years has placed heavy restrictions on live gigs. “It is no exaggeration to say that the Gwangju scene has been becoming more and more desolate,” Yang said in a recent interview, pointing out the recent breakup of existing local bands, as well as the domination by corporate-backed acts of the indie band corner on music charts. “Compared to the consumption of pop music culture, the consumption of indie band culture, which is not even as much as the blood of a newborn, is an inevitable phenomenon, and the remaining bands are holding on by a thread.”

Dirty Rockhon has been able to play only three to five times a year since the pandemic began. “If a show poster was posted on social media, the band would get harassing messages from strangers,” Yang added.  Also, the Sagae Rock concert series has been suspended since the start of the pandemic. After a hiatus, Dirty Rockhon is ready to come back. The band lost a drummer, but lucked out in recruiting a replacement.

“These days it’s hard to find actual drummers because anyone can make a midi with a laptop and an audio card,” Yang said. “Fortunately, I was able to get a new drummer easily this time because another band in Gwangju broke up and we grabbed up their drummer.”

Yang said the band’s goal now is recording its first full-length album.

“We’ve only released EPs and digital singles so far, but we don’t have a full-length album yet, so we’re going to start working on one soon,” he said.

“I just want to do music that ordinary people who are going through daily life like cogwheels can sympathize with and enjoy together by thinking about what kind of pleasures they can find in it. Even if you don’t have a golden spoon, even if you don’t have enough money in your wallet, you can be happy because your heart is rich.”

Visit fb.com/dirtyrockhon or Instagram @dirtyrockhon_official for more information or go to youtube.com/DirTyRocKHoN to hear their music. 

The Author

Jon Dunbar is a member of the Gwangju International Center living in Seoul. He contributes the monthly crossword to Gwangju News. He is also a council member of the Royal Asiatic Society Korea and an independent publisher. He founded the punk zine Broke in Korea in 2005 and published the novel Hongdae Fire in 2020.