Duff Looks For Guitars in South Korea

What to do on downtime whilst working abroad?

Seoul Guitar District, South Korea October 2020. As part of my job I travel all over the world so naturally, I go looking for guitar shops on down days.

After chatting to our Korean work partners one of them Mr. Lee mentions he plays guitar and used to be in a band. We chat about his love of British rock music and his favorite band Muse, we chat about playing guitar and guitar shops in Korea. Mr. Lee says that in Seoul (capital of South Korea) there is a massive guitar shop, in his own words “Korea's biggest guitar shop”.

Intrigued by this when we have time say I am up for traveling to the capitol to see this “massive” shop. As time went by we didn't seem to be getting much downtime, there was a brief period of time off but it was due to a Korean National holiday and the guitar shop was not open but during that time I did get to see the historic palace in Seoul (main picture of the blog).

This is a pretty amazing place, most Korean’s when they visit the palace dress in period clothing. There are shops all around the outside of the grounds that will allow you to hire the clothes for the day. Whole families will dress up and take pictures in all the different areas, it's an amazing site I genuinely thought to begin with that there were 100s of staff members/actors to make the palace more realistic.

Gettinging back to the guitars, we finally got our day in late October. We headed into the capital, leaving Jongno 3 Subway station at exit 6 we headed down to the Music District. On our way, we decided it was time for some grub and popped in for a Korean BBQ and a few local beers always go down really well (if you get the chance to have Korean BBQ go for it) . After getting a full belly and a few bottles of beer I am now fully ready to experience Korea's biggest guitar shop.

We head west, I notice 1 small guitar shop to the right and another tiny shop on the second floor to the left. Now I'm thinking “Is this it”, I look through the window of the first shop on the right. Lots of nice-looking guitars, there are many brands I haven't heard of before making copies of many much-loved guitars. By this point I am now thinking, is that all there will be? Just lots and lots of Korean-made copies. Mr. Lee then informs me we are here, my face drops.

I am thinking he means these 2 shops here, I am very wrong. He points to the ginormous structure looming over us, to me it just looks like another big concrete office building. We head over to the door, it's up a few steps and looks like the old big internal school double doors. There's a note on the front*.

* Just a quick addition - Covid in South Korea during my visit was very much under control. Bars and restaurants were all open and life was getting on as normal, the only thing vaguely noticeable was masks were worn everywhere.

I am looking at the sign-in Korean not able to read a word and thinking well we've come this far and now understandably it's closed due to Covid. Mr. Lee goes and asks the man in the shop opposite something, he then comes back and says it's open. We push the door and success, we are in. Now it's at this point I come clean and tell you all I'd been chatting a lot on the 1h 30min to Mr. Lee about the “massive” guitar shop. A little bit of information I may have left out is I was told it's on 2 floors of the building. We head up the fire escape esc stairs to floor number 2 (ground floor is a road junction, floor 1 is a live music venue).

Well, what can I say! The sight that lay before me as we opened the door from the stairs to “shop”. It would appear that maybe the word may be the term “shop” got lost in translation because this place was more of an indoor market. Not one large shop but maybe 50-60 small little retailers selling everything and I mean everything. Some shops were floor-to-ceiling speakers for sale or to be repaired, some shops were so full of amps that I’m pretty sure the proprietors had to climb over some to get to their chair.

The Isles in between the shops had market stalls full of guitars, microphones, cables, and more. And at the center of it all a nice little cafe with plenty of seating so you can all have a good chat. You come to realize that this must get even more useful when you realize that floors 3 and 4 also have lesson rooms and rehearsal rooms too. Each shop or stall being slightly different than the next.

To understand this place check out his youtube video by Shai Sarfati:

We spent hours there looking in every shop playing guitars, pianos, and drums. If you are ever in the area it is a must. Plus the prices are pretty good too. We found 70s Jazz basses 70s and 80s Gibsons, some shops even have so many guitars that they were using them to stop others from falling over. There are some great hidden gems but you have to hunt for them.

If pedals are your thing then 2 shops in this cavern of amazingness will bowl you over! From original Japanese boss and Ibanez/Maxon pedal to modern MXRs and Blackstar. They even had pedals that would fit in the palm of your hand!

After 4 hours Mr. Lee finally managed to prize me away so that we could see some more of this amazing city. In my time there I visited this Goliath of a store 2 more times and each time nearly came back with an instrument from the 70s. One day I will be back with a few empty guitar cases and a wallet full of Won to pick up some great bargains.

Thanks for reading about my little trip to Koreans largest Music store. Please check back for more blogs soon..