Bang, bang, bang

The thing that I have noticed most about Korea is the economy of space. Everything is thought out in such a manner as to conserve space, even cash registers take up less room here than back home. So with so many people living in a small geographical space, further limited by its naturally mountainous makeup, its not surprising that there are a lot, and I mean a lot of apartment buildings in Korea or that said apartment buildings hardly offer what we in the West would consider spacious living quarters.

I live in what I consider to be a somewhat typical, if on the low end of the spectrum, when it comes to apartments. My apartment runs the full width of the building but is at most ten feet wide, while being about forty feet long. This provides me with a makeshift bedroom (formerly a changing room that I managed to fit my bed into - and only my bed), a bathroom, kitchen area, living room and balcony. For a single person it is adequate but I'd sure love to have more counter space in the kitchen (currently it is zero). I have no idea how entire families live in these apartments, but they do.

Given this lack of space, not only geographically but also in regards to their living arrangements its not surprising that Koreans don't all have home computers, home entertainment centers and the like. They simply take up too much space.

How do they get around it? Simple, they have something called a 'bang'. 

Bang (pronounced closer to bong) means 'room' and is preceded by any number of terms. For instance there are PC Bangs; places where you can pay 1000W per hour to use a computer. I have a friend here who does that (she didn't bring a laptop with her). There are DVD-Bangs, where you and a friend (usually a couple looking to escape the eyes of watchful elders) can sit in comfort and watch the latest DVD on a large screen in privacy. There are Nore-Bangs, which is karaoke with a twist. In North America one would go to a bar to sing Karaoke, but here in Korea they have private rooms of varying sizes that you and your friends can rent out and sing to your hearts content (these are an amazing idea and should come to Canada). There are many others, such as Da-Bangs (coffee rooms where you get some special attention from a woman), Daeddal-Bangs (private massage parlor type rooms), adult PC-Bangs (imagine a private room for your pornographic desires) and other types.

However the best one that I've been to (so far I've only been to a DVD-Bang and a Norae-Bang - honest) is what we've taken to calling a Wii-Bang, as in the Nintendo Wii. 

We went for the first time last night and it was a lot of fun. Imagine a room where there are eight areas for playing a Wii. Each come with a myriad of games and controlers that only costs you 1500W per hour! Thats roughly $1.45 an hour back home. You play on large LCD TVs with leather couches for relaxation. In addition there are 18 PS3s to be used with the same TVs and couches. 

The overhead for such a place must be staggering. Even if you figure that bought low end TVs your still looking at a conservative $1000 per TV, totalling $26,000. Add in 8 Wii consoles at $250, and you have another two grand. Add on top of that the 18 PS3's at $350 each for another $6300 and you have $35k tied up in just hardware. Not to mention the numerous games that sell for anywhere between $40 and $75 a piece, furniture, utilities and the like. Its an expensive venture to be sure. 

But they only charge 1500W an hour!

It was a lot of fun. A group of ten of us went last night. We had three Wii consoles playing various games and a PS3 console going with Guitar Hero. We were there for close to three hours and i only cost 3600W each. 

Next time I go I'll take some pictures to give one a sense of what I'm talking about.