How noraebang gave everyone a turn

Busan, 1991

The Royal electronic arcade near Dong-A University in Busan, in April 1991, is often cited as the starting point. A 2018 Kookje Shinmun history noted, however, that no official record establishing the “first” had been confirmed. It is more accurate to treat that period as the moment a new business format appeared in Busan than as a fixed invention date.

A 2016 study by Sangkil Yoon and Il Chang examines how Busan’s existing 1980s karaoke culture related to early-1990s rooms using computer accompaniment. Noraebang combined established singing culture, arcade-style use and separate rooms.

The merchants who wired the rooms

Seoul Museum of History’s 2010 survey of downtown merchants says noraebang spread from Busan and the Yeongnam region to Seoul in late 1991. Synchronising accompaniment with captions and producing adequate sound were early technical challenges, and merchants in Sewoon’s electronics district supplied and installed the equipment.

Customers saw a microphone and screen, but a working room required an accompaniment unit, amplifier and other equipment to be connected. Behind the loosely named “karaoke machine” sat several audio devices and the skill to install them.

Songbooks and remotes

Number-based selection meant finding a title in a songbook and entering its number into the machine. A registered patent aimed at improving songbook selection describes this procedure. When the person choosing a song is not the person singing, selection and listening happen at the same time in the same room.

On a remote, reservation queues the next song, key changes pitch and tempo changes speed. The buttons are visible in the accompanying 2008 photograph of a Kumyoung remote, and Kumyoung’s current IPTV service information also lists key and tempo controls and a song queue. The photograph does not show the features of a 1991 machine.

Changing electronics

Treating noraebang as purely analog because of its books and buttons obscures its technology. TJ’s corporate history records a home computer-accompaniment product in 1989, and hard-disk video accompaniment and an internet-connected system in 2002.

A 1995 Electronic Times report on an Inkel product already described remote control, lighting control and the option to use external laserdisc or videotape footage as a background. The buttons stayed familiar while the electronics behind them kept changing.

The audience in the room

A door and walls matter as much as the microphone. In a separate room, the audience is the people who came in together. Choosing songs, waiting and responding to others are part of the experience alongside singing ability.

The room is not comfortable for everyone. The pleasure of singing together can come with self-consciousness. Who is present and who sets the order explain more than the claim that Koreans simply love to sing.

In the accompanying 2014 Gwangju photograph, people holding a microphone and a remote share a sofa, singing and selecting songs in the same room.

Coin noraebang

Coin karaoke is not simply a smaller version of the old room. Sharing a room by the hour and dropping in for a set number of songs use time differently. Reporting from Suyeong-gu in Busan in 2018, Kookje Shinmun documented customers arriving alone to sing. Solo singing is not a sudden new trend.

Nor has individual use replaced groups. A room for socialising and a room for practising alone meet different needs.

The 2006 photograph shows small singing booths inside a games arcade, a different format from the dedicated coin-noraebang shops of the 2010s.

Noraebang today

Official information for TJ’s A3 describes app-based song search and queuing, access to recordings, and coin or time-based management. That shows what the system can do, not what every business has installed. Song selection once done by flipping through songbooks continues through other interfaces.

Rooms vary as well. A 2023 Korea Tourism Organization feature describes a Hongdae venue whose front rooms are visible from the street through full-height windows. Buttons and screens have changed, but choosing the next song is still at the centre of the experience.