Hello.

You've read this kind of blog before. It starts with something like "while it might seem as City X if is a cultural/culinary/artistic wasteland, there are plenty of hidden gems if you just scratch under the surface!"

Sometimes that template sentence is followed by up to three exlamation marks.

Now, Ulsan is something of a cultural/culinary/artistic wasteland; for a city of well over 1 million, you'd expect more. But unfortunately, South Korea doesn't work quite like that. In a lot of countries any city of this size, even places like Boise or Adelaide, will probably have a 'hip' area. In said 'hip' area, one can expect to find people with tattoos, dreadlocks, african drums and angst about their middle-class roots.

South Korea is small. So if you're one of those people, you get out of your hometown as soon as possible and move a few hundred kilometers (at most) to Seoul, to Hongdae, and open a coffeeshop/wine bar/record label/drum shop/skate shop/head shop there. This leaves a deficit in most other cities.

That said, this country is becoming bourgeoisified (it's a word now) and internationalized enough, that changes are taking place. You still won't find a good, indiginous music scene here. But there are good places to go in Ulsan. We're going to talk about a few.