Bear with me.
Several years ago, maybe around 2011, I got a spot on local English-language radio station TBS eFM. I believe my first gig was a weekly report about the weekend's upcoming concerts, which I did over the phone from my government office. I eventually landed on the oldies station, where we had to play music 20 years old or older. I appeared once a week or every two weeks and programmed the station's playlist for an hour. I introduced a lot of wild things never heard before in Korea, going for stuff like outsider music, Latin boogaloo, and outlaw country.
1. The highlight of my time at TBS eFM was in 2013, when one of my musical heroes toured Korea. You'd have to know about Jamaican music to know Dr Ring Ding, and you'd have to know it well to know that Dr Ring Ding was actually a big white German guy. Here he is on the left with the show host, John:
2. Here's the three of us together in a basement recording studio, with me on the left. It was quite an hour for me, as I got to sit right next to the guy I've always referred to as my "DJ secret weapon" while he sang
this song which specifically names me and my cohost (John and Jon).
3. Weeks after that broadcast, I decided to see if the building, which has oddly high security, had a roof. It did.
4. It was kind of a rest area for radio station workers.
5. Also a decent view.
6. Shortly after that, I got a high-pressure new job, and one night I fell asleep and was 10 minutes late to a 12:30am show. About a month later I lost my position there, either due to that late-night nap or because I made out with the previous producer at her farewell party.
Anyway, driving by in 2016, I discovered the building itself had been fenced off and blanketed up.
7. I snuck onto the property and got this picture of one of the buildings on the complex, where I hadn't worked before.
8. This is the front door I would enter through back in the day.
9. One night I kept friends waiting as I saw the opportunity to slip in, and I went inside and made it up to the top floor where I took this picture of our old DJ booth.
10. Another room next door.
11. Once again I went out on the roof.
12. By now the other building, seen in #7, was being demolished.
13. But hey, I got this nice picture.
14. And the radio antenna, which is now certainly safe to approach.
15. How things look when you drunk. Anyway, I never got back inside before it was destroyed, despite living on the same mountain as this building.
Then, earlier this month, this article came out identifying the TBS eFM site as the former location of the
KCIA's Section 6, where people accused of communism would be brought for torture, sometimes life-ending. Take a look at the picture, of the "Room of Death," on that article.
16. As I read that article, I slowly figured out its exact location, and knowing demolition activity in the area I slowly realised it was in the same compound as my former radio gig. I went back immediately after reading the article and took this picture.
17. That wasn't enough so I went back early the next evening with a friend. Over the course of one Friday day shift, they wrapped up that one part of the wall.
18. Come with me, down into the Room of Death.
19. Down in the Room of Death.
20. Sitting in some other ruins that look like they predate the modern Section 6 building.
If you want to hear more of our radio show -- if that is your takeaway, not the whole Room of Death thing -- there are
two uploaded at this link, one with Dr Ring Ding and one where I introduce music about the Korean War, both recorded in the studio in pictures 1-2.
I also more recently got a new gig with the same radio station, occasionally taking the host of one show on walks through urban renewal areas. Wish I could have included TBS eFM as one.
