Ulsan is a sprawling city, bustling with activity both day and night. When I first arrived in Korea in September 2021, many Covid-19 restrictions were still in place to ensure everyone's safety. Some of those measures included mandatory vaccinations for incoming immigrants, a quarantine period at arrival into the country, and curfews at night to disperse crowds. To go into many places you needed a QR code to verify you had been vaccinated. Masks, of course, were mandatory, but social distancing wasn’t as strongly enforced. With all of the restrictions, I went to Korea prepared to spend the first year mostly at home. Instead I got to enjoy the nightlife in Ulsan with many new friends.
My first week of work was for training and preparing my school to open along with my new coworkers. A trainer had come down from Seoul for a few weeks to help us open. She had lived in Korea for a few years and was ready to take us out on the town from day one. We explored some of the different bars and restaurants in the area every night, spending time at the well-known foreigner bar Thursday Party along with more local spots.
We didn’t go to any real nightclubs with dancing but hung out at more atmospheric bars. The one dance club we tried to enter rejected us because we didn’t have ARCs. ARCs are Alien Registration Cards. I believe they have a different name now, but the concept is the same. When you go on a long-term visa in Korea you receive this card that serves as your ID. It can take a month or longer to get the card once you enter the country, but there are a lot of things you can’t do without it. Until you have your ARC, you can’t get a post-paid Korean phone plan, open a bank account (without a work-around), or access certain services.
We never made it back to that club once we got our ARCs, and we weren’t sure we would be welcome back anyways. There are no anti-discrimination laws in Korea, so it is perfectly legal for restaurants, bars, or clubs to deny foreigners. I never had issues getting in anywhere else, but I have heard that there are more places around Seoul with restrictions. Since Ulsan had a much lower foreigner population, I believe locals had less negative interactions with foreigners and were generally happy to meet us. Age restrictions are also common with some clubs not allowing in guests over thirty.
In those first few weeks of going out with the curfew, we had a consistent routine. We would go grab food and drinks, hang out until 10:00pm when the bars closed, and then head to the park. This one little park with a playground and some picnic tables was the place to be during Covid. The mart across the street sold mats that you could sit on and bottled soju, so we would grab some drinks and snacks and find a spot in the grass. We made so many friends at the park, meeting foreigners from other schools, Koreans with a bit of confidence in English, and sometimes foreigners from completely different fields. I once met a guy from Greece with the same last name as me. We swapped IDs to confirm, and I learned he was working on a boat that was stopped in Korea for just a few months. My last name isn't very common, so it was wild to me to meet someone in Korea of all places.
We often stayed out as late as 4:00am. Every night a different group would form depending on who came up and talked to us. Some nights we stayed in the park, some nights we headed to McDonald’s, and a few times we even took a taxi to the beach. We shot off bottle rockets, took a dip in the water in our clothes, and ordered fried chicken right to the beach. After a few weeks we switched to only weekends, and after a few months the curfew was gone.
As we got closer with the Korean staff, we would spend the occasional night out having a company dinner of Korean BBQ or sashimi and head to the noraebang (Korean karaoke room). We would get a private room to ourselves with a booth, TV with English and Korean songs to choose from, and waiter. We would get spaghetti, chicken, makgeoli (Korean rice wine), and keep the soju coming. We sang everything from Korean trot to Adele, jamming along on the tambourines. The last night we got together we stayed out until dawn.
With all of the drinking I did in Korea (the most I had since college), I somehow rarely got hungover. I attribute that to the constant flow of food and snacks, my obsession with an electrolyte drink called Pocari Sweat, and the hangover vitamin drinks. I was told to drink one at night and one in the morning. If I felt a little off the next day, I would have some hangover soup or hot pot. There’s nothing like a bowl of hot broth and vegetables to reinvigorate your body. I felt like a new person every time.
While I’m not normally a big drinker, I enjoy the occasional night out with friends. I had so much fun going out in Ulsan. While I never got to experience the nightlife in Seoul, I hope to try it out when I head back soon.
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