BUSAN — After Obangarde, a well-known small live music venue in Busan's Nam-gu district, was ordered to suspend business because its audience stood up and danced, a member of the Busan Metropolitan Council called for measures to address what she described as the limits of current regulations.
Nam Myung-sook, a proportional-representation member of the council from the Democratic Party of Korea, said the case should not be treated as a single administrative penalty against one business. "This should be an occasion to look back at the institutional reality facing Busan's small-scale performance culture," she said, according to the council on the 9th.
Obangarde has long provided a stage for local and indie musicians and is one of Busan's best-known small live performance spaces. But at a recent show, audience members moved tables and chairs aside to watch while standing and danced to the music. The venue was ordered to close for two months for violating operating requirements for general restaurants.
Nam said she was not disputing the legal basis for the penalty itself, but argued that the problem lies in a system that regulates spaces functioning as performance venues solely as general restaurants.
"Playing music for a performance, and having the audience listen, clap, cheer and rise from their seats, is a natural part of performance culture," she said. "Regulating this uniformly simply because the space is registered as a general restaurant does not match reality."
She said it is a policy contradiction for Busan to nurture international music festivals on one hand while restricting the spaces where local musicians work on the other. Rather than focusing only on large concerts and festivals, she said, the city should recognize small stages where local musicians perform as part of its cultural ecosystem.
Nam noted that current law leaves room for local governments to permit dancing in audience areas through municipal ordinances, provided certain safety standards and requirements are met. Seoul's Mapo-gu and Busan's Busanjin-gu are among the districts that have adopted such ordinances.
Nam said the Busan city government should follow those examples and "move to create rules that fit the reality of small live music venues."
As a first step, she called for a full survey of small live venues and live clubs in Busan to determine how many performance spaces operate as general restaurants. Based on that, she proposed setting clear safety standards covering capacity, emergency exits, evacuation routes and firefighting equipment, then reviewing whether to allow performance-related activity in audience areas.
She also said the city should consider enacting its own ordinance to support small live music venues.
"This is not about giving up safety to allow dancing," Nam said. "What matters is setting clear safety standards on capacity, emergency exits, evacuation routes and firefighting equipment, and creating an environment suited to reality."
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has said it will review revisions to current laws and consider a new legal category for performance venues in the wake of the Obangarde case. Nam argued that Busan should not wait for the central government to act, but should first gather views from the local scene and propose alternatives.
"A city of culture is not built on large concert halls alone," Nam said. "It can become a true city of culture only when the cultural ecosystem created together by small venues, local musicians and audiences is alive."
"This case should not end as a single incident," she added. "It should become a starting point for institutional reform that revives Busan's local performance culture."
