Norae Bang means “song” “room.” In any city or town in Korea – or anywhere Koreans go around the globe – you will find these establishments. You enter one, and you will see many rooms marked with a number on the door. You want to remember this number once a room is assigned to your group.
You rent a room by the hour – usually for around $10-15 per hour. Each room is equipped with the karaoke machine, two microphones, some noisemakers, and comfortable couches and a table in the middle. There should be a couple of volumes of available song lists. There are more than 20,000 songs from Korea, Japan, China, U.S. & U.K. on these lists, and new hit songs are added constantly.
The first order of things once you settle into a room is to order drinks and snacks. Mostly they sell beer and soju(known as the Korean vodka) and various chips, nuts, dried squid, fruit plates, and some places may offer warm dishes such as fried chicken and noodle soups. There usually is a call button in the room to get service.
Pick a song, note the number assigned to that song, and punch the number in the remote control for the machine. Keep putting in more songs, drink, dance, sing your hearts out, and go to the bathroom. When you return, the only way you can get back into your room is to find the room number on the door. All the rooms look the same, and all the rooms are noisy. You can never tell which room you walked out of unless you know the number!
Ready to try? Then get out and look for the signs with these characters on: 노래방
Small Wide World 