Star in your own BTS or Aespa K-pop music video for free, with classic video backdrops at Seoul’s K-Pop Ground studios
- K-Pop Ground, part of HiKR Ground complex in Seoul, has five studios that are instantly recognisable from BTS and Aespa music videos
- Visitors can choose the music, change the background colour schemes, and save their session on a USB stick to show their friends, all free of charge
Want to appear in a K-pop music video grooving to your favourite track? Now you can, if you happen to be in Seoul.
The five studios respectively resemble the interior of a metro carriage, a laundromat, a spaceship, a stage and a colour room. Embellished with flashy, colourful lighting and strong futuristic touches, these backdrops are K-pop music video staples.
The studios share inspiration from the music videos of some of the biggest K-pop stars.
For example, the laundromat resembles a scene from BTS’ “Permission to Dance” music video. The train carriage is a spitting image of where Aespa were dancing in the video for “Black Mamba”, while the spaceship setting is like their “Next Level” video.
Visitors can choose the music they want to play for their shoot, and control the lighting. They can even customise the videos playing in the background.
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All that fun doesn’t cost anything. Just bring a USB drive and you can save the recordings to share with friends.
Run by the Korea Tourism Organisation, HiKR is located near many other tourist attractions in Jongno-gu.
It can be reached by a short walk from quintessential tourist spots such as Ssamji-gil in Insa-dong – a street where you can buy traditional souvenirs and dine at decades-old Korean restaurants; and Cheonggyecheon – a restored stream that flows right through the middle of Seoul.
According to the Korea Tourism Organisation, K-pop Ground is the only XR (extended reality) studio in the country that allows people to make K-pop content. Extended reality merges elements of the real world and virtual reality (VR).
Between their shoots, visitors can immerse themselves in a distinct “universe”, on the second floor, where actors roam the space playing characters from an imaginary K-pop entertainment company. There is a quirky CEO and idol group trainees, whom visitors can interact with.
There is more to explore inside the HiKR complex – although the other floors are less crowded than the K-Pop Ground.
The exhibition hall on the third floor regularly changes its content. Right now the space is showcasing contemporary Korean art and information about destinations found in Korean Netflix content, such as the zombie period drama Kingdom.
The fourth floor has booths where you can use VR to experience different regional festivals in Korea. There’s also a small information centre where visitors can find out about medical tourism in the country.
The fifth floor is called the HiKR lounge. It has an information centre and a branch of Knotted Donut – a popular local doughnut shop – and provides a view of the Cheonggyecheon recreation area.
