German Korean disco-punk band returns to Seoul

Korean German musician Ja-min Oh and her disco-punk duo Minoh are making their first official band trip to Seoul after a chance connection with Seoul punk band Rumkicks. The band will play at Club Victim, Club Steel Face and two venues in Tokyo during the tour. Oh said the trip grew out of an improvised Seoul performance that later drew support from the Goethe-Institut.

Minoh’s impromptu Seoul show was played on rented instruments from Nakwon Music Arcade after a friend connected the band with Club Victim.

An online video of that show reached Tokyo venue Ruby Room, which invited the band to perform there, but the members had already returned to Germany.

The Goethe-Institut provided a travel grant covering flights for four people and equipment across the world.

Minoh will play at Club Victim on Oct. 9, at Club Steel Face on Saturday with Heynam Sin X Patients, and in Tokyo on Oct. 11 at Club Gamuso and Ruby Room.

Published Oct 4, 2026 6:40 pm KST

The members of Korean German disco-punk band MInoh / Courtesy of Thomas Weidenhaupt

Korean German musician Ja-min Oh has returned to Korea, the land of her parents, several times over her life. But it took an encounter with Rumkicks, a band of spiky-haired girl punks from Seoul, to connect her band, disco-punk duo Minoh, with the music scene here.

Oh was stage manager at Pit Rock, a venue in the small western city of Aachen, when Rumkicks stopped by to play a festival on May 24, 2025. She started a conversation with Heynam Sin, who was filling in for Rumkicks on bass at the time, and Sin gave her a personal connection with the local scene.

Shortly after, Oh and her bandmate Guido Kloppisch went on holiday to Seoul. "A friend put us in touch with Club Victim — they said yes, and we played as a two-piece on instruments we rented at Nakwon Music Arcade," Oh said.

An online video of the impromptu show reached the Tokyo venue Ruby Room. The venue sent an invite, but the two Minoh members were already back in Germany so they couldn't play.

"None of this was planned," Oh said. "Now, one year later, it is — and this whole DIY accident somehow ended up funded by the Goethe-Institut."

The German cultural institute provided the band with a travel grant, covering flights for four people and equipment across the world. "It comes with no editorial say over what we do," Oh added.

The band got its start as Kloppisch, the band's bassist, envisioned a duo with electronic beats as "a classic new wave setup, two people and a machine."

The band, which takes its name from the syllables in Oh's, became a trio when their sound tech Helge Liepertz became their permanent drummer.

They branded their music as "disco-punk," which Oh described as "a mix between danceable, mellow new wave and rough post-punk — fuzzy bass, harsh synths, distorted guitars."

She added, "Disco-punk is when you really want to dance and kick something at the same time."

Adding to the band's presence is an unusual uniform: silver-colored flight jackets that make them look like space cadets or visitors from another world.

"We wanted something a bit artsy-fartsy, a bit of a joke, but catchy too — the kind of idea that sounds dumb until you see it," Oh said. "(Guido) kept coming back to the word 'uniform,' something spacey, something that matched what we'd started calling our own music. The jackets are that word made physical. Silver, a little absurd, impossible to ignore under stage light."

Minoh performs. Courtesy of B.R.O. Photography

Oh was born in Germany in 1979. Her parents met in university in Korea, and mother came to Germany in the early 1970s to work as a nurse's aide. Her father followed a couple years later, working first as a miner before switching to become an art student.

"At some point he wanted to move back to Korea," Oh said. "My mom didn't. She wanted to raise us in Germany, and that's what happened. I'm second generation, born and raised here, largely because my mother insisted on it."

In 1987, Oh's family moved to Korea, and she spent one miserable year in the Korean school system.

"I honestly experienced that as awful," she said. "My Korean wasn't good, my writing was worse, the other kids picked on me for being from Germany and getting hit in school was normal there at the time. When we moved back, purely because my mother saw we weren't coping, I was endlessly relieved."

No matter where she lived, she spoke Korean with her family at home up through her teenage years.

"We were raised strictly and pretty patriotically Korean," she said. "We spoke only Korean at home, and we used the formal, respectful form of address with our parents, the way you would with elders — not the casual one most families use."

As a result, Oh says her Korean language skills are good, but she speaks "like a middle-aged woman who left the country 40 years ago."

When she was around 13, she started watching K-dramas, particularly "Sandglass" (1995), which helped revive her interest in Korea. She watched Im Kwon-taek's 1993 film "Seopyeonje," which introduced her to the concept of "han" (a Korean emotion described as grief or resentment over historical wrongs), a notion that resonated deeply with her.

"That feeling — the pain inside, that specific ache in traditional Korean music — is something I understand on a very deep level," she said. "Maybe that's actually my Korean heritage, more than anything else. There's a saying in Korean, 'blood doesn't lie.' Maybe it's Korean blood that won't quite let go of me, and that feeling of han that keeps pulling at me."

It may be these feelings that resulted in a motif through Minoh, which makes several references to blood in its songs and other materials. The band's bio describes them as "unafraid to bleed in all directions," and their 2025 full-length album is titled "Where It Bleeds."

"For us, bleeding is what han looks like when it comes out," Oh said. "Bleeding is pain, wounds, things that stay open. For us it's also about not holding back anymore — or not being able to. Everything comes out, nothing gets filtered. And it's messy. It's the genres too: punk, synth wave, noise, disco, all bleeding into each other, nothing staying in its lane. Which is basically disco-punk again, said a different way — the dance and the kick, happening at once."

In 2013, Oh gave Korea another try, living here for a few months to seriously consider whether she could make it her home, while teaching guitar and playing music.

"I even had this idea of writing a doctoral thesis on han — on that feeling and how it gets expressed. Never followed through on it," she said.

"That's also when I realized how German I actually am. I don't function well in Korean society. So much is said between the lines there, and I kept either misunderstanding things or coming across as too direct. I went back to Germany devastated, honestly not knowing where I belonged or what 'home' was even supposed to mean."

In more recent years, the global spread of Korean popular culture has brought her parents' culture directly into the German community where she lives, which has given her mixed feelings.

"At first I only noticed it through my guitar students suddenly learning Korean. Now that Koreans are winning Oscars and Grammys, and Korean groceries show up in regular supermarkets, it's a different thing to say you're from Korea. It used to be, 'Huh, China or Japan?' Nobody really knew Korea existed," she said.

"I live in a pretty old-school, analog musician bubble, in a small city, so I don't experience the hype much day to day — some of that is my bubble, some of it is just Germany. I'm honestly glad about that. It mostly interests me on a secondary level, and when Koreans themselves get very patriotic and proud about it, it just makes me smile tiredly, because I also know it'll pass."

Oh's father moved back to Korea in the 1990s and her mother followed in the mid-2010s. Oh herself has started making frequent trips here, but primarily for family, not music. This tour marks her first time coming here officially with the band.

"We're not doing this to tour," Oh said. "We want to get to know the scene, play with local bands and maybe bring some of them over to Germany."

Minoh will play at Club Victim on Oct. 9, and on Saturday at Club Steel Face, with Heynam Sin X Patients. On Oct. 11, they have two shows in Tokyo, first at Club Gamuso and then at Ruby Room.

Follow @minohband on Instagram for more information.

韩裔德国音乐人吴嘉敏（Ja-min Oh）和她的迪斯科朋克二人组Minoh，在与首尔朋克乐队Rumkicks偶然结识后，首次正式踏上首尔的舞台。此次巡演期间，他们将在Club Victim、Club Steel Face以及东京的两家场馆演出。吴嘉敏表示，这次首尔之行源于他们在首尔的一次即兴演出，该演出后来得到了歌德学院的支持。

Minoh 在首尔的即兴演出是在朋友介绍下与 Club Victim 乐队见面后，从 Nakwon 音乐街机租借乐器进行的。

那场演出的视频在网上流传到了东京的 Ruby Room 演出场地，该场地邀请乐队到那里演出，但乐队成员当时已经返回德国。

歌德学院提供了一笔旅行资助，涵盖四人全球范围内的机票和设备费用。

Minoh 将于 10 月 9 日在 Club Victim 演出，周六与 Heynam Sin X Patients 一起在 Club Steel Face 演出，10 月 11 日在东京的 Club Gamuso 和 Ruby Room 演出。

发布于2026年10月4日 下午6:40（韩国标准时间）

韩裔德国迪斯科朋克乐队 MInoh 的成员 / 图片由 Thomas Weidenhaupt 提供

韩裔德国音乐人吴嘉敏一生中曾多次回到父母的故乡韩国。但真正让她所在的迪斯科朋克二人组Minoh与韩国音乐圈建立联系的，是与来自首尔的朋克女乐队Rumkicks的邂逅。

2025 年 5 月 24 日，Rumkicks 乐队来到位于西部小城亚琛的 Pit Rock 音乐节演出时，Oh 担任舞台经理。她与当时代替 Rumkicks 担任贝斯手的 Heynam Sin 攀谈起来，Sin 让她与当地音乐圈建立了个人联系。

不久之后，吴和她的乐队成员吉多·克洛皮什去首尔度假。“一位朋友把我们介绍给了Club Victim——他们同意了，于是我们在乐园音乐街机租了乐器，以双人组合的形式进行了演出，”吴说。

这段即兴演出的视频在网上流传到了东京的Ruby Room演出场地。场地发出了邀请，但Minoh乐队的两名成员当时已经回到了德国，所以无法演出。

“这一切都不是计划好的，”吴说。“现在，一年后，一切都计划好了——而这场DIY意外最终竟然得到了歌德学院的资助。”

德国文化协会为乐队提供了一笔旅行资助，涵盖四人全球机票和设备费用。“但他们不会干涉我们的演出，”吴补充道。

乐队的成立源于贝斯手克洛皮什的设想：组建一支以电子节拍为特色的二人乐队，就像“经典的新浪潮配置，两个人加一台机器”。

乐队的名字来源于“Oh”的音节，当他们的音响技师Helge Liepertz成为他们的正式鼓手时，乐队就变成了三人组合。

他们将自己的音乐风格定义为“迪斯科朋克”，Oh 将其描述为“一种融合了动感、柔和的新浪潮和粗犷的后朋克的音乐——模糊的贝斯、刺耳的合成器、失真的吉他”。

她补充道：“迪斯科朋克就是那种你想跳舞的同时又想踢东西的音乐。”

乐队成员的着装也十分独特：银色的飞行夹克，让他们看起来像太空学员或来自另一个世界的访客。

“我们想要一些有点艺术范儿、有点玩笑意味，但又很吸引人的东西——那种听起来很蠢，但看到实物就觉得很棒的点子，”Oh说道。“（Guido）一直念叨着‘制服’这个词，一种空灵的感觉，一种和我们开始用来形容自己音乐的东西很契合的感觉。这些夹克就是‘制服’这个词的实体化。银色的，有点荒诞，在舞台灯光下却让人无法忽视。”

Minoh 表演。图片由 BRO Photography 提供。

Oh于1979年出生于德国。她的父母在韩国上大学时相识，母亲在20世纪70年代初来到德国做护士助理。她的父亲几年后也来到德国，最初是一名矿工，后来转行成为一名艺术生。

“他一度想搬回韩国，”吴女士说。“但我妈妈不想。她想在德国抚养我们长大，事情也确实如此。我是第二代，在这里出生长大，这很大程度上是因为我母亲坚持要这样做。”

1987 年，吴的家人搬到了韩国，她在韩国的学校系统里度过了痛苦的一年。

“说实话，那段经历糟透了，”她说。“我的韩语不好，写作更糟糕，其他孩子因为我来自德国就欺负我，而且当时在学校挨打是常态。我们搬回来，纯粹是因为我妈妈看出我们无法适应，我当时真是如释重负。”

无论她住在哪里，直到十几岁，她都和家里的家人说韩语。

“我们从小接受的是严格的韩国式爱国教育，”她说。“我们在家只说韩语，对父母使用正式、尊敬的称呼，就像对待长辈一样——而不是大多数家庭使用的那种随意称呼。”

因此，吴女士说她的韩语能力很好，但她的口音“就像一个40年前离开韩国的中年妇女”。

她大约13岁时开始看韩剧，特别是《沙漏》（1995），这部剧重新燃起了她对韩国的兴趣。她还看了林权泽1993年的电影《西平帝》，这部电影让她接触到了“恨”（韩语中一种被描述为对历史冤屈的悲伤或愤恨的情感）的概念，这个概念深深地触动了她。

“那种感觉——内心的痛苦，韩国传统音乐中那种独特的悸动——我有着非常深刻的理解，”她说。“也许这比其他任何因素都更能解释我的韩国血统。韩国有句谚语，‘血浓于水’。也许正是这股韩国血脉让我难以释怀，那种‘韩’的感觉一直牵动着我。”

或许正是这些感受促成了Minoh乐队作品中反复出现的“血”这一主题，他们的歌曲和其他作品中也多次提及血液。乐队简介中称他们“无所畏惧地向四面八方流血”，而他们2025年发行的首张专辑名为《血流成河》（Where It Bleeds）。

“对我们来说，流血就是‘han’（一种音乐表达方式）流露出来的样子，”Oh说道。“流血代表痛苦、伤口，以及那些始终敞开的伤口。对我们来说，它也意味着不再压抑——或者说，无法再压抑。一切都倾泻而出，没有任何过滤。这很混乱。音乐类型也是如此：朋克、合成器浪潮、噪音、迪斯科，所有元素相互交融，没有哪个领域能够保持原有的界限。这本质上就是另一种形式的迪斯科朋克——舞蹈和节奏，同时发生。”

2013 年，吴女士再次尝试在韩国生活，在这里住了几个月，认真考虑自己是否能把这里当作自己的家，同时教吉他、演奏音乐。

“我甚至想过写一篇关于‘感’的博士论文——研究这种感觉以及它是如何表达的。但最终没有付诸行动，”她说。

“也是在那时，我意识到自己其实有多么德国化。我不太适应韩国社会。那里的言外之意太多了，我总是要么误解别人的意思，要么说话太直接。说实话，我回到德国时非常沮丧，不知道自己属于哪里，也不知道‘家’到底意味着什么。”

近年来，韩国流行文化的全球传播将她父母的文化直接带入了她居住的德国社区，这让她百感交集。

“起初我只是通过我的吉他学生突然开始学习韩语才注意到这一点。现在韩国人赢得了奥斯卡奖和格莱美奖，韩国食品也出现在普通超市里，说自己来自韩国已经完全不一样了。以前人们会问，‘啊，中国还是日本？’根本没人知道韩国的存在，”她说。

“我生活在一个小城市里，周围都是比较老派的模拟音乐人，所以我日常生活中很少感受到那种狂热——一部分原因是我身处其中，一部分原因是德国的现状。说实话，我很高兴自己没有这种感觉。我对它的兴趣主要停留在次要层面，当看到韩国人为此感到无比爱国和自豪时，我只会无奈地笑笑，因为我知道这一切终将过去。”

吴珊卓的父亲在上世纪90年代搬回韩国，她的母亲则在2010年代中期也回到了韩国。吴珊卓本人也开始频繁地来韩国，但主要是为了探望家人，而非为了音乐。这次巡演是她首次正式随乐队来到这里。

“我们这么做不是为了巡演，”Oh说道。“我们想了解当地音乐圈，和当地乐队一起演出，也许还能带一些乐队来德国。”

Minoh将于10月9日在Club Victim演出，并于周六在Club Steel Face与Heynam Sin X Patients同台献艺。10月11日，他们将在东京举办两场演出，先在Club Gamuso，后在Ruby Room。

关注Instagram账号@minohband了解更多信息。