By The city of Dongducheon is well known for being home to Camp Casey and Soldiers from the 2nd Infantry Division. This has made the Bosan-dong ville across the street from Camp Casey the main shopping and bar area for Soldiers stationed at the base. However, Bosan-dong isn’t the only ville in Dongducheon. Camp Hovey is a smaller camp accessed from Camp Casey by a small valley known as the Hovey Cut between the two camps. Just outside the gate of Camp Hovey is the small village of Teokgeo-ri.
Note that Teokgeo-ri has been spelled Toko-ri in the past.
At one time Teokgeo-ri was one of the sleaziest villes you could find in Korea since the clubs had to go out of their way to attract GI customers from the much larger and popular TDC Ville. If you have ever watched the first Stars Wars movie and remember the bar with the space aliens in it in the city of Mos Eisley, that is what Teokgeo-ri was like a few years ago.
Obi-wan Kenobi once described Mos Eisley as a “wretched hive of scum and villainy”, Toko-ri wasn’t much different. However, instead of horned, green, or beady eyed aliens, Teokgeo-ri had Filipino and Russian juicy girls covered in chocolate and wax, a retarded barmaid, strippers that used to hold what was known as the P***y Olympics led by a Korean woman known as the Dragon Lady who did anatomy defying things with cigars and beer bottles, and to top it off there was even a midget. Before I had even ever stepped foot in Korea I had heard about the Midget of Toko-ri from old crusty NCOs about how they used to “stick to the midget” especially on New Years; that is how well known she is in the US military. After seeing the midget for myself I can’t imagine why anyone would want to “stick it to the midget”, but hey to each their own.
Since I don’t have anything to do with the ville any more I’m not sure if any of this still goes on, but from what I hear Teokgeo-ri has really died down and even the midget has left the ville in recent years. I hear that the clubs in an effort to stand out from their competition in the TDC ville are more active in prostitution. Anyone know if this perception is true or not?
Anyway I recently made a visit to Teokgeo-ri. The below map shows the route I took around this small village:
I started my walk around Teokgeo-ri from the main road that runs through the center of town. From this road I noticed the first club I saw called the Black Jack:
As I continued to walk down the road I also saw the Fox Woods Club:
At the end of the street the road leads to Highway 364 which is a scenic drive up and over the mountains to Pocheon. I took a left and followed a small side road that leads to Camp Hovey:
The side road follows a creek on its eastern side and on the western side are more buildings from the village. Here is the view looking across the creek towards the farm land from the side road:
Here is the view of the buildings I was approaching as I walked down the road:
This cluster of buildings were more clubs servicing Soldiers from Camp Hovey. The first club with the Joy Club:
Next was Club Bounce and Club Hooah:
Here is the view looking back at these clubs:
Here is the view of the creek that runs through Teokgeo-ri and also flows through both Camp Hovey and Camp Casey:
This creek looks harmless enough now but when there is sustained rain this creek can really get swollen and flood which is something Camp Casey and Hovey recently experienced.
Here is view looking in the other direction across the rice paddies that border Teokgeo-ri:
As I walked further down the road I came upon this bridge that crosses the river:
Across the bridge there is a road that leads to Beaver’s. Beaver’s is a BBQ restaurant frequented by US Soldiers that has been the subject of controversy in the past. However, it was about this time that I started getting rained on pretty heavily and just decided to walk back to my car as quickly as possible instead:
As walked down the road Camp Hovey came into view:
The road in front me leads through this narrow ville, which I have had a few interesting times trying to drive a Humvee through before:
Instead of walking down the road towards Camp Hovey I took a left and headed back towards the downtown section of the city instead:
Along the way I walked by this US Army friendly hotel:
I then walked by the villages Post Office that appears to be having a problem with people leaving trash on their premises:
Here is a picture of a chicken and beer joint I passed as I walked through the ville:
Here is a side street in the middle of Teokgeo-ri I then followed where more clubs are located:
First is the DMZ Club:
Then there is the Grand Illusion:
Followed by Club NBA:
Here is the view looking back down the street at the clubs that I walked by:
From this street I then walked up a side alley to take me back to where I parked on the main road through town:
Along this road I saw few more clubs such as Club Obsession:
I then walked by the UN Club:
After coming back upon the main road through Teokgeo-ri I noticed a sign for the D&G Club:
Right next to the D&G Club was what was left of this burned down club:
Here is one final view of downtown Teokgeo-ri:
If it wasn’t for the fact that Teokgeo-ri is a sleazy ville it actually would be a nice place to live due to its scenic location. The valley is quite beautiful and some people are starting to take notice of this fact as more and more large and expensive homes are being built along the hills around Teokgeo-ri:
I do have to say that in the past 10 years Teokgeo-ri has come a long ways and is not as sleazy as it once was. Who knows maybe some day after the US military relocates from Dongducheon to Camp Humphreys further down south, maybe Teokgeo-ri will become an area more affluent people build their homes to take advantage of the village’s beautiful scenery? With that said that concludes my walk around Teokgeo-ri. If anyone has anything they want to add about the various clubs in the village and experiences they had in Teokgeo-ri in the past please share with everyone in the comments section.
She hasn’t seen...
5:06 am on August 13th, 2011 1
The flood in ’98 spawned most of the rebuilding you see today. While they have slightly polished the turd, it’s still a worthless cesspool of Horny GIs ,Flip whores, Soju laden Whiskey and Skunk OB.
5:25 am on August 13th, 2011 2
I am wondering if there is any such thing as “skunk OB”.
In all the years of selling Korean beer, I never had a complaint about any of the beer tasting skunky.
Nor, outside of a GI ville, have I had strange-tasting Korean beer.
I suspect that “skunk OB” has more to do with the habit of GI bars refilling used bottles with draft beer and loosely recapping them by thumb in the afternoon.
Then, they go into the beer cooler where they loose much of their fizz and freshness after a day or three.
Ajuma brings them to the table with rapidly popped caps and nobody is the wiser.
Poor OB, which runs a squeaky-clean stainless steel and glass brewery where robots do most of the work, gets blamed for making skunky beer.
Some people deny this is possible. One guy wanted to argue that there was no way ajuma could serve him a refilled beer… he “would just know”. Besides, “I can hear the hiss when the cap comes off.” He denied my skepticism that anybody could here that in a noisy bar.
While he explained the intricacies of differentiating the nuances of opened and unopened beer, I kept eye contact, picked up an empty bottle off the bar, pressed a cap on it with my thumb… RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM… and said, “Gosh, dude. I guess you are right. Let me buy you a beer.” I popped the top with an opener.
His attitude changed. “Thanks, man!” He lifted it back for a swig… and, of course, nothing came out.
In the history of stupid looks, it was in the top ten.
5:34 am on August 13th, 2011 3
I was just up in that area today…had a lot of flood damage to many of the clubs. The Americans helped out quite a bit cleaning out their own favorite watering holes though!
5:42 am on August 13th, 2011 4
“Poor OB, which runs a squeaky-clean stainless steel and glass brewery where robots do most of the work, gets blamed for making skunky beer.”
Who gets the blame for their recipes?
6:15 am on August 13th, 2011 5
“Who gets the blame for their recipes?”
Budweiser.
10:15 am on August 13th, 2011 6
Though this all looks scrubbed and clean compared to the Korea I remember from 1983 I sure do want to come back and take a tour. I really appreciate the photo journalism pages like this I’m finding on this site! Thanks
6:14 pm on August 13th, 2011 7
Just don’t make the mistake of going in December when it’s 14 below…
7:54 pm on August 13th, 2011 8
Note that the clubs are all several stories tall and windowless. All of the clubs are on the ground floor. What’s in the floors, above?
8:20 pm on August 13th, 2011 9
That is where the CSW’s are held (can’t escape if there are no windows….)
1:25 am on August 14th, 2011 10
#5,
Directly or indirectly? And,while I’m at it since you know a thing or two about the booze business in Korea…Why are Korean breweries’ new products so bad?
5:13 am on August 14th, 2011 11
A little useless Teokgeo-ri trivia that I learned from someone born and raised there.
The first syllable in the name is “tuk” (턱), which is the Korean word for “chin.” The second and third syllables are the word “geo-ri” (거리), which is the Korea word that has several related meanings, such as distance, range, an interval, a difference or a gap.
So…how/why did these two words get combined to make the name of a small mountainous village?
There are several trails up in the mountains, some of which are somewhat dangerous because one errant step and you could find yourself going down. So if someone took a wrong step, he/she could easily find him or herself falling into a cavity/depression of some sort and quickly be up to his/her chin in a hole. Thus, you fell to a depth (distance) “up to your chin.”
And so the name Teokgeo-ri was born.
Without giving it any thought – 99%+ of the people would guess the “ri” part of the name is the “ri” (리 里) that means village. But this is a rare case of a village name that ends with “ri” – and the “ri” means something other than village. Also, most Korean place names have Chinese characters behind the hangul spellings – but not this village. It’s name is pure Korean.
5:32 am on August 14th, 2011 12
Teadrinker,
Have you not noticed that everybody is producing a “safe”, lowest-common-denominatior one-size-fits-all product?
This ranges from TV/movies/music to snacks/chain restaurants/beer to uninspired fashion/cars/consumer electronics.
Unique and appealing stuff is available… but it costs substantially more than the dreck passed off on the masses.
This is a side effect of the perverse form of macroeconomics currently being practiced and passed off as “capitalism”.
It would take pages and pages to explain… but some key points are… governments discourage small-scale innovation through over-regulation, employment law, and tax structure… large companies discourage anything but managed competition from their peers… the financial companies encourage stagnation through formula risk management… and short-term, golden parachute CEOs worrie about short-term gain at the expense of long-term failure, etc.
(Another interesting aspect is when this system fails, there will be many wagging their fingers and happily touting the “failure of capitalism”.)
So… with all this, every beer tastes like Budweiser… the lowest form of beer that is not exactly unpleasant… but certainly isn’t much more special than water.
Small companies interested in making great beer at a lower profit can’t get the approval or financing to get started and the big companies work together to keep it that way… and then they collectively try to shave pennies of cost off the thousand gallon tank by using inferior ingredients or faster processes which result in lower quality products across the board… but, with an army of focus groups, they are able to choose something the public will tolerate if they have no other choice… and then, after some time, the public forgets and the new crap becomes the new standard.
If all the contrived regulations and permits didn’t exist, any one of us could make fantastic beer out of our houses and sell it on the street at a reasonable price and make a reasonable profit… quickly becoming competition with the swill producers.
It can be done… but it requires big money. Gone are the days of Ma and Pa starting a big company out of their house and building the business one step at a time all on their own. Everyone from the big companies to the financial institutions to the government they control don’t want it to be that easy or that independent.
Actually, America has some great microbreweries but the big 3 (Bud, Miller, Coors) control distribution and lock them out best they can.
Prohibition killed many breweries and the small ones primarily came back because of one man… one kind of unexpected hero. While we love to make fun of him, we should probably always give him credit for this as we complain about him.
http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/76819/how-jimmy-carter-saved-beer
Anyway, that is a very babbling, unorganized, complex, and wide-ranging answer to why popular beer (and a lot of other things) suck… and seem to keep getting worse.
Hope it made sense.
6:42 am on August 14th, 2011 13
Guitard,
I heard a slightly different story.
“Teokgeo-ri” does not really exist except as slang. It is not an official name… hence it is not a “ri”. It is a dong of Dongduchon. The official address is gwang-ahm-dong.
Teok-ga-ri came about because going over a hill in the area (possibly of the same name) caused one to be out of breath.
Korean slang for “out of breath” translates as “breath comes up to your chin”… which became, as you pointed out, “chin distance” or some similar idea.
I can’t vouch for my version being correct… but that’s what I heard.
8:38 am on August 14th, 2011 14
#12,
With imports being increasingly popular, they could still produce a better quality product and charge a premium for it as they do in most countries. It would sell. But, as you were saying, they are shortsighted.
8:40 am on August 14th, 2011 15
…The breweries are also owned by the same companies that produces and imports those imports…which makes me wonder what the markup is on imports.
8:46 pm on August 14th, 2011 16
16. There are skunk beers. This happens because it is not stored properly.
A bar owner buys bulk and it sits in a non-climate controlled area; hot, cold, hot, cold…
It is exposed to the sun in summer in the back of a truck…
Expired beer.
Any combination of the above.
You get less skunks in the winter. Skunks have become more rare over the years but they most definitely exist.
8:54 pm on August 14th, 2011 17
Q: Why is Toko-ri CP worse than the Galactic Empire?
A: Spice isn’t the only load you have to dump before a patrol arrives.
9:07 pm on August 14th, 2011 18
To those of you who are interested in the concept of better beer in Korea, the following information is provided:
http://www.facebook.com/CraftworksKorea?ref=ts
http://www.craftworkstaphouse.com/
http://homebrewkorea.com/
Some folks are trying to give people good beer options – either by opening a bar or making it themselves.
Also, there’s a Korean-American guy who is running an American Craft Beer importing company here that currently supplies Anderson Valley, Lost Coast, and Rogue Brewing Company beers. They’re pricey, but good.
9:09 pm on August 15th, 2011 19
I lived in the old apartment complex at the far left of that 3rd pic for a long time. It used to be a foreigners only complex, sold to private individuals during our stay there (many of the apartments were subsequently renovated). That part of TDC was a nice, quiet place to live (sleazy clubs down the street, which I never visited, notwithstanding). I’d go back in a minute. Last time I was there that apartment complex wasn’t looking too good anymore, though…
11:58 pm on August 15th, 2011 20
The new OB beer, called “OB Gold”, is not bad. Its at least as good or better than any US mass produced beer. And I agree that being in brown bottles, cans or kegs there is little chance of a truly “skunky” Korean beer (except I suppose, Cafri, in the clear “High Life” style bottles), as “Skunky” aroma is a result of sunlight acting on the beer.
1:20 am on August 16th, 2011 21
Leon,
I have heard the old “it sat around” used as an excuse… but I think it is just an excuse because nobody wants to believe they are drinking used beer.
Korean bar owners have not studied logistics nor do they speak of JIT… but they have neither the space nor the extra cash to keep weeks of unused beer lying around in a back room… so they rotate their entire supply in a week at most.
The distributors also rotate their supply quickly as storage space is expensive.
There never seems to be a skunky beer from a store, either… or Korean-only bars in non-GI areas.
I stand by my idea that skunky beer is due to the games GI bars play.
2:18 am on August 16th, 2011 22
21. Sorry CH. I personally know bar owners whose stock *might* have rotated, sitting in an (climate) uncontrolled area, for 5-6 months, maybe longer. I couldn’t believe how much beer they were buying versus how much they sold. Thinking of one owner in particular, I’m suspecting a huge bulk discount on nearly expired product. Possibly saving 3-5 cents a bottle! Oh, it’s worth it.
I know I never sold used beer in my bar but sometimes, but rarely, got a skunk.
As far as sunlight and brown bottles. Meh. Hauling brown bottles around on the back of an uncovered flatbed for a few days?…
9:30 pm on August 25th, 2011 23
oh man this brings back memories. was with the MP’s from 2004-2007 here. I remember the king club and mustang club the most. mustang for the crowd/music and king for the girls
1:20 pm on February 25th, 2012 24
I was in Camp Hovey – Toko-ri from 1966 to late 1968. I don’t know how it changed but then it was one of the most laid back places in Korea. The people were friendly and the food was great. The pot was cheap and it was mellow. The girls were all Korean, no foreign girls at all. There wasn’t a paved road anywhere to be seen, except in the camp. There were no buildings over one story that I can remember, even in camp. Most buildings were quonsets except for the mess hall and the officer’s quarters. The clubs were called the New Seoul Club and the Niagara Club, etc. A yobo (girlfriend) was $15.00 a month and it went up as you gained rank. We used to do field marches up to a place called Wang Bang Knee. If you wanted to go to TDC, you could take a Kimchi bus at the risk of your life. Going over the pass to TDC was always an adventure. The village was a floating mud puddle during monsoon season. I don’t think many of us wanted to go to TDC because we had our own little tucked away paradise. It was among the best times of my life. I would go back in a minute if it were still like that. Unfortunately it does seem to have changed a bit.
2:09 pm on February 25th, 2012 25
One of my buddies just returned from Hovey last week. He said Toko-ri is now Off Limits. He did say that since it is Off Limits, the MPs and the units patrols do not go there, it is a good get away.
3:56 pm on February 25th, 2012 26
25. Is this an unofficial secret off-limits?
6:28 pm on February 25th, 2012 27
Re: OB and skunk beer – shit, when I was in Korea, I’d drink a semi-cold beer out of a homeless man’s shoe; In 1987 at 800 won, it was not a bad deal. When out and about, who cares about the beer?
As for Toko-ri: I lived a five minute walk from the main gate at Camp Casey. It was too easy just to go there. On 2 or 3 occasions, however, I wanted to see what Toko-ri might have to offer. While not dissapointed, I was not so impressed, either. I did meet one nice person at the Ace club, but not so nice that I went back. Honestly; why travel to go ride on a merry-go-round when you already live in Disneyland? I will admit that the cab rides were nice, especially if you told the adjushi to go fast; the ride through the mountains was nearly as fun as a roller coaster.
10:45 am on February 27th, 2012 28
I was also stationed at Camp Hovey (1966-1968) where I met Steve Dudas and we became friends and still are. Tokori was a great little village back then. There was a road that went up behind the village along a stream – great place to stop and have a picnic – very scenic. I stayed overnight many times – returning back to base in the morning. We would buy a teapot full of Malkoli for about 40 won – drink that and smoke pot. I really had a great time there even extending my tour of duty for an additional year. Also had a great time touring much of South Korea. The people were very grateful for us being there and protecting them.
Looking at these pictures – I can’t believe how much everything has changed.
4:34 pm on February 29th, 2012 29
Toko-ri was a “ri” at one point. Mail to my hooch off base back in the 80′s was Kyonggi-do, Tongducheon-Shi, Kwang-am-dong, Toko-ri, and whatever the street address was.
2:12 pm on March 12th, 2012 30
I was stationed at Camp Hovey from 1989 -1990! I spent so much time “down range” in the ‘vill my buddies called me the Mayor of ToKoRi! You could usually find me at the Enjoy Club swilling something cold, hardly ever OB. I think they sold Bud there, can’t remember! Usually had a LBFM close by trying to hustle a drinky or a short time!! I was very glad to see the photos posted here but can only remember the “GI” Club and Jun Bar B Q! The Enjoy club was up that alley between the two in the pic! Tried to go by there the day before I PCS’ed but the place had been shut down for some reason. I’d like to go there again and see the place, but I am too old now to “Enjoy”!!!
6:43 pm on March 12th, 2012 31
I was stationed in Yongsan at the 121 Evac Hospital from 1979-1980. One of the few things that I didn’t like about Korea was that the beer sucked. There were 2 types, OB (OB is an appropriate name since it tasted like Obstetrical drainage) & Crown (less nasty in my opinion but not by much). I went back to Korea for a week after I retired in 1996 on the way to my wife’s home in Cambodia & they had Budweiser. It’s not great like Guinness, German, or Czech beers but it’s better than OB or Crown. I drank oceans full of soju, mokoli, & oscar when I was stationed there. The pot was just ok but you could get different pills or codeine cough syrup in the Korean pharmacies. For any law enforcement personnel reading this that is just what I heard. The year I spent in Korea was the best year of my life, it was one big party.
7:30 pm on March 16th, 2012 32
Perhaps drinking OB is just an acquired taste. I know that after several months in Korea, I acquired the taste quite nicely, thank you. Hell, I could even drink that wierd-ass “champagne”, Oscar, and not toss my biscuits. If one can tolerate (or even enjoy) soju or makkoli, one could certainly like OB!
Did anyone ever try kolyangju? It is a Chinese whiskey; that shit gave me a three day hangover. Never again!
6:46 am on March 30th, 2012 33