Monday 11 June 2012

Tattoos and the Police

I like tattoos...simple. So being so close to Japan and being a massive fan of Japanese art work I had to jump at the chance of going to the Seoul Tattoo convention....Ink Bomb 2012!!! A full weekend of tattoo culture related activities. Artists from all around the world, body painting, piercing, live artwork, live music, motorbikes, half naked girls, booze and food and of course live tattooing. 
I've always wanted a Japanese hannya mask so after a lengthy search through the Japanese artists I find one, Horigyn from the Sword of Rebel tattoo shop in Nagoya, Japan. Email the guys at Ink Bomb get an appointment booked and then it was waiting time....I had a good idea of what I wanted and the guys work looked good so I left it at that.

Fast Forward a few weeks....

The big day. I meet a friend at the event and also randomly bump into someone I know from my small Korean city. It's like Christmas for me....


I go meet Horigyn when I get in tell him what I want, he says he's gonna draw it up gonna take half an hour or so. So we go check out the place. It's awesome...people are getting tattoos everywhere and you can watch everyone at work. There's a BBQ outside and some amazing  beer on tap, a home-brew IPA. If you haven't been to a tattoo convention I'd highly recommend it. This was my first so I can't compare it, but it was great...

OK Tattoo time...(eventually... his time keeping was pretty casual)

 


So the hours tick by, people come and go. There were a lot of foreigners passing through so I could chat to a lot of them. Some people freaking out (which is never nice) and some people really complimentary....cause I have no idea what is going on back there. 

After a little while a steward for the event comes along and asks the guy to stop....hmmm ok...then a while bunch of people go outside. 10 minutes. 20 minutes.....Horigyn comes back and flashes a massive X at me...."Police...we stop!" 
"wha...come again???"

this is what my tat looked like at the at stage...

I was so close to being finished. He says..."ssshhh, ok we finish" 

He closes a curtain to the cubicle, turns the speed way down on his gun which makes it almost silent, and yes this means it hurt a lot more. But alas after 5 minutes the steward comes back and tells us to stop..."police come. You must all go!" 

The urgency with which everyone was moving gave me the impression that everything was pretty serious...but hang on my tattoo isn't finished...

Horigyn catches my facial expression and says "we go back to hotel!" and carries on packing up.
Wait what?? Whose hotel..cause I don't have one?...yours then? Wait what???
What's more rock n'roll than finishing a tattoo in some guys hotel room....I'm in!! Horigyn and his apprentice pack up the gear and we head out to the road where 5 or 6 police cars are pulling up and making their way into the building. I believe a few nice gestures are said between a few folk but I didn't really have time to get involved cause I was jumping into a cab with two random Japanese guys. 
We get to the hotel after a few Japanese/Korean/English words with the cabbie to get there it's on. I'm reassured by the presence of a lot of the other tattoo artists and their customers coming back to do the same thing. No idea what the hotel staff thought, but who cares really...

Ok lets make this place into a tattoo shop....GO!




Only took about 20 minutes and then it's all done....And it's awesome the guy rocked it out. So happy....
I scoot and make my way back to the convention to see what's going on and to get a few answers....I get told that the reason for the convention being shut down is that tattooing in Korea is illegal without the necessary medical license. You need this to stick a needle in someones body. So over 3/4 of the artists there don't have this license and the popo shut it down. I hear you say "then why have a tat convention?"......well normally the guys that run the show bribe the coppers to look the other way. Something must have gone wrong this time cause it did not work!!!! 

and here's a little eye candy...


1 comment:

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