After 13 years without its own vinyl manufacturer, a brand new pressing plant, Machang Music & Pictures, has just opened in South Korea.

Take a peek inside South Korea’s first new vinyl pressing plant in over a decade, Machang Music & Pictures.

Located in the nation’s capital, Seoul, the two-machine plant signifies the resurrection of the vinyl industry in Korea, which according to the Korea Times, has experienced a lull for over a decade:

“Before Machang Music reopened the plant, the vinyl-pressing industry died in Korea over 10 years ago in 2004 when Seorabul Record closed down. There was an attempt to bring back a vinyl-pressing plant in 2012, but the plant did not own a lacquer cutter and had to import a master plate, or lacquer, transcribed overseas. It didn’t last long.

Korean artists who want to make vinyl records had to look for one of the few remaining LP-pressing plants in Germany or the Czech Republic. The process took up to six months due to the large volume of orders at the factories and shipping time.”

The opening of the plant exemplifies the continued dominance of vinyl across the world. Recently we reported that Sony would begin pressing vinyl from their state-of-the-art studio in Tokyo in March of 2018.

This was followed by the news that, despite a drop in overall music sales in the US, vinyl figures continue to rise, and were up 2% in the first half of 2017 from 6.22 million 6.36 million.

These trends are evident in the Korean music market too, as the Korea Times report:

“The Korean LP market has also showed notable growth in recent years. Some of the popular vinyl records were relaunched in the 2000s and young musicians such as IU, 2AM and Busker Busker ventured on releasing their new albums in the vinyl format.

The size of the vinyl market is estimated around 10 billion won ($9 million) annually now. As of last year, 280,000 vinyl records are sold, jumping from about 10,000 six years ago.”

Take a peek inside Machang Music & Pictures below:

If you’ve got a band and are looking to press your record on wax, check out our Needle in the Hay vinyl comp.

Also read our feature on Australia’s own vinyl heroes, Zenith Records.

[via Korea Times]