Korea's Coffee Culture: From

It all started with coffee.

During my first week in Korea back in 1990, I started going to a small coffeehouse Jardin, just down the street from the language institute where I taught. It was one of these upscale gourmet-type coffeehouses that, according to an article I had read in one of the English-language newspapers, had suddenly started springing up everywhere in the city.

From what I read in the article, I learned that before there were these gourmet coffeehouses, most people went to places called a dabang (a more traditional type of coffeehouse) or cafes to have their coffee. However, most of the coffee served in these dabang (Korean for coffee house) and most cafes was your instant variety heavy, also known as "ajumma coffee" (an ajumma is Korean for aunt or middle-aged woman) on the Prima (powdered dairy creamer) and sugar. Now almost over night, people could choose a variety of coffee concoctions and flocked to these coffeehouses.

This was a big change in the early 90s in Korea. It might have seemed subtle to some people who just wanted to enjoy their coffee, but what was really happening was a break from tradition.

Young Koreans wanted something new and modern. They did not want to hang out in the dank, dark dabang that were more often than not frequented by middle-aged Korean men and women. Likewise, the tea houses and cafés their parents had gone to in the 70s and 80s were not hip enough for the urban chic beginning to appear.

I know Jardin, which had recently opened (just a few weeks before I had arrived in Korea) was always packed with students from ELS as well as some other language institutes in the area. Sometimes people would wait outside waiting for a table to open.

Within a month or two more coffeehouses opened up including one called Mr. Coffee. When I learned that Mr. Coffee gave free refills (another first in Korea) I changed coffeehouses, to the dismay of the owner of Jardin. One day he caught me walking down the street on my way to Mr. Coffee and ran outside to ask me why I didn't go to his coffeehouse anymore. He seemed a bit perturbed as if I had intentionally slighted him.

What I loved about Mr. Coffee was that I could sit by the window and gaze outside. I just loved watching the procession of people and street scenes like women cutting up cabbages to make kimchi.

Sometimes when I ran into some of my students in one of these coffeehouses, or if other students saw me sitting inside alone, they were usually surprised that I was by myself. Koreans back then (and perhaps even now to an extent) found it peculiar that someone (a foreigner) would hang out in a coffeehouse alone. The same was true if you told students that you had lunch or dinner by yourself. In Korea, you soon find out that you do everything in a group.

Most coffeehouses tried to beat their competition by offering unique ways of brewing coffee. One such coffeehouse, Bremer used some scientific-looking apparatus for customers to brew their coffee at their tables. It was a big hit with customers (and usually my students who dragged me there when we went out after class) who thought they were really getting the best cup of joe in town. I always felt sorry for the workers who had to carry all this crap to the tables and then have to clean it up afterward.

The names of coffeehouses were cute, weird, and sometimes having nothing to do with coffee. There were places like Poem which still seemed to get by (not to mention get away with) serving instant coffee at exorbitant prices  (its subterranean location near the Kangnam Subway Station was favored more for its low-key ambiance and cubicles for couples to get "close" than its coffee) and if a new movie came out that Koreans liked, you could almost be certain that it would soon be the name of a coffeehouse or café. In early 1993, almost everywhere you went in Seoul you would probably come across a coffeehouse or café called Bodyguard named after the pathetic Whitney Houston/Kevin Costner flick.

To be sure, when it came to naming a coffeehouse anything goes and the cheesier the name the better. Old habits die-hard though. Just the other day I saw a small coffeehouse called "Whatever."

What was really happening when all these gourmet coffeehouses first appeared and dominated the market until the end of the 90s, was the way people enjoyed drinking coffee. Coffeehouses became more modern and the coffee started to taste better.

Likewise, it is not so much as the coffee as it is the ambiance of these coffee houses that have appealed to most Korean consumers then and now. To be sure, most customers don’t mind shelling out a couple of bucks for a cup of their favorite java because what they are really paying for is the coffee house atmosphere—in most cases, a place where they can hang out with friends after having a meal or even celebrate someone’s birthday party.

Then, in 1999 the first Starbucks opened near Ewha Women's University in western Seoul and the rest they say, is history.