Korean Dabang: The Rise and Fall of Seoul's Tearooms

Before Seoul had cafés, it had dabang. And for a few decades it had a staggering number of them.

The 다방 (dabang, literally “tea room”) was where Koreans met a blind date, closed a business deal, waited for a phone call, killed an afternoon, and listened to records they could not afford to own. It was office, living room and concert hall at once, and it was run by a woman everyone called the madam. Today genuine survivors in Seoul are rare, and the word itself sounds like a period costume.

This is Part 1 of our Vanished Seoul series, on everyday institutions that disappeared or shrank almost to nothing.

How did Seoul’s first tearooms begin?

With hotels, then Japanese colonists, then artists.

The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture places Seoul’s first hotel-style tearoom in the Sontag Hotel in Jeong-dong in 1902, catering to diplomats and the court. Tearooms in the modern sense arrived around 1923, first Japanese-owned, such as Futami in Myeongdong.

Koreans took them over quickly, and the first owners were not businessmen but artists. In 1927 the film director Yi Gyeong-son opened Kakadu in Gwanhun-dong, generally counted as the first dabang run by a Korean, and made the tea himself. In 1929 two actors opened Mexico near the YMCA on Jongno. In the 1930s Nakrang Parlour in Sogong-dong turned the idea into a proper commercial venture, with painters and writers as its regulars.

The Pacific War ended the first chapter. Coffee and sugar imports stopped in 1941, and many tearooms closed or served substitutes.

What was a dabang actually like in the 1960s and 70s?

Crowded, smoky, and run on a very specific cast of characters.

After the Korean War the dabang became the default meeting place of every Korean town. From the 1960s, the encyclopedia notes, the typical dabang was run by a female owner who employed a 얼굴마담 (eolgul madam, the “face” hostess who greeted regulars), young waitresses called 레지 (reji), a counter clerk and a kitchen hand. Regulars had their own tables. Salesmen with no office used a corner as one, and the counter phone was how you reached them.

By 1969 the National Tax Service counted 4,613 dabang nationwide, and more than 60% of their 6.26 billion won in sales that year was coffee, according to a Chosun Ilbo report from 1970 cited by OhmyNews. Much of that coffee reached Korea through the grey market from US military PX stores, since legal imports were a fraction of what was drunk.

The music dabang deserves its own note. In the 1970s, the encyclopedia says, DJ-run music tearooms aimed at young people “bloomed”. Imported records were expensive and radio playlists were censored, so a good dabang with a good DJ was where a generation first heard rock and folk properly. A decent DJ was a local celebrity.

How many dabang were there, and when did they peak?

Around 1992, at roughly 45,000 nationwide.

📉 Korea's dabang over time

Look closely at Seoul and the decline started earlier than the national peak. The capital had more than 12,000 dabang at the end of 1989 and 9,364 by August 1991, with about 800 closing in 1991 alone. In Jongno and Jung-gu, the old downtown, nearly half vanished in four years. The countryside was still growing while Seoul was already moving on.

What Seoul was moving on to was coffee. By 1991 there were roughly 150 coffee specialty shops in about 15 chains nationwide, with names like Jardin, Doutor and Nice Day. They were brighter, had no madam, and sold the drink rather than the room.

Why did dabang disappear?

Three blows, in order.

• The café. The specialty coffee chains of the early 1990s, and then the Starbucks era after 1999, offered what younger customers wanted: better coffee, self-service, no hostess, no one watching who you came with.
• The 1997 crisis. In February 1997 the national dabang trade association renamed itself, dropping the word dabang from its title altogether, which the encyclopedia treats as the moment the name “passed into history”. The financial crisis at the end of that year then took the count from about 33,000 to about 9,000.
• The ticket dabang. In rural towns some survivors turned to delivery: a waitress would bring coffee in a thermos by scooter to a shop or farm, and the “ticket” system let customers pay for her time outside the premises. It became a notorious cover for prostitution. In 2004 lawmakers proposed amending the Food Sanitation Act to ban paid out-of-premises time at non-alcohol venues, noting that post-1999 deregulation had let the practice spread, and the Constitutional Court narrowly upheld the penalty provision in 2010. Fair or not, the word dabang has carried that shadow ever since.

Were dabang replaced by cafés, then?

Replaced, and then some. National Tax Service data reported by Coffee & Tea magazine counted 45,203 coffee beverage businesses in 2018, 93,913 in 2023 and 96,080 in 2024. In the first quarter of 2025 the number dipped to 95,337, the first decline since the series began.

So Korea now has more than twice as many coffee shops as it had dabang at the absolute peak, and the country that once drank coffee with an egg in it now argues about pour-over ratios. If you want to see where that story went, our guide to franchise coffee prices covers the budget chains, and Seoul’s specialty roasteries covers the other end.

Where can you still visit an old dabang in Seoul?

Fewer places than you would hope, and they change. Check hours on Naver Map before you go.

Hakrim Dabang (학림다방), Daehangno. Opened in 1956 opposite what was then Seoul National University’s liberal arts campus, which is why generations of students, poets and activists used it as a second home. The current owner took over in 1987 and has kept the dark wood, the steep stairs and the classical records. The signature is Vienna coffee, topped with whipped cream. It appeared in the drama My Love from the Star, and Seoul lists it among its long-running “Orae Gage” heritage shops. It is on the second floor at 119 Daehak-ro, a short walk from Hyehwa Station.

📍 Open in Naver Map

Eulji Dabang (을지다방), Euljiro. Opened in 1985 and run ever since by the same owner, Park Ok-bun, with leather sofas, old calendars and the classic egg-yolk ssanghwa-cha. Redevelopment of the Seun district forced it out of its original building above Eulji Myeonok, and in 2022 it moved across the street; Korean press reports in 2024 still found her opening up every morning. More than one tearoom on the same stretch now uses the name, so look for the one near Euljiro 3-ga Station and check recent reviews for current hours.

📍 Open in Naver Map

Doksuri Dabang (독수리다방), Sinchon. Known to generations of students simply as “Dok Dabang”, the Doksuri (“Eagle”) Dabang opened in 1971 by the Yonsei University main gate and was Sinchon’s student meeting point for three decades. It closed in 2005 and was revived by the founder’s family in 2013 on the eighth floor of a new building at 36 Yonsei-ro. It is a modern café now, with a view over Sinchon, but the name and some old menu items survive.

📍 Open in Naver Map

A reconstructed one. The National Folk Museum of Korea, inside the Gyeongbokgung grounds, has an outdoor “7080 Memory Street” recreating a Seoul alley of the late 1970s and early 1980s, including a music tearoom called Yaksok Dabang with its DJ booth. Parts of it can close in rain.

📍 Open in Naver Map

For a very different kind of tea room, the hanok teahouses in our guide to traditional tea houses are the older, quieter tradition that dabang briefly pushed aside. And if you are heading to Hakrim, pair it with our Hyehwa and Daehangno food and café guide.