MORNING CALM TALES Korea's 1990s coffee revolution

Office workers pick up coffee after lunch, in this photo published in The Korea Times March 17, 2006. Korea Times Archive

By Jeffrey Miller

• Published Aug 30, 2025 11:40 AM KST

Something was brewing in Korea.

It was my first week in Seoul when a few students invited me to a new coffee shop called Jardin, just down the block from the language institute. The place gleamed with chrome, track lighting and big windows that opened onto a busy street. Inside, young Koreans sipped espresso and cappuccino, chatting over jazz playing softly in the background. It could’ve been Paris or New York — except we were in a rapidly modernizing corner of East Asia, and this was the start of a cultural shift.

Back then, most people still drank a thick mix of instant coffee, powdered creamer and sugar. It was served in a range of places: traditional cafés that took pride in perfecting a proper brew and the more notorious dabang — dim, smoky rooms often favored by older Korean men. The latter had a reputation, not always for their coffee. For many younger Koreans, especially after the successful Seoul Olympics in 1988, these places felt outdated and uninspiring. They wanted something fresher, cleaner and more stylish. And just like that, a coffee revolution began to bubble.

Korea’s budding café culture wasn’t just about better beans. Coffee shops quickly became social sanctuaries — places to study, gossip, date or decompress. In a society where inviting friends into one’s small apartment was rare, cafés filled the social void. Western chains like Starbucks hadn’t arrived yet, but you could feel their impending arrival in the air.

Within a month, another shop opened down the street — Mr. Coffee. Word spread that they offered free refills, which was then unheard of. Naturally, I defected. The owner of Jardin wasn’t pleased. One day, he spotted me heading the other way.

“Where are you going?” he asked, stepping out of his shop.

Busted.

“Just ... uh, to a Korean restaurant,” I muttered, hoping he wouldn’t see through the fib. He looked hurt. After that, I took the long way to Mr. Coffee.

What I loved most about Mr. Coffee was the window seat. I’d settle in with a refill and lose track of time, watching the steady rhythm of street life unfold just beyond the glass. Outside, women crouched on low stools, slicing cabbage into giant basins for kimchi in front of old-style restaurants. Students, backpacks slung over one shoulder, hurried off to the endless row of academies. Vendors pushed carts piled with tangerines, bananas and apples, their cries mixing with the blare of trot music from vendors selling everything from pirated tapes to socks.

It was a window on Korean culture, and I welcomed the immersion — every glance outside felt like a lesson, every moment a glimpse into daily life.

My second Christmas in Korea, I sat in that same spot, writing cards to family back home. As snow drifted past the glass, Bing Crosby crooned “White Christmas.”

Each new café tried to outdo the others. One called Bremer had what looked like a mad scientist’s coffee lab: glass flasks, spiral tubing and tiny burners at each table so you could brew your own siphon coffee. My students loved dragging me there after class, convinced this method produced the purest cup. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the staff who had to clean up the mess.

Then there were the names — Poem, Mozart, Chaplin and even The Bodyguard — named after the Whitney Houston/Kevin Costner movie. Cheesy, yes, but wildly popular. I once spotted a shop called Whatever, and years later, another called Has Bean. Korean café names had their own logic: the quirkier, the better.

Despite the glossy new coffee scene, the older dabang culture lingered.

A few weeks after I arrived, my colleague Ken and I took a New Year’s trip to Busan. After a stroll through Jalgachi Fish Market, we ducked into a quiet café near our hotel. A woman in a black leather mini-skirt and white sweater greeted us and poured our coffee into dainty floral china. Then, without a word, she sat beside me, gently took my hand and stroked it.

Ken raised an eyebrow but said nothing. We chatted about our afternoon plans as if this were perfectly normal. Eventually, another customer arrived, and she left our table.

Only afterward did Ken clue me in: “Some of these dabang offer more than coffee.”

When I saw the name of the place — The Friendly Coffee House — I couldn’t help but laugh. Maybe she was just being friendly?

By the late 1990s, Korea’s coffee craze had grown into a full-blown phenomenon. In 1999, the first Starbucks opened near Ewha Womans University. The line was out the door. A few months later, there were half a dozen. The rest, as they say, is history.

Looking back, those early days at Jardin and Mr. Coffee were about more than caffeine. They were about finding new rhythms in a foreign land, forging connections in unexpected places and watching a culture reinvent itself one cup at a time. Coffee wasn’t just coffee — it was a window into a changing Korea.

Sitting in a Starbucks, watching another generation pass by, I think back on those early days in Korea, when cafés were few and a quiet seat by the window felt like a gift. The shops have changed — sleeker now, with endless drink varieties and a background hum of polished cool — but somewhere beneath, I still feel the echo of those first years. The warmth of discovery. The hush of a country just beginning to stir. In a swirl of milk and steam, the memory lingers — soft, like a story whispered into a cup.

Jeffrey Miller is the author of several novels including "War Remains," a story about the early days of the Korean War, and "No Way Out," a thriller set in Seoul in 1990.