Phillies' 25th anniversary marks milestone for HBC

David, the first owner of Phillies Pub in Seoul's Haebangchon, is behind the counter at Phillies in 2000. / Courtesy of Lance Reegan-Diehl

By Jon Dunbar

Seoul's Haebangchon (HBC) has been crammed full of restaurants and bars for so long, that it's hard to remember when it wasn't.

But as Phillies Pub marks its 25th anniversary this year, memories are bubbling to the surface among long-term community members who can recall a time when this local watering hole stood alone alongside Sinheung-ro. The owners of Phillies are celebrating the milestone, advertising 25th anniversary happy hour drink and snack specials priced at 2,500 won, with plans underway for an anniversary party on April 9.

Phillies got its start as a delivery kitchen run out of the home of a U.S. military veteran who wished to be identified only as David. He started off delivering philly cheesesteak sandwiches around the area by moped, and on rainy days he'd put on a wetsuit to make deliveries.

"It was a lot of work but loved every day of it," he told The Korea Times. "I always knew it would work because I put my heart and soul into it."

An early picture of Phillies / Courtesy of David

As his clientele grew, he decided to set up shop in a proper location, opening in its current space on March 15, 1997. Prior to that, it was a "pillow shop," according to David.

"I was the first place to open in HBC," he said. "Everyone in HBC came by and were considered family."

A live performance at Phillies in 2000 / Courtesy of Lance Reegan-Diehl

The place had a reputation for being run as a "military mess club," but during David's time it attracted a crowd much more diverse than that. He even recalled one happy memory from the 2002 World Cup, when he said the Irish team stopped by, including its star player Robbie Keane.

David sold Phillies off to a new owner sometime after the World Cup and relocated to Songtan in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, where he opened a new Phillies down there for a few more years. "I still miss the place and have never been back as it broke my heart when I sold it," he said.

The front entrance to Phillies years ago, underneath a VFW canteen / Courtesy of Lance Reegan-Diehl

Not much information could be found on the second owner of Phillies HBC. David sold it to a Korean American or Korean Canadian who could be identified only by the syllable Jae, who may have run it with his wife, and also possibly a German who had been asked to help run it.

Phillies was "boarded up" by the time its third owner, New Zealander Todd Jenkins, entered the picture in May 2005.

"I really did um and ah over it," said Jenkins, who had been a customer during David's original era. "My first viewing of it, a dozen rats scattered as soon as we opened the door."

But he did buy it, rebranding it as "New Phillies."

"I called it New Phillies because I didn't know if a previous owner had the rights to the name and no one could tell me," he said. "So it was to cover my arse really...I wanted to keep it as Phillies, but it didn't matter, people called it that anyway. Phillies was fondly well known to expats, so no need to change the name."

When he moved in, he found the walls decorated with racy pin-up girl pictures, which had been crazy-glued on. Unable to remove them he covered them up only for them to be rediscovered years later during renovations by the current ownership.

"It was frustrating dealing with the (administrative side) because sole trading foreigners were rare and the civil servants had no experience dealing with them and assumed that a foreigner owning a business wasn't legal," he recalled. "I had to spend a lot of time 'educating' them on the law to prove that I could in fact own a bar."

Todd Jenkins, published in The Korea Times Aug. 8, 2005 / Korea Times Archive

During Jenkins' time, he expanded Phillies into the basement space, which he said had been "a small clothing factory that went bust" before he took it over.

A few short weeks after opening the basement space, he received a decent offer to purchase the place and sold it off, leaving around July 2008. "I gave up Phillies mostly because I always struggled to find and keep kitchen staff, and was not leading a very healthy lifestyle," said Jenkins, who now runs a restaurant/bar in Tauranga, New Zealand. "The last time I was there was 2017 when I popped back to Korea from New Zealand. I was glad to see foreign-owned businesses thriving in spite of a lot of early resistance from HBC locals."

After Jenkins, Phillies came under the ownership of a Korean who preferred to be identified simply as Y.

"There were only two bars and one restaurant in the neighborhood and all the customers were foreigners," Y recalled. The current location of Bonny's was at the time a real estate agency, and the Workshop was a car garage, according to a later owner who visited around this time.

Once again, the new ownership redecorated the place heavily, painting the walls black "to seem much cleaner than before," and added a foosball table imported from Germany. Y also opened Jacoby's Burger in 2008 across the street, which started to show signs of filling up with restaurants, bars and cafes.

During Y's term, Phillies began selling Alley Kat beer from Edmonton, Canada, made locally by Kabrew, for the first time in the area, representing a major milestone in Korea's then-negligible craft beer scene. According to Y's successor, Phillies is where a lot of craft beer pioneers of Korea met and decided to open their own microbreweries here.

"I wanted to make Phillies a community, a social place for my customers," Y said. "I think it worked because almost all customers were regulars and became good friends, and some became my business partners."

Y sold Phillies off in 2011, and today works in the meat industry.

"I'm coming to HBC sometimes and as you know almost all the foreign dudes are coming for jobs and work via contract, so they come and go," he said. "But I think the traditions are passed through word of mouth so newbies still come to town and visit Phillies."

Next, 11 years ago from this month, Phillies was bought by a new regime of owners, the only one who is still in Korea and involved being Jim Cuthbertson.

Scott Mayoh, Matt Warren, Brad Pitt, Michael Fisher, Aaron Allinson and Jim Cuthbertson pose together during an anniversary party for Phillies in April 2012. / Courtesy of Phillies Pub

"When we started renovation, we striped the walls and noticed that it had pin-up girls plastered everywhere," Cuthbertson said. "We inquired about this and were informed that these were from the original Phillies. The pinups are newspaper cutouts and are still on the walls under a few coats of paint."

In the time Cuthbertson has been involved, Phillies has grown, expanding its menu of food and drinks, removing a pool table and a stripper pole.

"We are very lucky to be situated in HBC," Cuthbertson said. "The local community has always supported us and continues to do so."

Late last year, Cuthbertson and other business partners opened Gogi Boys, a new restaurant a short walk uphill from Phillies specializing in Korean barbecue, right when they were anticipating that vaccines would help the economy get back on track. "As you can see we were completely wrong with our prediction," he said. "We have our fingers crossed that this will end soon. The pandemic has not been kind to the restaurant industry."

After a couple decades of development in HBC, Phillies may no longer stand out as it had before, but to those who know, it is still a landmark of the diverse, ever changing foreign community that has taken root in the area. The history of Phillies is the history of HBC.

Visit fb.com/philliespub for more information.