Korean Café and Dessert Culture: From Dabang to Bingsu

Cafés are one of the most visible parts of Korean daily life, and the story behind them runs from tea rooms with hostesses to photogenic shops selling rice-cake sweets. This page traces how the café (kape, 카페) took over from the older dabang (다방), and how desserts old and new fit in.

The dabang era

The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture dates the first modern dabang to a hotel setting in Seoul's Jeongdong district in 1902 and describes a dedicated tea room, Hutami, around 1923. In 1927 film director Yi Gyeong-son opened Kakadyu, regarded as the first run by a Korean; Mexico opened in 1929; and in the 1930s the poet Yi Sang ran Jebi. Writers, artists and filmmakers made these rooms into meeting places. The war years cut off sugar and coffee, and many closed. After the Korean War, dabang became broader community spaces with a hosted, sweet-coffee style, and in the 1970s music dabang with DJs courted young customers. Dongseo's instant coffee, introduced in 1970, brought coffee into homes. Older tea habits are covered in Korean tea culture and traditional beverages.

From dabang to café

The same entry says that chains appeared in the 1980s, and late-night dabang multiplied once curfews were lifted. In the 1990s, vending machines, upscale beverages and coffee shops cut into the dabang trade, and the industry association renamed itself in 1997 to drop the word. By the encyclopedia's figures, dabang numbered around 45,000 at their 1992 peak and fell to about 9,000 after the 1997 financial crisis, while coffee shops grew from 54,416 in 2014 to 92,201 in 2017. The modern café is often a place to work, study or meet, which is a role the old dabang also played. For the grab-and-go side, see convenience-store food.

Bingsu: shaved ice

Shaved-ice desserts have a long lineage. An international business-news feature notes that in the Joseon era ice was scarce and kept in underground ice houses (seokbinggo) for the royal court and wealthy; late-nineteenth-century records mention officials eating ice with red beans. Shaved ice became more common under Japanese rule, influenced by Japanese kakigori, and after the 1950s, as sugar became more available, sweetened red beans made patbingsu a popular street-market and café dessert. From the early 2010s, premium bingsu cafés popularized finer, snow-like ice, customizable toppings and seasonal flavors such as mango, injeolmi and coffee. Traditional drinks with similar summer roles are covered at sikhye and sujeonggwa; the red-bean base is related to patjuk and pat.

The revival of traditional sweets

In recent years, young Koreans have taken to sweets once associated with grandparents. A 2021 Korea JoongAng Daily article describes consumers moving from macarons and cheesecake toward traditional sweets, naming shops that specialize in rice cake, gangjeong and yakgwa, and a hanok-set dessert plate at Korea House, mostly visited by people in their twenties and thirties, who like the photogenic setting. A 2024 piece from the culture ministry's overseas outreach arm names yakgwa, tteok, Gaeseong juak and injeolmi bingsu, and links the trend to retro style, interest in beans, rice flour and nuts, local-government classes on commercializing traditional desserts and the term halmaenial (granny plus millennial).

• Yakgwa and gangjeong: The honey pastries in hangwa have been repackaged as small, individually wrapped treats; see yakgwa.
• Rice cake: See tteok and injeolmi.
• Sugar: Many of these sweets are sweet and calorie-dense, so they suit occasional enjoyment; see sugar in Korean food.