Traveling around Korea alone can be great fun.

Quite often in modern, high-pressure, urban Korea, a lifestyle driven by the so-called “YOLO” philosophy — an acronym for “You Only Live Once” — has grown ever more popular, especially among twentysomethings. Young people in a state of YOLO spare no time or money to enjoy their solo time to the fullest, whether it be traveling, dining out or watching a movie by themselves.

The phenomenon has brought about many new words, like honbap (혼밥) or eating alone, honsul (혼술) or drinking alone, and honhaeng (혼행) or traveling alone. As this solo lifestyle becomes common, restaurants, bars and other places designed for solo diners and drinkers have started to spring up across the nation.

It’s now safe to say that traveling around Korea alone can be great fun.

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Lone diners enjoy some delicious ramen at partitioned tables, at the Ichi-men restaurant in the neighborhood of Sinchon, Seoul.

There’s a small Japan-style ramen restaurant called Ichi-men (이찌멘, 一麵) in the university district of Sinchon in Seoul. The restaurant is famous for serving lone diners, as each table there is partitioned from the others for the eaters’ privacy, like reading cubicles. The space is divided into three sections, with a total of 20 seats. Two sections are solely for lone diners, while the remaining one is for couples or groups.

A vending machine standing next to the door first welcomes visitors. A diner chooses a food item on the menu, which costs from KRW 6,000 to 8,000. With a paper receipt from the machine, the diner takes a seat at one of the solo seats and soon sees the bodiless hand of an invisible employee in front of them, asking for the receipt through a rolled-up red curtain.

There’s a hallway between the rooms where the staff prepare the food. Across the table, through the hallway, all the diner can see are half-visible couples waiting for their food in the couples’ section. Each table has a water dispenser, letting the diner drink water on their own, at their seat, as they desire.

In a moment, the employee’s hands reappear with your ordered dish. As the staff kindly rolls down the red curtain, the diner now starts to dig in, in a self-absorbed and unselfconscious state of mind.

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At the ramen restaurant Ichi-men, diners order by pressing a call button on the right side of the table, and drink from individual water dispensers on the left. Through a rolled-up red curtain in front of the table, a waiter serves the ramen and then rolls down the curtain so that the diner can start to eat in a space that is completely alone.

“Our restaurant best suits the latest trends of honbap or honsul,” said Ichi-men’s head chef Hyun Yang-bae. “With all the tables partitioned off and curtained, you can enjoy your Japanese ramen in an absolute bubble, without anyone around you bothering you. Many of our customers come alone on weekdays. Even at our early opening hour, the single-seat dining areas soon get full of solo eaters, especially female eaters,” the chef said.

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Head chef Hyun Yang-bae at the ramen restaurant Ichi-men in Sinchon is more than happy to serve lone diners. ‘If you’re looking for a restaurant where you can have Japanese ramen, free of stares or looks from others, our restaurant is the way to go,’ he said.

For meat lovers, there’s a good option in the neighborhood of Hongdae. Near Hongik University Station, there’s a meat restaurant called Baetjang (뱃장). The restaurant houses a long bar that looks perfectly suited to solo diners with little grills where they cook the meat alone. As the meat is served, a small grill is placed in front of each individual diner. Such single-servings meat restaurants are popping up all over the place, particularly in university neighborhoods and in Gangnam-gu District.

“We’ve seen many customers who had to first gather up their courage to come here alone, but they’ve since become our regulars,” said Baetjang owner Park Sang-min. “As in Japan, this single-dining lifestyle has settled in as part of society here,” he said.

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The Megabox movie theater at COEX Mall in Gangnam-gu District, Seoul, welcomes solo movie-goers, as six of its 16 theaters have so-called ‘single seats.’

A movie theater in the heart of Seoul also entertains solo movie-watchers. The Megabox movie theater at the COEX shopping mall in Gangnam-gu District has six of its 16 theaters equipped with five columns of “single seats.” The single seats have an armrest table on one side instead of a seat. In these seats, you don’t need to bother yourself about who you’re sitting next to. You can focus solely on the movie, with no vacant space next to you.

“In line with the growing number of solo audience members, we introduced theaters with single seats in 2013,” said Kim Seong-hun, head at the COEX marketing team. “These single-seat theaters are recently quite popular, as we have many movie lovers who come looking for a single seat.”

※ How to get there

1) Ichi-men (Yonsei-ro 5-gil, 38, Seodaemun-gu District, Seoul): Outside of exit No. 1 at Sinchon Station on subway line No. 2, walk in the direction of the Hyundai Department Store and turn right. You’ll soon find the restaurant by the roadside.

2) Baetjang (Donggyo-ro 212-28, Mapo-gu District, Seoul): Leave from exit No. 3 of Hongik University Station, along the Airport Railroad Express (AREX) line, and go down the street two blocks. You’ll find the restaurant on your left.

3) Megabox is on the ground floor of the COEX Mall in Samseong-dong, Gangnam-gu District, Seoul Leave from either exit No. 5 or 6 from Samseong Station on subway line No. 2 and walk a bit.

By Sohn JiAe
Korea.net Staff Writer
Photos: Sohn JiAe, Megabox
jiae5853@korea.kr