Seoul keeps its best drinking in rooms the state does not protect, so the city built them a register of their own and called it future heritage. It confers nothing. One of these bars was listed inside it in 2015 and carried out of its alley by court order anyway, at dawn, on the sixth attempt. Mung bean pancakes and makgeolli, dried pollack and cold Budweiser, Pyongyang noodles, Korean vinyl at volume, and a basement under a hotel to sign it all off.
- 1 · The Cold Open
Sunhui-ne Bindaetteok
Gwangjang opened in July 1905, floated by a company whose promoters included the man who went on to found Doosan. It is a market and not a room, so this is one stall inside it rather than the whole thing, which is the honest way to send anybody anywhere. Chu Jeong-ae started here in 1994 on eight pyeong of floor. The mung bean is ground on a stone and the bindaetteok goes into a river of oil at five thousand won, the meat balls three, and it is drunk with makgeolli, which is the only reason any of it belongs on this road. Sit at the counter. Do not order for one.
the market from 1905, this stall since 1994 · 11am till 9pm daily · verified Aug 2026
- 2 · The Detour
Eulji OB Bear
Kang Hyo-geun opened this in late 1980 as an OB Bear draught house and put nogari on the counter because he missed the pollack his family cured at kimjang time. Five hundred cc went for three hundred and eighty won. The whole alley followed him, sixty tonnes of beer a day at its peak, and in 2015 Seoul registered the lane itself as future heritage. That protected nothing. His landlord, who owned the biggest bar in the same alley, served notice in 2018, won in court, and had the place emptied by force at dawn on 21 April 2022, at the sixth attempt. His daughter reopened in February 2024 by exit ten, across the main road, two hundred metres from the lane her father made. The bar called OB Bear now pours cold aged Budweiser, which is a sentence with a lot in it.
opened in the alley in 1980, evicted 2022, trading near it again since Feb 2024 · 3pm till 11.30pm, Sundays till 10pm · verified Aug 2026
- 3 · The Anchor
Woo Lae Oak
Jang Won-il opened this in 1946 near the Euljiro 4-ga rotary and called it Seobukgwan. Notice what that does not say. There was no Pyongyang restaurant that moved south; there was a Seoul restaurant opened by a man who had cooked in Pyongyang. The family fled in the war and came back afterwards, which is where the name is said to come from, Woo Lae Oak meaning the house of coming again, and Seoul's own register hedges even that with a phrase meaning so they say. The building is 1988 reinforced concrete and the inside was done out again after the gas failed in the summer of 2025, so come for the bowl and not for an old room. The Pyongyang naengmyeon is eighteen thousand and a bottle of soju is six, which is what most of the people eating alone in here have in front of them. The queue machine starts at half past nine in the morning and they are shut on Mondays, whatever the listings say.
the business 1946, this building 1988, the room done out again 2025 · 11.30am till 9pm, last order 8.20pm, SHUT MONDAYS not Sundays; queue machine from 9.30am, doors 11.30; upstairs breaks 2 till 5 on weekdays. It shut without warning for gas works in Aug 2025, so ring ahead in August · verified Aug 2026
- 4 · The Wildcard
Gopchang Jeongol
A record bar, not a tripe restaurant, though the name is a tripe stew and every search engine will send you to four of those before it sends you here. Jeong Won-yong began the line in Sinchon in 1999 in a four table room beside the railway, and it has moved around Hongdae ever since, so 1999 is where the thread starts and not the date of this address. There is a band with the same name; its leader said flatly in an interview that there is no connection beyond the members having drunk here. Korean pop on vinyl from the sixties onward, and by eleven on a Friday the whole room is singing, so do not arrive expecting a listening bar. Soju is seven thousand on a weekday and eight at the weekend, and yes, there is a gopchang special at eighteen. Shut Sunday and Monday.
a line running back to 1999, at this address later · 7.30pm till 1am, Fri and Sat till 2am, shut Sunday and Monday · verified Aug 2026
- 5 · The Last Call
Charles H
At the lower level of the Four Seasons, named for Charles H. Baker, the American who wrote the best drinking travel books of the thirties, and confirmed as such by the hotel rather than assumed by us. AvroKo built it as subterranean New York of the twenties with the palette taken from Korean court dress and the metalwork from Korean smiths working now. It went fourteenth on Asia's fifty best in 2019 and first in Korea, and that is the most recent placing anyone can show. Since 31 July 2025 there is a further unmarked door inside it, H. Bar, running cocktails as a tasting menu. A Queen of Diamonds is thirty three thousand won and there is a ten thousand won cover charge before you have ordered anything, which is better known at the top of the stairs than the bottom.
the bar opened October 2015 · 5pm till 1.30am daily, though one source says 6pm · verified Aug 2026 · 🏨 the night ends at Four Seasons Hotel Seoul