The Road of Coffee
Contents › Chapter 5 The Age of Cafés
The Dots Spread
From big cities to small towns
View in 3DSpreading Lights
From the 2000s, the dots multiply fast. They start in the big cities and spread to small cities and towns. Where the dots crowd together is where many people live. The numbers below are shops actually registered that year.
Why?A café is seen as easier to start than other restaurants, so many first-time shop owners choose one. The number of coffee drinkers grew too.
Learn moreDifferent statistics count "cafés" differently. This documentary counts only shops registered as "coffee shops" with city and district offices. Dessert shops and cafés registered under other names are not included.
- When
- 2001 → 2026
Read more
Ministry of the Interior and Safety: rest-food shop licenses, data.go.kr (in Korean)
More in the series
Routes are simplified — drawn as the shortest path between two places — and dates vary between records. Café counts come from Korea's local business license records (rest-food shops registered as coffee shops), shown with the date of the snapshot.