Coffee Prince — Filming Locations & Real Places

There's still a Nell song sitting in my mom's karaoke favorites. I asked what it was, and she immediately said, 'That's from Coffee Prince,' and started humming it.

It's a 2007 drama — I wasn't even born yet. But from the way my mom told it, this wasn't just some old show. She said, with a hint of pride, that she'd made a special trip out to Hongdae back then just to find the café.

I searched YouTube for 'Coffee Prince best scenes' and 'Gong Yoo Yoon Eun-hye chemistry.' A few edited compilations had millions of views and thousands of comments each — there was even a recent news clip about a 'Coffee Prince re-discovery boom.'

The plot sounds a little cringe on paper: a woman disguised as a man gets a job at a café, and the owner, mistaking her for a man, proposes they pretend he's gay. But the chemistry in the clips was more natural than I expected — that beat where Gong Yoo's shocked expression cracks into a laugh still landed, even by today's editing standards.

My mom says the show peaked at a 27.8% rating. By today's standards, that basically means the entire country was watching the same channel at the same time. It's a number I can't quite picture.

부암동 창의문 일대 — 최한성의 집으로 등장한 산모퉁이 카페가 있는 동네 · Wikimedia Commons

I asked if the café was actually real. Apparently it was, in Seogyo-dong, up the hill from Hongik Univ. Station. When I asked if it was still there, even my mom didn't know. So I looked it up myself.

Turns out it's... closed. Abandoned for five or six years, even listed for sale for ₩10 billion in one article. A YouTube video titled something like 'Coffee Prince café today' showed the dusty windows exactly as they are now. It felt strange that my mom's nostalgic spot had ended up like that.

The house that played Han-sung's (Lee Sun-kyun) home, Sanmotungi Café in Buam-dong, is apparently still open for business, though — same place with the dog he lived with.

When I told my mom the café set was gone, she seemed genuinely disappointed. 'That place was so pretty,' she said, and kept talking about that time for a bit. That was the first time it really landed for me — that my mom had a twenties, too.

It's a little strange to realize she was about my age back then. A drama pushing twenty years old, and to her it's still just 'that show from back then.' To me, it's a few-minute clip my YouTube algorithm happened to serve up.

Since Sanmotungi Café is still around, I might take her this weekend. Even if the original set is gone, it's a relief that at least one place is still standing. I'll queue up that Nell song while we're there.