Café
Dae-o Bookstore
55 Jahamun-ro 7-gil, Jongno District, Seoul
Secondhand bookstore turned cafe in a preserved hanok, run by the same family since the Korean War.
This guide to Dae-o Bookstore in Seoul opens in 1951, right after the Korean War, when a man named Cho Dae-sik cleared out a storage shed and started filling it with secondhand books, with his wife Kwon Oh-nam beside him at the till. It follows the Seochon neighborhood that once held about ten used bookstores like it, and the choices Grandmother Kwon faced after her husband died around 2012 and people urged her to sell. Look for the low tiled roof and narrow courtyard where a pop star once posed for an album cover.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.