Less than a year ago, signs went up at some Starbucks Korea branches reading: no personal desktop computers, no printers, no power strips, no partitions. It was a direct response to backlash against “nuisance kagongjok” — cafe-based students and remote workers accused of treating a table like a private office for hours at a time, according to an April 25 report by Kyunghyang Shinmun reporter Lee Yoon-jung. Complaints about seat-hogging had been building for a while, and chains looked ready to crack down.
Less than a year later, the same chains are doing the opposite. Starbucks has been expanding “Focus Zones” — partitioned one- and two-person spaces with individual seating, standing lamps, and dedicated outlets — at six branches clustered around university districts: Sillim Nokdu-geori, Songpa Bangi, Ilsan Hugok, Gwanggyo Sanghyeon Station, Sejong University, and Hanyang University ERICA. A Starbucks representative told Kyunghyang the goal was never to exclude cafe-workers, just to stop them from inconveniencing other customers, and that rising laptop use made it necessary to design seating around that reality rather than against it.
Other chains moved the same direction. A Twosome Place branch near Sinchon now runs its entire fourth floor as a dedicated “study zone,” with partition-style, wall-facing, and bar-style single seating plus an outlet at every seat, specifically to attract long-stay customers in high-foot-traffic areas like Hongdae Seogyo and Sinnonhyeon. Tim Hortons, which has been opening new Korean locations quickly, built its Samsung Station branch with roughly 17 percent of total seating as enclosed booth or single-occupancy space, shielded from outside sightlines for solo work or quiet conversation.
Sungkyunkwan University business professor Kim Hak-gyun told the paper the shift tracks a broader change in why people go to a cafe at all — not just to meet a friend, but increasingly to read or work alone, the same normalization that’s made solo dining (“honbap”) and solo cafe visits (“honcafe”) unremarkable in a way they weren’t a decade ago. There’s also a business case: with more than 100,000 coffee shops nationwide as of 2024 and low-price chains squeezing margins on price alone, market-research firm Embrain DeepData found total 2025 purchases at major cafe franchises rose 11.4 percent year over year, while food-menu purchases specifically rose 20.7 percent — and meal-replacement bakery items like savory breads jumped 141 percent, suggesting long-stay customers who eventually order food are becoming a revenue strategy, not just a seating problem.
For anyone working or studying out of a Korean cafe, the practical shift is real: a “Focus Zone” or dedicated study floor now exists specifically to be occupied for hours, at select branches, without the side-eye that came with doing the same thing at a regular table twelve months ago.
Source: Lee Yoon-jung, Kyunghyang Shinmun, April 25, 2026.
