{"id":10119,"date":"2025-11-09T12:53:31","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T04:53:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=10119"},"modified":"2025-11-09T12:53:31","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T04:53:31","slug":"how-losing-50kg-gave-this-korean-bartender-the-strength-to-open-a-place-of-his-own","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=10119","title":{"rendered":"How losing 50kg gave this Korean bartender the strength to open a place of his own"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

Look up the highest-rated bars in Seoul, and you will find many of them clustered in Cheongdam, an affluent neighbourhood near Apgujeong and Gangnam in the South Korean capital.<\/p>\n

Venues such as Zest, Alice and Le Chamber \u2013 all ranked highly in the annual Asia\u2019s 50 Best Bars<\/span> list \u2013 are peppered along Dosan-daero street, making easy work for barflies eager to tick each one off their bucket list in one boozy evening.<\/div>\n

Hidden among them is the lesser-known \u2013 at least for now \u2013 Kiez, a discreet underground cocktail den opened in January 2025 by 33-year-old Dongyeol Shin, an up-and-coming talent on the drinking scene.<\/p>\n

The name of the bar, inspired by the red-light district of Hamburg, Germany, is a subtle hat tip to Shin\u2019s German upbringing; his family emigrated to Europe in 1994, lured by the economic prospects following the reunification of East and West Germany.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\"The<\/div>
The interior of Kiez, where mid-century Japanese aesthetics meet Bauhaus style. Photo: Kiez<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Bartending was not Shin\u2019s original vocation \u2013 he studied finance in Vienna, Austria, and landed a job with a pharmaceutical company soon after. \u201cI was basically an accountant, and the corporate world gave nothing to me. I was very unhappy,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

He made a snap decision to quit his job and book a one-way ticket back to Seoul<\/span>, despite not knowing much Korean and having just over \u20ac1,000 (US$1,150) to his name.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


\n
Read Full Article At Source <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Look up the highest-rated bars in Seoul, and you will find many of them clustered in Cheongdam, an affluent neighbourhood near Apgujeong and Gangnam in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[8729,7313,2453,498,3723,3103,65,5307],"class_list":["post-10119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bored-interesting","tag-50kg","tag-bartender","tag-gave","tag-korean","tag-losing","tag-open","tag-place","tag-strength","wpcat-33-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}