Why 10 PM Never Felt Late in Seoul

Looking back, it might sound a little strange.

When I think about Seoul nightlife in my 20s, one thing stands out: 10 PM never felt late at all.

If I had to describe it, 10 PM back then felt more like 7 PM does to me now.

It wasn’t the time when I thought,

“I should probably go home.”

It was more like,

“So, what should we do now?”

I was young, and so were my friends.

Back then, many of the people around me were still students or working part-time jobs rather than regular office jobs. Some of them didn’t finish work until late at night.

So even if a few of us met around 7 or 8 PM, it wasn’t unusual for another friend to join us at 10 or 11.

In my late 20s, I had a job where I sometimes finished work at 11 PM myself.

Did I go straight home afterward?

No.

I had just gotten off work. It was time for dinner.

11 PM: Time for the First Round

When you finish work, you’re hungry.

So I’d meet my friends and we’d get something to eat.

And naturally, we’d have some drinks with the food.

Drinking has long been a big part of Korean social life, although the culture around it is changing.

In Korea, we often call the first stop of a night out il-cha (1차), or the “first round.”

For me, the first round wasn’t simply about drinking.

We ate.

We had a few drinks.

And we started talking.

Nobody was very drunk yet, and the conversation was just getting started.

It was almost like a warm-up.

When we finished eating, we didn’t necessarily go home.

We moved somewhere else.

That was i-cha (2차), the second round.

The Real Conversation Started in the Second Round

At the second place, we might continue whatever we had been talking about during the first round.

Or one random comment would send the entire conversation in a completely different direction.

The alcohol started kicking in.

Our voices got louder.

The conversation became more animated.

And after talking and drinking for a while, eventually we were pretty drunk.

At that point, as young single guys, sometimes we wanted to meet women and have some fun together.

Today in Korea, there are places known as hunting pochas, drinking spots where meeting strangers is part of the culture.

But when I was younger, we didn’t necessarily need a special place for that.

At an ordinary restaurant or bar, there might be one table with a group of guys and another with a group of women.

Sometimes one of the guys would simply walk over and start a conversation.

In Korea, we used to call this “hunting.”

Despite the English word, it had nothing to do with actual hunting.

If everyone got along, the groups might end up sitting together, drinking, talking, and having a good time.

Of course, it didn’t always work.

If they weren’t interested, you simply went back to your friends.

Looking back, it was a pretty direct way of meeting people.

Then We Looked for the Next Place

By then we’d eaten, had plenty to drink, and were having fun.

So we’d start thinking about where to go next.

Maybe a noraebang, a Korean karaoke room.

Maybe a nightclub or club.

Maybe another bar.

I’m not saying this was how every young Korean spent their nights.

This was simply how my friends and I sometimes spent ours.

And the place where I spent many of those nights was Gangnam Station in Seoul.

What Seoul Nightlife in Gangnam Felt Like Back Then

The Gangnam I’m talking about is the Gangnam I knew roughly ten years ago.

And in my memory, Gangnam Station at night felt quite different from the way it does to me today.

Sometimes 10 PM and 3 AM barely seemed like different times of day.

That doesn’t mean every business stayed open 24 hours.

Restaurants focused mainly on lunch, cafés, dessert shops, and other daytime businesses eventually closed.

But many restaurants serving alcohol, bars, noraebangs, and other places people went for a night out stayed open very late.

In my memory, it wasn’t until around 3 AM that the area really started to feel like it was winding down.

And the streets were packed with people.

If I exaggerated a little, I’d say half the people looked perfectly sober and the other half looked drunk.

That’s not a statistic, of course.

That’s simply how I remember those nights.

People were talking with friends.

They were drinking.

They were deciding where to go next.

And there were taxis everywhere.

There Were Plenty of Taxis. Getting One Was Another Story.

Taxis were never hard to see in Seoul.

There were plenty of them.

But that didn’t always mean getting home was easy.

Back then, one problem was that some taxi drivers would decide whether to take you depending on where you wanted to go.

So you could be standing on a street surrounded by taxis and still have trouble finding one willing to take you home.

Eventually, though, I usually managed to get one.

And that’s how I normally went home after the subway stopped running.

Missing the Last Train Didn’t Mean I Always Stayed Out Until Morning

When people talk about Seoul nightlife, you sometimes hear stories about people missing the last subway and simply staying out until the first train started running in the morning.

That certainly happened.

I’ve done it too.

But it wasn’t normal for me.

If I remember correctly, I think there was only one time when I stayed out all night with friends and took the first train home in the morning.

Most of the time, even if I’d missed the last subway, I took a taxi home.

There was a good reason for that.

Staying out drinking until sunrise doesn’t feel very good afterward.

Seoul at Sunrise Wasn’t Romantic at All

At night, everything was fun.

You drank with your friends.

You talked.

You laughed.

You sang.

And sometimes you completely lost track of time.

Then morning arrived.

You walked outside and the sun was already up.

And on the way home, you started sobering up.

That’s when things stopped being fun.

You’re exhausted.

Your stomach hurts.

The hangover starts arriving.

And there’s something even worse.

You begin remembering things you did while you were drunk the night before.

“Ah… Why did I do that?”

That’s the worst.

Movies can make walking home after drinking all night under the morning sun look strangely romantic.

It never felt very romantic to me.

I just wanted to get home and sleep.

And yet, strangely enough, after all that exhaustion and regret, there would eventually be another really fun night.

And sometimes we’d stay out late all over again.

We were young.

Gangnam at Night Feels Different to Me Now

I still pass through Gangnam about once a month.

Usually sometime between 10 PM and midnight.

And whenever I do, I’m struck by how different it feels from the Gangnam I remember.

The first thing I notice is the number of people.

There seem to be far fewer of them.

Sometimes, to me, it feels like there are only one-tenth as many people on the streets as there used to be.

I haven’t stood there counting people, obviously.

I’m not claiming the actual number has fallen by 90 percent.

I’m saying that’s how dramatic the difference feels to me.

A lot of businesses are already closed.

By 10 or 11 PM, I notice dark storefronts that would have blended into a much busier nighttime scene in my memory.

Sometimes when I see young people walking around late at night, I even wonder whether they’re students who just finished studying at one of the many hagwons around Gangnam.

I don’t actually know where they’ve been, of course.

It’s simply something that crosses my mind because Gangnam has so many private academies.

What I do know is that the streets no longer look to me like the ones I remember, packed with groups of people moving from one drinking spot to another.

And interestingly, that feeling isn’t entirely unsupported by the numbers.

Seoul’s Nights Really Have Changed

According to Seoul Metro data, the average number of passengers boarding the subway after midnight on weekdays fell by about 24 percent between 2019, before the pandemic, and 2025.

At Gangnam Station, the change was even larger.

Late-night weekday boardings fell from 1,109 per day in 2019 to 599 in 2025—a decline of about 46 percent.

That doesn’t prove everything I remember about Gangnam’s nightlife.

But it does suggest that the late-night city really is moving differently than it did before.

Drinking habits among younger Koreans have also been changing.

According to data from the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, 56 percent of Koreans ages 19 to 29 in 2024 either didn’t drink at all or drank no more than once a month.

Late-night gatherings and work dinners have also become less common since the pandemic, and younger Koreans appear increasingly willing to socialize without making alcohol the center of the night.

None of this means Seoul nightlife has disappeared.

Places like Gangnam, Hongdae, and Itaewon can still be busy late at night, and plenty of people still go out drinking and stay out late.

But the Seoul nights I took for granted in my 20s feel different from the Seoul nights I see today.

To Me, 10 PM Felt More Like 7 PM

These days, if I’m outside at 10 PM, I’m probably starting to think about going home.

The version of me in my 20s was different.

At 10 PM, the night wasn’t ending.

One friend might just be getting off work and joining us.

Someone like me, who sometimes finished work at 11 PM, might only then be heading out for dinner.

We ate.

We drank.

We talked.

We moved somewhere else.

We talked some more.

Eventually, I took a taxi home.

And on very rare occasions, we stayed out until morning.

Then I regretted it the next day.

But back then, 10 PM felt more like 7 PM does to me now.

Someone was just getting off work.

Someone was just sitting down for dinner.

And for us, there was still plenty of night left.

That’s the Seoul I remember from my 20s.