For today’s post I will introduce you to… ah wait… we will check out another lightly visited place. We are doing this blogging thing collectively, right? It feels more intimate that way. Because today’s place highlights the our, the uri, the 우리, so prevalent in Korean culture. We are checking out coffee uriBan, or 커피 우리반, which was a chill café in the Dongbaek neighborhood of Yongin.
When I first visited coffee uriBan, I had already moved to Jukjeon, but I was still teaching in semi-rural Cheongdeok-dong. Even though it was in the other direction from home, Dongbaek was still very familiar as I had done a lot of shopping there during my first year, and my school sometimes had teacher’s dinners in that neighborhood. Dongbaek, despite being slightly farther away from Seoul, was more urban feeling than Cheongdeok, and it was definitely developed a few years earlier. And I don’t call it Dongbaek-dong because the Dongbaek area technically comprises Dongbaek-dong and Jung-dong, and so people just call it Dongbaek. The central shopping area of Dongbaek is within walking distance of Cheongdeok, except, in the ultra hot and humid summers, a Seattleite like me can melt quite quickly. More importantly, so can my ice cream and other frozen goods, which is why I bought a car the first week of summer. I didn’t want to bring home spoiled cold foods or melted frozen foods from a 40 minute walk in the heat!
Since I had a car, my co-teacher recommended that I visit coffee uriBan. It was the first week of July 2011, and the weekend before final exams before the end of the first semester, but I still had to prepare for summer camp. So I went to Cheongdeok to walk up one of the mountain paths above the neighborhood, and then I visited Liesgen Haus to work on these lessons, which would actually be a Spanish summer camp! (Odd how I’ve mentioned Spanish three times in the past four posts lol). One of the baristas helped me out a few times with Korean. But then they closed early that day, at 4:30. Okay then, I’ll visit uriBan!
It turned out to be a nice place with a cool bookshelf. I had a blueberry cheesecake there and continued my lessons. I guess it was too soon for another coffee; it’s good to have at least a little break between caffeine infusions, right?
Nice design with the blueberry streaks, right? It’s the little touches that elevate a place. As I worked, the table next to me started talking about Vancouver BC and Seattle! So I’m sure that made me smile. But I didn’t have coffee there this time, I just went home for dinner.
A tangent, or maybe a PSA. After dinner, I went out for a drive. Near Bundang-dong, passing an intersection, I saw an accident which looked like it had just happened. A car against a motorcycle, with the motorcyclist crawling away, and the driver looking at the cyclist as if he was upset with him. Lots of liquid coming out of the front of the car. A grisly sight, and not the only time in my years living in Korea that I saw motorcycles involved in accidents, or grisly accidents in general. Drive safely everybody! Life is too precious. Fortunately, it was just reported today that accidents have been going down since I first moved to Korea in 2010. Unfortunately, it’s been the opposite in Washington state.
Back to the we! Even though Korea’s school year starts in March, I had started my contract in April. These staggered starts for foreign English teachers were fairly common in the early 2010s, but are pretty rare these days. Anyway, I finished the second year teaching at my first school just one month into the new school year. So my original 1st years were now 3rd years! My babies were growing up! Actually they’re quite grown up now in 2024, which is kind of hard to believe. In any case, I naturally became close with a few students in particular, and we keep in touch to this day. In April 2012, though, two of them were 3rd year girls. They had faithfully attended my summer and winter camps, and they wanted to hang out once before I went back to the USA. I was staying another two and half weeks to just enjoy and explore, and to sell my car. I suggested we hang out in Dongbaek, and we ended up going to coffee uriBan.
Quite appropriate because 우리반 means “our class”. So a good place for students to visit. But hmmm, what are those drinks? It seems to be two caramel macchiatos and a matcha latte? Not sure. But my focus was not so much on the coffee during this visit, but rather on enjoying time with my dear students. Here they are:
Of course I’m not going to show their faces, but this is the best view I have of the interior of uriBan. And, it’s kind of cute to see middle schoolers drinking coffee like this. We had a fun time. I gave them tiny gifts, and then they jumped over things outside a bit, we took pictures making zombie faces, and they played some game where they had to dance outside if they lost. A fun goodbye meeting.
After all this, we haven’t really talked about the coffee much, eh? Eh, that’s okay. Even if the blog is about coffee, life is what makes the coffee interesting. And the blog too, I hope. Life is about the we, not the it. And coffee uriBan was a place with good memories of life surrounding it.
Unfortunately, as with so many places in Korea, coffee uriBan has closed in the intervening years. But Naver Maps to the rescue again, with a street view of the café in its glory days:
Naver Maps street views show that the business has changed a few times in the intervening years. Most recently, in February 2023, it was an ABIKO CURRY.
Here’s a link to a Google Map to find the former location of coffee uriBan.
And here’s a link to a Naver Map of the former location of coffee uriBan.
Address: 경기도 용인시 기흥구 중동 832-7
Korean name: 커피 우리반
Final verdict: ***
written in Seoul at Camel Coffee, No. 7 branch, in Ttukseom. where an oatmilk flat white assisted in the composition.
cafeseaseo 
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