Take a look at the internet of decades past, and you’ll find plenty of jokes about bringing a desktop computer to a coffee shop. For South Korean Starbucks stores, however, that old-time meme is anything but in the past.
The Korea Herald reported last week that Starbucks stores in the country had introduced a ban on electronics, aside from the cafe-friendly use of laptops and small electronics.
“Personal desktops, printers, power strips, partitions, etc. cannot be used in the store,” reads a sign from a Korean Starbucks location photographed by the Korea Herald and machine-translated by The Register.
Starbucks confirmed the policy change. “While laptops and smaller personal devices are welcome, customers are asked to refrain from bringing desktop computers, printers, or other bulky items that may limit seating and impact the shared space,” a company spokesperson told The Register. “Starbucks remains committed to being a welcoming third place for coffee and connection, and where community thrives in every cup, every conversation, and every visit.”
Dragging excessive technology into coffee shops isn’t exactly a problem unique to South Korea. Improv Everywhere made a hit video by having comedians drag desktops into coffee shops 17 years ago, and social media posts about desktops in coffee shops continue to pop up on occasion.
Unlike in the West, where such weirdos have been dismissed as … uh … weirdos, South Koreans have actually come up with a term for folks who obsessively work in coffee shops: cagongjok.
The word, a combination of cafe and the Korean words for studying (gongbu) and tribe (jok), suggests a whole subculture of folks who study and work at Korea’s cafes and coffee shops, the number of which has been skyrocketing of late. As of late 2022, there were more than 100,000 coffee shops in Korea – double the number of convenience stores, a 4.5 percent increase from the year prior and double the number that existed in the country in 2016.
The English language Korea JoongAng Daily noted that, as of 2020, South Korea was the second-highest coffee consumption nation in the world, trailing only France and just ahead of the United States.
In other words, Koreans love coffee – and working in public, apparently. Combine those two things and you have an epidemic of comedic proportions on your hands that only a politely-worded sign can address, asking cagongjok to respect the space of others instead of recreating jokes from the internet of the ‘aughts. ®