Where Have All the Soju Tents Gone? Part 2

Pojangmacha didn’t disappear by accident.

In Part 2 of Where Have All the Soju Tents Gone, Joe and Shawn trace how Seoul’s soju tents went from survival spaces to cultural nuisances, then to nostalgic props. From Olympic-era crackdowns and hired enforcers to violent evictions, gentrification, and sanitized “sensibility pocha streets,” this episode looks at how modernization erased a vital part of everyday life.

This isn’t a story about food. It’s about power, class, gender, and who gets to stay visible in a global city.

       

 

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Credits

Produced by Joe McPherson and Shawn Morrissey

Music by Soraksan

Top Tier Patrons

Angel Earl
Joel Bonomini
Devon Hiphner
Gabi Palomino
Steve Marsh
Eva Sikora
Ron Chang
Hunter Winter
Cecilia Löfgren Dumas
Ashley Wright
Edward Bradford
Boram Yoon
Chad Struhs
Stewart MacMillan
Louise Dreisig

Gentrification, Crackdowns, and Plastic Nostalgia

By the mid-1980s, life in South Korea was finally stabilizing.

Economic growth brought electricity, running water, and beer to neighborhoods that once relied on soju tents as social lifelines. And then Seoul decided it wanted to look modern.

That decision changed everything.

Olympics, Image, and the Beginning of the End

The 1986 Asian Games and the 1988 Seoul Olympics triggered a new obsession with global image. Roads were widened. Streets were cleaned. “Environmental beautification” became policy.

Pojangmacha were suddenly reframed as problems.

They were accused of illegal road occupation, poor sanitation, criminal activity, even being responsible for the smell of the Han River. Most of these claims were exaggerated or outright false, but they worked.

The real issue was visibility. Orange plastic tents didn’t fit the image of a global city.

Violent Urban Displacement

Local governments didn’t just regulate vendors. They hired private security firms, known as yongyeok, to remove them.

Chains were cut. Carts were flipped. Equipment was smashed while police stood by. This wasn’t enforcement. It was displacement.

The same firms reappeared across districts under different names, avoiding accountability while securing new contracts. This pattern repeated throughout Seoul.

The Myth of “Unfair Competition”

Brick-and-mortar restaurants complained that pojangmacha didn’t pay rent or taxes.

What they didn’t mention was that most restaurants closed early, while soju tents served people after midnight. Vendors also had far less stability, never knowing if they’d be allowed to open the next night.

Restaurant associations had power. Street vendors didn’t. Governments listened accordingly.

Nostalgia After Destruction

After the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, something strange happened.

Pojangmacha returned in the public imagination, not as infrastructure, but as nostalgia. They became symbols of sorrow, failed fathers, laid-off workers, and quiet resilience.

K-dramas embraced them as shorthand for exhaustion and vulnerability. Romantic confessions happened over soju. Breakups unfolded under plastic tarps. A brick-and-mortar bar could never do that work.

Demolition as Policy

In December 2000, Bangbae-dong’s famous pocha village was demolished. Others followed at Seokchon Lake and Misari.

Crackdowns escalated.

A crackdown in Anyang in 2003 involved thugs showing their genitalia to vendors and threatening them.

In 2007, 200 hired enforcers destroyed stalls in Goyang. A vendor whose family livelihood was wiped out hanged himself the next day.

In November 2014, less than one month after Anthony Bourdain filmed his show “Parts Unknown” at a pojangmacha in Gangnam, Seoul’s newly elected “progressive” mayor Park Won-soon broke a signed agreement with vendors and had thugs trash their stands.

In 2016, Ahyeon-dong Pocha Street was dismantled after complaints from residents of newly built apartments. Vendors who believed they were legal were dragged out. Structures collapsed. Citizens were injured.

Sanitized Survival

Today, Seoul corrals remaining vendors into designated zones with standardized booths and permits. The result looks like preservation, but feels like a museum.

Brick-and-mortar “pocha-style” bars are booming, selling nostalgia without the vulnerability. Most real pojangmacha were run by elderly women and couples. Their disappearance mirrors broader class and gender politics in the city.

What Remains

Despite constant removal, pojangmacha refuse to vanish entirely.

Recent crackdowns, like the 2025 Konkuk University Station incident, have sparked renewed backlash. The anger isn’t just about culture. It’s about method, violence, and dignity.

This story isn’t over. But it’s no longer about saving soju tents.

It’s about how cities decide who belongs.