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Coffee lovers can now enjoy their dark roast while taking in a view of the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea — thanks to Starbucks.
The Seattle-based chain of coffeehouses on Friday opened up a new location near Gimpo, South Korea, where customers can get a glimpse through the heavily militarized border into the north.
Hundreds of java drinkers showed up for the grand opening of the chain’s newest store in an observatory near the city, which lies some 31 miles northwest of the capital Seoul and close to the DMZ.
Visitors must pass through a military checkpoint on the way to the Starbucks outlet, although it is in a lesser known and less militarized area than more popular tourist spots along the border such as the Panmunjom truce village.
On a clear day, North Korean villagers can be seen from the Starbucks observatory through its telescopes.
Baek Hea-soon, a 48-year-old Gimpo resident, arrived early on Friday to try out the new Starbucks outlet.
“I wish I could share this tasty coffee with the people in North Korea,” she told Reuters.
Less than half a mile from the DMZ is Kaephung, a propaganda village that is believed to be largely uninhabited and whose structures were once used to mount loudspeakers that blasted politically-charged messages into South Korea.
The Han River, designated as “neutral waters” between the two countries, lies less than a mile away, running between the observatory and Kaephung in the north.
Starbucks, with its global recognition, could change the border area’s “dark and depressing” image, Gimpo Mayor Kim Byung-soo said.
“This place could now become an important tourist destination for security (and) peace that can be seen as young, bright and warm, as well as garnering global attention,” Kim told reporters.
Starbucks is ubiquitous across South Korea, with 1,980 stores as of the third quarter of 2024, according to Starbucks Coffee Korea Company, now known as SCK Company, which operates Starbucks in the country through a licensing deal.
In 2021, Starbucks sold its stake in Starbucks Korea to SCK Company and Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC.
The buffer separating the two Koreas has become an unlikely draw for foreign and local tourists despite heightened tensions on the peninsula in recent years.
The two Koreas are still technically at war after a three-year conflict ended in a 1953 armistice. A peace treaty has never been signed.
In recent months, tensions have also grown over balloons of trash floated from North Korea, which Pyongyang says are a response to balloons carrying anti-regime leaflets sent by activists in the South.
North Korea blew up inter-Korean roads and rail lines on its side of the border last month, while Seoul warned Pyongyang that any use of its nuclear weapons would spell the end of the North Korean regime.
North Korea has over recent decades suffered serious food shortages, including a famine in the 1990s, often exacerbated by natural disasters such as floods that damage harvests.
With Post Wires
