The Dog Cafe of Busan, in South Korea

The Dog Cafe – South Korea’s Answer to Japan’s Popular Cat Cafes

By Spooky on June 22nd, 2012 Category: Animals, Travel

There’s a place in South Korea where you can relax by bonding with about twenty dogs of different breeds and sizes, all vying for human attention. It’s called the Dog Cafe and it’s awesome!

If you haven’t yet heard about Japan’s famous cat cafes, they’re venues where stressed businessmen go to relax by surrounding themselves with dozens of purring felines. Cats are very popular in the Land of the Rising Sun, but the concept has been adopted by other Asian countries and recently, even Austria. But animal lovers in the South Korean city of Busan decided to take a different approach and opened a dog cafe, where visitors can surround themselves with furry canines who love human attention. According to Jürgen and Mike, from for91Days.com, Busan is a busy place, with tiny apartments where owning a dog can be considered a luxury, so a place like the Dog Cafe was just what the city needed.

Photo: Busan for 91 Days

Located across the street from Exit 3 of the Jangsan Metro, on the upper floor of a pet shop, the Dog Cafe is any dog lover’s dream come true. As soon as you walk through the door, you’re welcomed by a bunch of pooches who can’t wait to jump and drool on you. Sometimes they even wrestle each other for your attention, but I guess that’s normal when you put this many dogs in an enclosed space. There are gates in place to separate the smaller dogs from larger ones like Labradors and Golden Retrievers, but the pooches don’t seem to respect boundaries very much. They pretty much run the place, running around, playing, jumping on people’s laps and of course, pissing, but that doesn’t seem to bother anybody. After all that’s what they’re all here for.

Photo: City Awesome

In order to enjoy the canine company at the Dog Cafe, you have to pay an 8,000 won ($7.20) entry fee, but that includes coffee or a smoothie and a delicious-looking buffet of cakes and donuts. You can stay and play with the dogs as long as you want, but the longer you remain here the harder you’ll find it to leave when you see your new four-legged friends looking at you with those puppy eyes as you head for the door.

Photo: City Awesome

The canines at the Dog Cafe of Busan are strays or rescues, but they are all very well trained so you really shouldn’t worry about anything else than being knocked down by the bigger ones or having to wash their smell off your clothes when you get home.