How losing 50kg gave this Korean bartender the strength to open a place of his own
Overweight and aimless, Dongyeol Shin decided to change his life. He now runs Kiez, a chic drinking hole in one of Seoul’s trendiest enclaves
Look up the highest-rated bars in Seoul, and you will find many of them clustered in Cheongdam, an affluent neighbourhood near Apgujeong and Gangnam in the South Korean capital.
Hidden among them is the lesser-known – at least for now – Kiez, a discreet underground cocktail den opened in January 2025 by 33-year-old Dongyeol Shin, an up-and-coming talent on the drinking scene.
The name of the bar, inspired by the red-light district of Hamburg, Germany, is a subtle hat tip to Shin’s German upbringing; his family emigrated to Europe in 1994, lured by the economic prospects following the reunification of East and West Germany.
Bartending was not Shin’s original vocation – he studied finance in Vienna, Austria, and landed a job with a pharmaceutical company soon after. “I was basically an accountant, and the corporate world gave nothing to me. I was very unhappy,” he says.