Incheon

1 · POSITION

Incheon — Jemulpo in the 1880s — was the treaty port through which Westerners entered Korea, and it was here, not in Seoul, that Korea’s first hotels for foreigners opened. The register holds it as the laboratory of Western hotel service in Korea before the capital had a grand-hotel culture. [1, 2]

2 · THE DAEBUL

The Daibutsu — Daebul — opened in April 1884 in the Japanese settlement, kept by a Japanese shipping agent named Hori; a British diplomat was its first guest, before it was finished. It was rebuilt and enlarged in 1888, the date usually given for Korea’s first Western-style hotel. When the railway reached Seoul and better hotels opened there, it was sold and became a Chinese restaurant; a reconstruction now stands as a museum. [1, 2]

3 · THE OTHER HOUSES

Each settlement had its own: the Hotel de Corea in the general foreign settlement, a favourite of sailors from the warships; Harry’s Hotel in the Chinese settlement, from about 1884; and Steward’s, opened in the late 1880s by Eu Don, a Chinese former servant of the American legation, first as the Sea View Hotel — cheaper, its patrons said, and with better food. [1]

4 · WHY THE PORT

The Daebul lost its trade when the railway and Seoul’s own hotels arrived — the register reads that as the moment the hotel moved from the port, where the stranger first landed, to the capital. [1]

5 · ⚑ CANDOUR

⚑ The keeper of the Daebul is named as Hori Kintaro by one source and Hori Hisataro by another; its reconstruction is dated 2018 and 2020. The register does not treat the Daebul as Korea’s first hotel without these qualifications. [1–2]