Where there’s a smoker there’s a way

A South Korean businessman has found a way of providing smokers with indoor areas where they can drink coffee and indulge their habit while sitting on chairs at tables – just like normal people.

But according to a story in The Korea Times, these ‘smoking cafés’ have become a ‘burning issue’.

Since January 2015, Korea has banned smoking in restaurants and cafés, which nevertheless have been required to provide separate, enclosed smoking rooms without chairs or tables.

The new cafés do not serve customers but give them paper cups so they can get coffee from vending machines. This allows the venues to be licensed under food vending laws, not as restaurants, thereby avoiding the ban on chairs and tables in smoking lounges.

The first smoking café opened late last year in Yong-in, Gyeonggi Province, but it now has more than eight branches nationwide.

“The smoking café in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, has 500 customers on a daily basis,” the founder of Win Win Korea, Hwang Ki-ju, who owns the franchise, told the Maeil Business Newspaper. “On weekends, we see more than 1,000 customers.”

Hwang said the franchise had also been established in Seoul, with the first outlet opening at Hyewha-dong.

The company plans to have 50 branches by the end of this year.

“It’s totally legal in every form,” Hwang said. “The merits outweigh the negatives in that it decreases indiscriminate smoking.”

But the Times reports that officials are not happy.

“According to the law, smoking in restaurants is illegal, but this does not mean that it is legal to smoke in food vending entities,” a Ministry of Health and Welfare official said. “We are currently looking at options to put a stop to the franchise, such as fixing our amendment.”