In Yangpyeong, a little over 10,000 won taxi ride into the mountains from Yongmun station is a two story Rolleiflex camera that trades in dreams.
It’s not the easiest place to get to, I suggest taking a taxi or driving, while there is a bus stop somewhat nearby it is not close and you’ll have to hike up a somewhat steep hill for about 540 meters. But you can catch the 7-5 bus from Yongmun station and take it for about 19 minutes and 12 stops getting off at 중원 1리 정류장. This would be cheaper but more time consuming.
The Dreamy Camera Cafe is beautiful. It’s run by a couple of retired army pilots whose dreams for a quiet rural life and to open a cafe for dreamers birthed this cafe. You also have to assume they love photography since the cafe is filled with cameras and beautiful photographs and Polaroids from visitors. You can read more of the owner’s story and dream for their cafe in this Verge article which they include a copy of inside their English menus.
Most of the seating is upstairs, which is peaceful and one of the spots where you can get the current activity. It seems from photos filling up all available space on the stairs (and from the Verge article) that one of their original activities was to take Polaroids of visitors and have them write on the bottom of the photo and then they hung it up. The current one is to fill out your dreams.
And then when you are done you give it to one of them and they’ll take a photo of it and you can take a Polaroid type photo of it home, which is why it says to write in big letters a couple times on the paper. There are albums of collected dreams on the shelves in different languages and some Polaroids of them on the stairwell. It was fun to do, especially with my friend whose at a crossroads in her life. We took it seriously and I think it made it more meaningful for us.
We were there for a couple of hours. We ordered honey bread (6,000 won) to share and tea. They also sell cheese cake, kaya toast with cheese, tiramisu cake and choco muffins. The rest of their menu is drinks. I ordered the winter dream blending tea (all blended tea is 5,000 won) first. It’s a mix of rooibos tea, orange and cinnamon which smelled amazing. Then after sitting for awhile longer I decided to try another called sweet raspberry which is hibiscus, raspberry and blackberry and was super refreshing and sweet. We got all of our tea iced.
When it was time to leave we headed back downstairs. Which is also where the bathroom is, it’s a single person bathroom so if someones in there you’re going to have to wait, but it’s a decent bathroom. We looked at their things for sale, like key chains and postcards that you can fill out and they’ll send for you, anywhere in the world.
We asked them to call us a taxi, the taxi driver who’d brought us up had given us a business card to give them when we wanted to leave. While we waited we sat in their lawn enjoying the nice day and all the cosmos flowers in bloom. There was a picnic table and earlier I had seen a family with a blanket sitting and enjoying the space. While it’s not the easiest place to get to, it’s definitely one of my favorite cafes. There’s something magical about this unique looking cafe in the middle of the mountain that wants to hear about your dreams. Both the husband and wife speak fluent English. They are closed Sunday’s and Monday’s and the rest of the week they are open from 11am until 6pm.