The Restaurant Index
Korean cuisine was the most common restaurant category in South Korea, with 359,832 establishments as of Jun 2026, according to Commercial District Information (Small Enterprise and Market Service).
Every eating and drinking place in Korea's commercial-district registry, sorted by how many there are. 840,255 of them, Q2 2026 (as of 30 June 2026). The categories are the registry's own, not ours.
Source: Commercial District Information (Small Enterprise and Market Service) (소상공인시장진흥공단 상가(상권)정보) — Small Enterprise and Market Service (소상공인시장진흥공단). Q2 2026 (as of 30 June 2026). Retrieved 2026-09-10.
- 1Korean한식42.8%359,832
- 2Other quick-service기타 간이19.4%162,941
- 3Cafés & non-alcoholic비알코올14.6%122,623
- 4Bars & pubs주점11.6%97,580
- 5Chinese중식3.8%31,984
- 6Japanese일식3.0%24,842
- 7Western서양식2.7%23,100
- 8Canteens & buffets구내식당·뷔페1.3%10,673
- 9Southeast Asian동남아시아0.8%6,631
- 10Other international기타 외국0.0%49
- 11Catering출장 음식0.0%0
- 12Mobile food이동 음식0.0%0
Practical takeaways
- Korean alone is 42.8% of the total — roughly 4 in every 10 places.
- Cafés and non-alcoholic drink shops (122,623) outnumber Chinese restaurants (31,984) by about 3.8 to one.
- Catering and Mobile food show zero — the categories exist but no premises are on this registry under them. We leave the zeros in rather than dropping the rows.
Computed only from the table above — nothing added from outside this dataset.
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