PC café in Seongbuk for quiet weekday work: ZERO100 PC Gireum

I have a desktop, a smart TV, and a tablet at home, but the reality is that when I want to play a game or get something done quickly, I end up going to a neighborhood PC café. I stopped by ZERO100 PC Gireum, a fairly well-known PC café on the northern side of Subway Line 4, and made the most of a little free time on a weekday afternoon while quickly finishing a small blog post.

A 24-hour PC café near Gireum Station

It is near Exit 6 of Gireum Station on Subway Line 4. It is open 24 hours.

This place had a much better location than I expected. Perhaps because it is in the Gireum New Town area, I saw the occasional college student or teenager taking a break even on a weekday, so the overall atmosphere felt clean and lively. Still, since it is a neighborhood spot rather than somewhere in Gangnam, it was pleasantly secluded and quiet, which was a major plus.

Worries about smells and shared seats

It occupies a spacious area on B1. Some people may worry that a place like this will smell of cigarette smoke, but that is an old concern. There is a separate smoking area—a smoking room—so even women like me did not need to worry about our clothes absorbing odors.

What I genuinely liked the moment I walked in was the alcohol wipes placed around the space. Since all sorts of people use shared places like this, you can worry about keyboards, chairs, and dining spots being dirty, and they felt like a small but thoughtful consideration for anyone who finds that uncomfortable.

Which seats are good for working alone?

This Gireum-dong PC café had its seats divided in a variety of ways. There were more secluded two-person couple seats, as well as rooms where several people could enjoy team-play games. The single seats were generally neat too, and they did not feel crammed together or noisy, so they were perfectly good for enjoying whatever you like.

Most people who come here are gamers. Everyone had a headset on, enjoying games with friends, and sometimes they would make a noise when an attack did not go well—I found myself smiling to myself.

Writing a blog post on a gaming keyboard

When I was younger, I probably would have become absorbed in these games too, but as an office worker busy making a living day by day, these days I end up working or briefly checking YouTube when I come to a place like this. Either way, I make my living by writing, so I sat down and typed away quickly on the keyboard.

The gamers' keyboard had a different key feel from the one at home, making typing feel more satisfying and speedy, so I filled more than 1,000 characters of a blog post in no time—faster than usual. Since the writing came together so quickly, I even thought, should I just replace my home keyboard with one of these?

Snacks and a meal at the PC café

Another pleasure of coming to a place like this is the snacks, ramen, and rice dishes, right? That day, I ordered plenty of boiled eggs as an easy way to get some protein. They also had protein-packed charcoal-grilled salted chicken without a seasoning sauce, so I quickly added that to my cart too.

They also had plenty of coffee that was on par with Starbucks, plus non-coffee drinks such as matcha lattes. I was surprised that they seemed to have everything: packaged cookies and snacks, fried foods, all kinds of ramen, rice bowls, kimchi, and danmuji (pickled radish).

It made me understand why teenagers enjoy PC cafés so much. Super Junior's Shindong once said, while running this kind of business, that “the key is to do food well,” and once I actually ate here, I instantly understood what he meant about food quality.

Why I recommend a weekday afternoon visit

Among the PC cafés in Gireum-dong, this one was exceptionally secluded and quiet, making it a good place to visit often. In particular, I would recommend the weekday afternoon hours, when you can use it more comfortably and quietly than on weekends, when there are lots of students.

For an office worker like me, it was great to take a day of annual leave, pop in at a time like this, and quickly finish all sorts of word-processing work.