Time together · 1970s–2020s
How we spent time together
Where did you go to meet your friends? Follow the places where students spent time together, from coffeehouse tables to neighboring seats in a PC room.
Scroll through the decades1970s · One guitar, a song to share
An audience at Changgyeonggung’s outdoor music festival on April 17, 1976. A period scene of concerts and outings, not a university-only gathering.
대한민국 정부 · Photo source · Public domain
Students gathered in coffeehouses to talk and sang along to acoustic guitars. Group dates and campus festivals offered other chances to meet someone new.
Accounts of university culture describe coffeehouses, group dates, and acoustic guitars side by side. Photographs of a 1970 masquerade at Yonsei and a 1977 couples party at Hanyang preserve another campus scene: students enjoying music and dancing.
Visitors riding the roller coaster together at Children’s Grand Park on August 13, 1973. A scene from a period outing, not a university-only gathering.
서울특별시 공보실 / 서울기록원 · Photo source · 서울기록원 이용조건: 제한없음Three visitors pose together at the Children’s Grand Park pool on August 13, 1973. Their university enrollment status is not documented.
서울특별시 공보실 / 서울기록원 · Photo source · 서울기록원 이용조건: 제한없음Doksuri Dabang near Yonsei University in the 1970s: the early exterior of a campus coffee house where students listened to music and met friends. The archive dates the photograph to the decade.
서울역사박물관 / 서울역사아카이브 · Photo source · 공공누리 제1유형 (출처표시)1980s · A train to Daeseong-ri, a trip to remember
People gathered in a circle at Daehangno’s street festival on May 12, 1985. The event brought together members of the public.
서울특별시 공보관 / 서울기록원 · Photo source · 서울기록원 이용조건: 제한없음A group retreat meant leaving the classroom and boarding a train. After singing and playing together, unfamiliar classmates might feel a little closer on the journey home.
Recollections of retreats in Daeseong-ri describe guitars, songs, and shared drinks. On campus, clubs and Daedongje festivals brought people together through folk performance and group games. Trips and festivals made room for time in a crowd.
Participants dancing together at the Daehangno festival on May 12, 1985. This was a public festival, not a university-only event.
서울특별시 공보관 / 서울기록원 · Photo source · 서울기록원 이용조건: 제한없음People sit in a circle and play instruments at the Daehangno festival on May 12, 1985, with other participants gathered around to listen.
서울특별시 공보관 / 서울기록원 · Photo source · 서울기록원 이용조건: 제한없음Doksuri Dabang near Yonsei University after its 1980s expansion. Its new exterior contrasts with the low building of the 1970s. The archive dates the photograph to the decade.
서울역사박물관 / 서울역사아카이브 · Photo source · 공공누리 제1유형 (출처표시)1990s · Finding a place to dance, watch, and meet
A photograph dated October 1999 from a trip to Korea. People the photographer met in a bar/coffee house sit together around a table with beer and shared food.
Jesse Hull · Photo source · CC BY 2.0Nightclubs and rock cafés offered music and dancing; cinemas offered a story to watch together. Places beyond campus also became settings for friendship.
A history of university culture describes the spread of dance-oriented rock cafés around Sinchon from about 1991. Cinemas and drinking venues were also meeting places. In the late 1990s, PC rooms added another way to spend time together.
People passing a Burger King in Myeongdong in November 1995. A period streetscape providing context for outings to cinemas and cafés.
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Five people posing together on the lawn at Pusan National University on May 25, 1998—a snapshot of a campus gathering.
Yusuke Kawasaki (kawanet) · Photo source · CC BY 2.0Outside Piccadilly Cinema in Jongno 3-ga, May 1999. A large film billboard stands beside disco club, karaoke and café signs. A royal procession and spectators appear in the foreground.
서울경관기록화 사업 2000, 서울특별시 · 서울연구원 · Photo source · CC BY 4.02000s · A round online, a game around the table
Customers playing StarCraft side by side in a PC bang in July 2001. Their university enrollment status is not documented.
Alex C · Photo source · CC BY 2.0
Friends looked at separate screens while playing on the same team, or gathered around a table to roll the dice. Games expanded both the places and the ways to spend time together.
Student interviews from 2000 mention PC rooms and rhythm games such as DDR and Pump It Up. By 2003, field reporting described board-game cafés spreading through Daegu’s university districts. Online play and face-to-face tabletop games belonged to the same decade.
People enjoying karaoke together in Gyeongju on September 19, 2006, sharing a room with microphones and songbooks.
riNux · Photo source · CC BY-SA 2.0Participants covered in mud at the Boryeong Mud Festival on July 21, 2007—a scene of shared outings and festival fun.
hojusaram · Photo source · CC BY-SA 2.0
Inside an arcade at COEX in Seoul on November 6, 2007. Rows of arcade cabinets and rhythm-game machines show the setting of an arcade at the time.
etrepum · Photo source · CC BY 2.02010s · Where shall we go today?
Students sharing dinner and raising their cups around a long table during an MT retreat on March 29, 2013.
Seoung13 · Photo source · CC BY-SA 4.0
Meet for a meal, sing in a coin-operated karaoke booth, or play another round at a PC room. Familiar activities continued, appearing in different combinations.
A 2019 comparison of the university entry cohorts of 1999, 2009, and 2019 lists restaurants, coin karaoke, and PC rooms alongside drinking as social activities. Reported drinking frequency and who paid also differed between cohorts. How students met mattered alongside what they did.
Students visiting food stalls at Soongsil University’s festival on October 6, 2010: a moment of eating and talking together on campus.
장염소(jangyungela) · Photo source · CC BY 2.0 kr_2010-10-06_12h36m.jpg){kind=link}
Participants spraying water at one another at the Sinchon Water Gun Festival on July 26, 2014. A public festival held on Yonsei-ro in Seoul’s university district.
전한 / 문화체육관광부 해외문화홍보원 Korea.net · Photo source · CC BY-SA 2.0A campus road at Yonsei University on July 25, 2012. People walk along a tree-lined path beside the roadway in this summer scene.
콩가루 · Photo source · CC BY-SA 4.0
2020s · A puzzle to solve, a route to run
Participants gathered around a game table at Squid Game: The Experience in Seoul on May 29, 2025. This is an actual visitor experience inspired by the television series.
이정우 / 문화체육관광부 Korea.net · Photo source · CC BY-SA 2.0Solve an escape-room puzzle, visit an exhibition, or meet at a set time to run. Recent student-group records show many ways to plan a meeting around an activity.
A university social group’s 2026 account lists board games, bowling, exhibitions, and pop-ups alongside retreats, festivals, and trips. A campus running group documents regular runs and marathon entries. Familiar activities continue beside newer ones.
Hongdae at night on August 19, 2024. People walk between restaurants and shops; this is not a documented university gathering.
Sgroey · Photo source · CC BY-SA 4.0
Participants enjoying a group mud activity at the Boryeong Mud Festival on Daecheon Beach on July 26, 2025. Their university enrollment status is not documented.
이정우 / 문화체육관광부 Korea.net · Photo source · CC BY-SA 4.0Scenes preserved in records
How has time spent socializing face to face changed?
The Time Use Survey records average daily face-to-face socializing among students at university level and above: 52 minutes in 1999 and 25 minutes in 2024.
These are averages across the whole group and all days, including graduate students. They include people other than friends. Shared meals, films, and sports may be coded separately, so this is not total time spent having fun with friends.
KOSIS · Time Use Survey, average time by students’ school level ↗Which activities do young adults experience?
In the 2025 National Leisure Activity Survey, 87.5% of respondents in their twenties had met friends in the previous year, 53.5% had drunk alcohol, and 37.0% had visited a karaoke venue.
These are annual participation rates for all people in their twenties, not only university students or the frequency of outings. Individual activities do not identify whether friends were present. Multiple responses were allowed; selected activities are shown.
Reading this story
Scenes were selected from contemporary reporting, oral histories and recollections, university cultural materials, and recent group activity records. They show new activities alongside continuing traditions, rather than ranking each decade’s most popular pastimes. Long-term comparisons of the Time Use Survey require attention to changes in activity classifications and survey seasons. The leisure survey combines board games with puzzles and cubes, and its themed-café category cannot be read as escape rooms alone.
See each caption for the photograph’s date, place, and subject. Reference photographs of places and activities are distinguished from photographs directly documenting university students in the period. Images were resized and compressed for the web; the opening previews show cropped portions. Research reviewed October 24, 2026.