The TARDIS Pub & Grill:
Korea’s Doctor Who Theme Bar
By Giacomo Lee, author of Funereal. Read more about fandom in the Far East with the BBC Sherlock fan café, Joker ‘Buster Cube’ collectables & lovely Karen Gillan in webtoon form over at his official site NOW!
In promotion of Doctor Who’s eighth season premiere last year, the show went on a world tour that took Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman and a life size TARDIS replica as far afield as the US, Mexico and Brazil. The only Asian stop on this tour was not China or Japan as one might think, but South Korea, a country with the most rabid Whovians in the Far East, and an Anglophile obsession with BBC fare like Sherlock and The Hour.
The TARDIS and its crew stopped by in Seoul last August, but just a a few months before in the satellite city of Anyang, one enterprising Whovian opened the country’s only Doctor Who theme bar.
The TARDIS Beer Pub & Grill is perhaps the only thing worth seeing in Anyang, a city not particularly known for anything, let alone sci-fi fandom. Open from evening onwards, the pub is in some ways typical of a Korean hof, open plan bars with tables and seats, serving alcohol with meat dishes or Korean snack food. They’re places to go with friends, for meals come in group portions. Food and alcohol can’t come without the other, so if you sit down, expect to buy more than a beer, and don’t come on a full stomach.
There are no Doctor Who specific treats on the menu, and the music is plain old k-pop fare, but one wall does feature a classic quote from the show, as seen below.
Look a little closer, and you’ll see old foe Cassandra staring back at you. This fantastic piece of art was recently presented to the bar by two Whovians who had gone out to meet the TARDIS on its public stops around Seoul, taking part in a competition to snap creative shots with the police box as background. The most popular photos would ensure fans VIP tickets to a gala screening of the Twelfth Doctor’s first episode. Here’s hoping Cassandra won it for them!
If Capaldi and co should ever return to Korea and wish to check out the TARDIS Beer Pub & Grill, then here are the directions: From Seoul, take line 1 of the city’s subway line all the way out to Anyang Station (Stop P147). Leave from exit 1 and walk until you reach building 674–201 in the highstreet. On Korean maps the bar should come up simply as 타디스 (‘Tardis’).
Giacomo Lee is a London author whose writing has been featured on Boing Boing, io9 & Shortlist. Read his near-future novel Funereal through iBooks on Apple iTunes, and Kindle & paperback on Amazon UK, and the Amazon US store. For free review copies, please contact the publisher at Signal 8 Press.
