Taegeukdang

Taegeukdang opened in 1946 in Myeong-dong, in the first year after Korea's liberation, and its name and logo were built around the taegeuk symbol at the center of the national flag — a deliberate choice at a moment when many competing bakeries were reaching for Western-sounding names instead. The shop moved to its present main location in Jangchung-dong in 1973, where it still operates as the flagship store today. It is widely described as the oldest continuously active bakery in Seoul and carries the city government's Oraegage designation for historic, long-established businesses.

The bakery's own site confirms it under the description "Seoul's oldest bakery, since 1946," and lists a working network of branches beyond the Jangchung-dong flagship: an Insa-dong shop, a counter inside the Mondrian Hotel, and outlets at The Hyundai Seoul, Seoul Station, the Seoul Station plaza, Hyundai Pangyo (two locations), and Hyundai Daegu. That spread reflects a real operating business, not a single nostalgia storefront — Taegeukdang had seven branches at its 1970s peak, contracted through the 1980s as newer bakery chains expanded, and was rebuilt by the third generation of the founding family after they took over around 2011–2012, followed by a 2015 renovation of the flagship.

Its best-known items are old enough to be part of the story themselves: Monaca ice cream sandwiches, introduced in 1947, castella sponge cake, and jeonbyeong, a traditional sweet pancake. Together with the branch list and the Oraegage recognition, these give Taegeukdang a documented, verifiable identity distinct from Seoul's newer wave of Instagram-driven dessert cafes — a working bakery with an eighty-year paper trail rather than a recently opened storefront riding a trend.