Semplace
Almost every licensed place to stay around Hongdae is for foreign guests only
These are "foreign-tourist urban homestays" (외국인관광 도시민박업), which the law lets owners run only for foreign tourists. In the 12 dongs (neighborhood units) around Hongdae, the area by Hongik University, 1,759 of the 1,838 licensed lodgings (96%) are this type. And more than one in five of all such homestays in Seoul are there.
12 legal dongs around Hongdae · in operation · Oct 22, 2026
Source: Seoul foreign-tourist urban homestay business license data (Seoul Open Data Plaza)
Previous issue Seongsu, Seoul
Semplace counts a neighborhood with official public data instead of reputation: shops by type, how crowded it is by time of day, how many people use the nearest subway station, and where short-stay foreign visitors are.
The figures come from Seoul's open data (Seoul Metropolitan Government public data, 서울특별시 공공데이터), and every page lists its sources. We update the figures when the next quarter's values come out.