Bi On-Nal: Why Koreans Have a Specific Emotional Category for Rainy Days
There is a phrase in Korean that does not translate cleanly into English. Bi on-nal gam-seong, which means something close to "rainy day feeling," refers to the specific emotional register that rain produces: quieter, slower, more internally focused, with a pull toward warmth and comfort that has nothing to do with avoiding the weather and everything to do with leaning into what it creates. This is not melancholy exactly, though it shares some of its quietness. It is closer to what other languages call hygge or cozy, but with a particular Korean sharpness around the sensory details: the sound of rain on a window, the smell of frying batter reaching the street, the way neon signs blur in the wet asphalt outside a café. Korea has not just accommodated rainy days. It has built an entire culture around them.
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| The sound of pajeon hitting a hot pan is close enough to rain on a roof that the two belong together. |
This culture shows up across the full range of daily life in Korea, from what people eat and drink to where they choose to spend their time and how they arrange the afternoon. The rainy day activates a specific set of preferences that most Koreans carry without consciously thinking about them. A window seat at a café becomes not just pleasant but almost necessary. The question of what to eat resolves itself instantly for most people. The pace of the day, already slower when it rains, finds its natural speed. Understanding this framework is one of the most useful things a visitor to Korea can do, because it unlocks a layer of the culture that is invisible when the sky is clear.
The Window Seat and Why It Matters More Than the Coffee
Ask a Korean where they want to sit in a café on a rainy day and the answer, almost invariably, is by the window. This is not about the view in the conventional sense. Rainy day windows offer something different from the usual urban street scene: the glass transforms the outside world into something softer and more abstract, with rain trails distorting the colors of passing umbrellas and the blur of wet pavement reflecting whatever light remains in the sky. Seoul's café culture, already one of the most developed in the world in terms of density and variety, has built extensively around this particular pleasure.
Cafés in neighborhoods like Yeonnam-dong, Seochon, Mangwon, and parts of Hannam-dong tend to have large windows that face quiet streets rather than busy thoroughfares, which makes them particularly suited to the rainy day experience. On a day when it rains, these neighborhoods shift from their usual mild busyness into something closer to stillness, and sitting inside a warm café watching that stillness with a coffee that you have no particular reason to rush through is one of the cleanest pleasures Seoul offers. The specific design vocabulary of many of these spaces, wood surfaces, ceramic cups, filtered natural light, minimal sound, seems almost to have been developed in anticipation of exactly this kind of afternoon.
What to Order on a Rainy Day
Rainy days in Korea push people toward particular drinks with a consistency that is almost reflexive. Hot lattes in ceramic cups, not paper. Yuzu tea, which is warming and slightly sweet and has the particular herbal quality that suits gray light. Korean traditional teas like omija, the five-flavor berry with its combination of sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and spicy notes, or boricha, the roasted barley tea served hot that is the default drink in Korean homes and functions here as the café version of comfort. The seasonal drink menu at most Seoul cafés shifts with the weather as much as with the calendar, and a rainy day is when the warming options move to the front.
Pajeon and Makgeolli: The Rainy Day Pair That Needs No Explanation
At some point during a rainy day in Korea, the question of what to eat will answer itself with a word: pajeon. The savory pancake, made with a wheat-based batter loaded with scallions and often seafood, fried in oil until the edges become lacework-thin and golden and the center stays soft and yielding, is so closely associated with rainy days in Korea that the connection has become a kind of cultural reflex. The tradition of enjoying pajeon on rainy days stems from the belief that the sizzling sound of the pancake cooking mirrors the sound of raindrops falling outside, creating a cozy ambiance that perfectly complements the gloomy weather.
The agricultural roots of the pairing go further back. The tradition is rooted in farming history: farmers unable to work during heavy rain would gather to drink fermented rice wine, which provided both energy and warmth, and fry pancakes using easily accessible scallions and flour. The drink they reached for was makgeolli, the milky, slightly fizzy rice wine with a low alcohol content, a faintly tangy finish, and a texture that sits somewhere between a beverage and a thin porridge. Together, pajeon and makgeolli form a pairing that has survived every shift in Korean food culture and shows no signs of being replaced, because the combination works on a level that goes beyond taste.
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| A rainy day in Seoul and a window seat are a combination that justifies arriving before the café opens. |
The Science Behind the Craving
There is a practical dimension to why the craving for pajeon and makgeolli is stronger on rainy days than on clear ones. Rain reduces serotonin secretion, which causes the body to crave carbohydrates as a compensatory mechanism. Humidity on rainy days also helps spread the smell of frying oil more effectively through outdoor spaces, which means the aroma of pajeon cooking travels further and reaches more people when it rains. The combination of a physiological carbohydrate craving and the amplified sensory signal of frying batter is not coincidental. It is one of those cases where culture and biology have arrived at the same conclusion from different directions.
The version of pajeon most closely associated with rainy days is haemul pajeon, seafood scallion pancake, which includes squid, shrimp, and oysters alongside the scallions. It is larger and richer than the simpler pajeong variations, and it arrives at the table still sizzling in its pan, the edges crisped to near-translucency and the interior fragrant with seafood. The protocol for eating it involves scissors to cut it into manageable pieces, a dipping sauce of soy sauce and rice vinegar with a little sesame oil, and no particular urgency. Kimchijeon, the kimchi version, offers a sharper, more assertive flavor that pairs equally well with makgeolli and is favored by people who want heat alongside their rain.
The Jumak Revival: Modern Makgeolli Bars and Where to Find Them
The traditional jumak, the Korean tavern that served makgeolli and simple food to travelers and farmers, has been reinterpreted in contemporary Seoul in ways that preserve its essential character while updating the setting. What was once a rural waystation has become a neighborhood gathering place, usually with low wooden tables, simple ceramic cups for the makgeolli, and a menu anchored by jeon in various forms alongside banchan sides like acorn jelly salad and kimchi.
Areas around Ikseon-dong, Seochon, and parts of Jongno have the highest concentration of these spaces, many of them operating out of older buildings that add a physical layer to the nostalgic atmosphere. On a rainy evening, these places fill with a specific mix of older regulars and younger Koreans who have come to the pairing through a combination of genuine appreciation and what has been called the "halmaennial" trend, young people embracing traditional aesthetics and foods as a form of cultural reconnection. A table of people sharing a large pajeon and passing a ceramic kettle of makgeolli around while rain streaks the windows outside is, in Seoul, one of the most time-tested social arrangements in existence.
Staying In: The Rainy Day as Interior Design Opportunity
For Koreans who spend rainy days at home rather than out, the day carries its own specific aesthetic. Korean interior culture, already oriented toward warmth and the quality of domestic space, shifts its emphasis on rainy days toward the layered comfort that the weather seems to call for. A soft blanket, a book or a laptop running a drama, a mug of something warm, and a window with a view of the rain constitutes a nearly complete rainy day interior in most Seoul apartments. The window is always the anchor point.
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| Koreans have a specific name for this mood. They call it bi on-nal gam-seong — rainy day feeling. |
This orientation toward rain as an aesthetic experience rather than an inconvenience is part of what makes bi on-nal gam-seong such a specific and shared category in Korean emotional life. Rain is not weather to be endured. It is a condition that reorganizes the space of the day around different priorities: slower, warmer, more sensory, more interpersonal. The food becomes more comforting. The spaces become more intentional. The conversations, whether over pajeon and makgeolli at a wooden table or through a café window with coffee going cold, run at a different pace than they do on clear days.
Rainy Day Seoul: A Loose Itinerary
If you find yourself in Seoul on a rainy day with no fixed plan, the following sequence requires nothing except comfortable shoes and a small amount of cash. Start at a café in a neighborhood like Yeonnam-dong or Seochon, arriving early enough to secure a window seat before the rain brings everyone else to the same conclusion. Stay longer than you normally would. When hunger arrives, find a pajeon restaurant that shows its age in the wooden furniture and the laminated menu, order haemul pajeon and a ceramic kettle of makgeolli, and take the afternoon with the pace it deserves. If the evening stays wet, Gwangjang Market in Jongno has been serving bindaetteok, the mung bean pancake that is pajeon's earthier older cousin, from stalls at the back of the market for decades, and the covered market arcade keeps the rain entirely out while delivering exactly the kind of warm, crowded, sizzling atmosphere that rainy evenings tend to call for.
What Korean rainy day culture offers, at its core, is permission. Permission to slow down, to eat something fried and rich, to sit in a café longer than is strictly necessary, to let a day that might have had plans become a day that has a mood instead. In a city as relentlessly active as Seoul, that permission turns out to be one of the more valuable things the weather can provide.
Data Sources
Baekusaeng Makgeolli, Why Koreans Drink Makgeolli When It Rains (2025)
KoreaExperience.com, Best Pajeon and Makgeolli Spots Seoul 2026
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