Sontag Hotel

The Sontag Hotel was one of the earliest Western-style hotels in Korea. It operated between October 1902 and 1917 in Jung District, Seoul, Korean Empire and Korea under Japanese rule. The hotel did not originally go by the name "Sontag Hotel". It was so nicknamed for its French proprietress Antoinette Sontag, who was a close confidant of the Korean monarchy. The hotel began to officially use that name in 1909. The hotel hosted a number of people of contemporary and later importance, including later British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and operated the first hotel dabang (cafe) in Korea. Sontag sold the hotel in 1909 and left Korea. It continued to operate until 1917, when it was again sold and converted into a school dormitory for Ewha Haktang. The building was demolished in 1922 and replaced with a larger dormitory. The hotel and its original proprietress are remembered fondly in Korea, with both featuring in a number of recent works of historical fiction. There is currently a small memorial plaque dedicated to the hotel at its former site. The space is otherwise largely occupied by a memorial hall for the centennial anniversary of Ewha Womans University.

Hotel data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).