People Are Sleeping Outside a Seoul Mall for a $6 Mochi

The Godiva store at Lotte World Mall opens at 10:30 a.m. On most days this month, the line for its mochi has been full by 6.

Godiva started selling mochi here on September 10, and only here. Each one is made by hand in the store that day, so there aren't many: Korean reports put it at about 150 a day. Korean news outlets have been running photos of people curled up in sleeping bags outside the mall before sunrise, and a few have brought one-person tents. On Korean secondhand apps, people charge around ₩25,000 to stand in line for you, about three mochi's worth just for the wait.

There's even a new word for it: tteok-pen-run (떡픈런). Tteok means rice cake, and open run is what Koreans call sprinting into a store the second it opens. Put them together and you get a city queuing at 4 a.m. for chocolate wrapped in rice dough.

The line is the hard part

It has already changed once. In late September you just queued and hoped. By mid-October, according to Korean reports, it works like this.

You line up outside Gate 9 on the mall's ground floor, near Exit 10 of Jamsil Station. Not inside, and not at the store.

The line stops at 150 people, one per mochi. Lately the last spot has gone to someone who arrived around 4:30 a.m., and it's full by about 6. Show up at 7 and you'll be sent home.

At 8 a.m., everyone in line registers on CatchTable, a Korean waitlist app, and gets a number. Nobody is let into the mall before 10. Ordering starts then, and you get a ping when it's your turn to go down and pay.

Then you wait again. A high number can push your turn well into the afternoon. One person holding a number in the 130s was told to come back at 3 p.m.

So plan on losing most of a day.

One thing we couldn't confirm is whether you can register without a Korean phone number. CatchTable has an English version for tourists, but this waitlist may work differently. If you don't have a Korean number, ask the staff at the line before you set a 4 a.m. alarm.

Where to go

• Store: Godiva, B1, Lotte World Mall (고디바 롯데월드몰점)
• Address: 300 Olympic-ro, Songpa-gu, Seoul (서울 송파구 올림픽로 300)
• Subway: Jamsil Station, Line 2 or 8
• Hours: 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.
• The line: outside Gate 9, ground floor, by Jamsil Station Exit 10

There's also a Godiva Bakery near Lotte Department Store. Different place, no mochi.

What you're actually lining up for

A thin, chewy rice-cake shell around a lot of Godiva chocolate. There are twelve versions in three styles.

Godiva hasn't published a menu online. These prices and flavors are what Korean media and visitors reported as of mid-October, so check the board in the store. Visitors say a gift box of four is ₩2,500 extra. Godiva itself caps it at four per person.

The store also sells a waffle gelato, another Lotte World Mall exclusive, if the mochi are gone.

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The one people keep raving about is the dark chocolate strawberry. Reviewers describe thick, slightly bitter chocolate with three whole strawberries inside, and it's less sweet than you'd expect. The white chocolate praline splits opinion. It's dense and very sweet, a little greasy for some, and more than one reviewer said it needs an iced Americano next to it.

A common complaint across flavors is that the rice cake and the filling don't quite come together. It eats more like chocolate in a mochi jacket than one thing.

If red bean has put you off Korean rice cakes before, this is an easy way in. It's much closer to a chocolate bar than anything traditional.