Seoul's pizza is recent, deliberate and very good. What the research did not find is a Korean form: the strong records here are Korean makers working Neapolitan orthodoxy to a very high standard, which is a real achievement and not the same thing as a tradition of one's own. A 2012 list was used as a survival check rather than a guide, and it produced the other kind of finding - one of its names has closed.
The clearest survivor of a 2012 Seoul list, and the strongest evidenced pizzeria in the city: Lee Young-woo, who trained in Naples and became the first Korean to win the Naples World Pizza Championship's Classico category, has run Spacca Napoli in Hapjeong/Mapo since 2011.
Verified 2026-09-18
Kim Ju-young opened this roughly 50-square-metre Seongsu pizzeria in 2020 after training under the Japan-based Neapolitan pizza master Makishima Pasquale from 2013, moving between Korea and Japan to learn the trade. The oven is wood-fired and the pizzas go into it as they are ordered.
Verified 2026-09-18
A Hongdae Neapolitan pizzeria open since 2020, using Caputo flour and affiliated with the Associazione Pizzaiuoli Napoletani, baked in an oven its own reviewers describe as built from Pompeii volcanic stone — the largest of its kind reported in Korea. No source we opened named the pizzaiolo, so maker is left blank rather than filled from an unopened aggregator's claim of a first name.
Verified 2026-09-18
Canadian owner David Lauckner learned pizza-making from artisans in Sorrento before opening a small pizzeria inside Itaewon Market, and he says plainly that his pizza is not strictly Italian: he wanted to combine what Americans and Canadians like with what he learned in Italy. The dough and sauce are made in-house daily to a Neapolitan base recipe, baked in an imported brick oven. It is a deliberate hybrid rather than a faithful reproduction, and one of the few names from Seoul's early-2010s wave confirmed both to survive and to be still run by its founder.
Verified 2026-09-18
