Room-and-drinks, hourly table service, an extension fee, and a service charge on the sum of the three.
| Part | What it is |
|---|---|
| Juda (주대) | The room and the drinks on the table, charged as one figure. Many venues split it between an early and a late slot. |
| TC | An hourly fee for each person serving your table. Multiplies by people and by hours. |
| RT | An extension fee that applies when you stay on without ordering more drinks. |
| Service charge | Ten to twenty per cent, added to the sum of the above at the end. |
Two of these scale with your group and two do not. The room-and-drinks charge is fixed per room; the hourly fee multiplies by the number of people serving your table and by the hours you stay. That is why adding one person to a booking changes the total more than adding one hour of a smaller group.
For two people over three hours: the room-and-drinks charge, plus the hourly fee multiplied by two people and three hours, then multiplied by 1.10 to 1.20 for the service charge.
We round the result to the nearest fifty thousand won because the underlying figures are rarely precise to less than that. Where a venue splits the room charge between an early and a late slot, we use the venue's own figures for each rather than averaging them.
Every estimate on this site — on the venue pages, in the calculator, in the tables — comes out of that one formula. There is no second method applied quietly somewhere else.
Take a room charge of 180,000 won and an hourly fee of 120,000. Two people for three hours works out between one million and one million one hundred thousand won.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Room and drinks | 180,000 |
| Table service | 120,000 x 2 people x 3 hours = 720,000 |
| Subtotal | 900,000 |
| Service charge, 10-20% | 990,000 - 1,080,000 |
| Rounded to 50,000 | 1,000,000 - 1,100,000 |
That is the whole of the arithmetic. The calculator on the Korean pages does exactly this and nothing more, which is also why it cannot account for what a venue decides on the night.
The same venue can quote two very different totals depending on when you go and how many of you there are.
| Variable | Effect on the total |
|---|---|
| Time of night | Many venues split the room charge at midnight, and the later slot is usually the cheaper one. |
| Group size | The hourly fee multiplies by the number of people serving the table. |
| Extending | Ordering more drinks raises the room charge; staying on without ordering adds the extension fee instead. |
| Day of week | Friday and Saturday do not cost more, but the choice of rooms narrows. |
| Promotions | Some venues run early-evening or advance-booking discounts. These are not in our figures. |
Of these, group size and extensions move the total the most. Time of night matters less than people expect: the late slot is cheaper at many venues, but not by enough to change which band you are in.
The two-people-three-hours figure for every type we have verified in Gangnam, worked out from the published room and hourly charges.
| Type | Room charge | Per person, per hour | Two people, three hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Karaoke | 130,000 - 180,000 | 130,000 - 130,000 | 1,000,000 - 1,150,000 |
| Hyper Public | 160,000 - 180,000 | 120,000 - 140,000 | 950,000 - 1,200,000 |
| Jjeomo (0.5) | 500,000 - 500,000 | 183,000 - 220,000 | 1,750,000 - 2,200,000 |
| Ten Cafe | 600,000 - 600,000 | 220,000 - 220,000 | 2,100,000 - 2,300,000 |
| Ten Pro | 1,000,000 - 1,000,000 | 400,000 - 400,000 | 3,750,000 - 4,100,000 |
| Il Pro (1%) | 1,000,000 - 1,000,000 | 367,000 - 367,000 | 3,500,000 - 3,850,000 |
| Shirt Room | 100,000 - 320,000 | 120,000 - 130,000 | 900,000 - 1,300,000 |
| Public | 100,000 - 180,000 | 120,000 - 360,000 | 900,000 - 2,800,000 |
| Noraebang | 160,000 - 300,000 | 120,000 - 120,000 | 950,000 - 1,200,000 |
These come straight out of the formula above. When checking a quote against them, make sure it is for the same two people and three hours.
They are a way of knowing whether a quote is normal. They are not a quote, and a cheaper venue is not a better one.
Bottle upgrades, packages, group bookings and event pricing are all outside the formula, and any of them can move a bill by a third. A venue that publishes a price in March may charge differently in September.
We also cannot tell you which venue suits you. The figures separate price bands; they say nothing about which room you will enjoy.
Almost always the difference is in what each figure includes, not in the underlying price.
| How a site quotes | What is missing |
|---|---|
| Room charge only | The hourly fee and the service charge, which is most of the bill. |
| A total with no basis | The number of people and the hours it covers, without which it compares to nothing. |
| This site | Nothing hidden: people, hours and service charge are all stated, and the figure is a range. |
| A venue's own page | We carry those figures as published, with the source noted. |
A site quoting only the room charge will look far cheaper than one quoting a full evening. A site quoting a total without saying how many people and how many hours has not given you anything you can compare. We state all of it.
We revisit prices monthly and venue listings whenever something is confirmed to have changed.
Each page carries the date its figures were current. When a figure changes, that date changes with it — we do not restamp pages that have not moved.