Around 1900, while coffee shops were in their infancy in Japan, around 1902, French-German Antoinette Sontag opened the Korean Peninsula's first Western-style hotel, the Sontag Hotel, in Jeongdong, Seoul.
She entered Seoul in 1885 accompanying Karl Ivanovich Bebel, the first Russian ambassador to Korea.
She was said to be Bebel's sister-in-law and served as a liaison between the Russian Legation and the Imperial Court.