'I've been waiting since 9 p.m. Tuesday': From Dubai cookies to mochi, open-run culture is now a pastime

"I think this is something worth doing at least once in your life."

Before sunrise Wednesday, the line outside Lotte World Mall near Exit 10 of Jamsil Station in Songpa-gu, Seoul, already stretched more than 100 meters. The queue, long enough to wrap around the building, had one purpose: Godiva mochi. Department store entrances once crowded with shoppers waiting for luxury handbags are now packed with people lining up for rice cakes.

Belgian chocolate brand Godiva sells a limited run of 150 mochi per day exclusively at its Lotte World Mall store — each piece filled with chocolate ganache and fruit such as strawberry and tangerine. With four hours still to go before the store opened, more than 150 people were already in line. Rain on Tuesday had pushed morning temperatures down to 9 degrees Celsius, and people found various ways to cope. Single-person tents and sleeping bags dotted the queue. Near the front, pizza, doughnuts, instant noodles and even soju had appeared.

Following last year's Dubai Chewy Cookie craze, this year's food trend centers on mochi and other rice-cake desserts. The first person in line had arrived Tuesday at around 9 p.m. — a wait of roughly 13 hours until opening. "I came because I wanted to give some to a friend," said Cho, 25. "I'm a university student, so I have time, and I figured I'd just wait it out." He added that playing games and chatting with others in line had made the experience more fun than expected.

Everyone had their own story. Jeong, 51, left home at 4:30 a.m. after her son said he wanted to try the mochi. "I live nearby, so I grabbed a folding chair and rode my bike over," she said. "It's fascinating to see so many young people lined up like this." Kim Yong-woo, 22, a university student who had been waiting since 2:30 a.m. to buy a gift for his girlfriend, said: "This is the first time I've ever waited somewhere like I was sleeping rough, but it's actually kind of fun in its own way."

Kwon Hak-jun, 28, an office worker, had traveled all the way from Daegu for his mother. "She told me Godiva mochi was really popular, so I came to buy some," he said. "I took a day off work, took the KTX last night and have been waiting since 11 p.m." There was also a self-described reseller in the queue. A university student who gave only his surname said he planned to buy the mochi during a break between classes and resell it — not just that day, but the next two days as well. Resale listings appear daily on secondhand platforms, with mochi that retails for around 9,000 won being flipped for as much as 45,000 won ($34).

Inside Lotte Department Store's Jamsil branch, a separate "tteok pilgrimage" open-run was in full swing. The pop-up brought together Yukgu Bangatsgan, a well-known rice cake shop from Sokcho, and Yeongdo Bridge Tteok House, which gained a following for its pizza-topped rice cake. Yukgu Bangatsgan's glutinous rice mochi sells out before noon. In the three days after the tteok pilgrimage pop-up launched — Oct. 9 through Oct. 11 — the number of customers buying bakery products at Lotte Town Jamsil jumped 65 percent compared with the same period last year.

Open-run culture is nothing new. Haitai Confectionery's honey butter chips, which debuted in 2014, set the template — at the height of the craze, listings appeared online selling empty bags, and one post even offered "honey butter chip scent" for sale. In March, Orion's moist golden cheese chips sold out almost immediately after launch, moving 380,000 boxes — about 5.03 million individual bags — within two weeks.

Late last year, the Dubai Chewy Cookie took over. Word spread through SNS, triggering open runs at stores across the country. As the product grew harder to find, resellers on secondhand platforms began listing single cookies for well over 20,000 won.

This year's craze is chewy rice cake. The standout name in the tteok pilgrimage lineup is Changuk Tteok, known for its pumpkin injeolmi. Open runs at its Gwangju, South Jeolla Province store became a daily occurrence earlier this year, and the brand has since expanded to pop-ups at department stores including The Hyundai. Fruit mochi is also a major draw — on weekdays, waits of more than 100 minutes are the norm.

The lifespan of any given must-have item is short. But another always follows. The engine driving the cycle is SNS purchase-verification culture — the satisfaction of securing a coveted product before everyone else, shared online for all to see. Marketers have taken note, designing campaigns that turn even a long wait into a shareable experience.

Lee Hong-ju, a professor of consumer economics at Sookmyung Women's University, said the phenomenon combines genuine enjoyment with the bandwagon effect — the pull of consuming something simply because everyone else is. "Items that 'everyone has to try' keep emerging as taste satisfaction and trend-chasing reinforce each other," she said. "The psychological reward of showing off to others, on top of personal satisfaction, is what keeps pushing open-run behavior further."