Seoul Searching

Because Ben and I traveled all the way to Japan, quite a far distance from NC, we had decided to also fit in a side trip to South Korea. After visiting Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka, we flew to Seoul for a four-night visit before returning to Tokyo to finish up our unforgettable multi-week East Asia tour.

My impression from the short time there was that Seoul felt like a mix of a large Japanese city and a large European metropolis. A lot of the desirable aspects of Japan were present, such as relative quiet, order, and cleanliness, along with plentiful relatively affordable and healthy food options, but without the depth of Japanese anality, such as not frowning on such “crazy” things as eating or drinking while walking, haha. I was surprised by the extent of better English skills as well. It also felt a bit more comfortable than Japan for me because I had spent some time before the trip learning to transliterate the Korean script (Hangul), which is a wonderfully elegant alphabet, much simpler than Japanese’s three (arguably four, if including romanji) scripts of katakana, hiragana, and kanji, with thousands of symbols in use. Seoul often feels like a European city with its wide boulevards, grand parks, and almost ubiquitous signs of Christianity. Good luck running into a church in one of Japan’s big cities.

We had a great time in Korea, and I was pleased to fulfill a long-time wish of visiting the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas. A highlight for me in South Korea was the wonderful bounty of delicious Korean foods, definitely one of my top international culinary collections. Japanese foods can be good, but to me they can’t compare to the flavors of Korean delights.

In this post I’ll focus on some of the aspects of South Korea that stood out during our visit, many of them unique to the country, with quite a few being unexpected.

CULTURE

Most people have heard of K-Pop, South Korea’s collection of catchy pop music, including famous acts like BTS and Psy (Gangnam Style). One can find signs of this influence all over Seoul.

It is estimated that South Korea has the highest number of plastic surgery cases per capita in the world, and beauty standards are infamous, with expectations of thinness, particularly for women, being unrealistic and unhealthy. These aspects can be seen particularly in the female K-Pop groups. (See this article)

One of many photo studios at which to show off one’s beauty

At Seoul’s five palaces, all of which can be visited, wearing traditional Korean garb (hanbok) gets you into these palaces for free! How cool is that? This has spawned a prosperous industry of hanbok rental shops all over the city, particularly near the palaces.

One surprise was that many car owners add padding on car doors to prevent damage to others’ cars. How considerate!

The Korean alphabet’s uniqueness is impressive – for example, letters are grouped and shaped based on vocal tract positions.

BELIEFS

I mentioned earlier that Christianity is much more prominent in South Korea than in Japan.

The practice of Christianity in Korea is marginal in North Korea, but significant in South Korea, where it revolves around Protestantism and Catholicism, accounting for 8.6 million and 5.8 million members, respectively [of 51 million inhabitants]. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Korea)

But in addition to traditional Christianity, there is a surprising prominence of cults in South Korea, and it’s even common for western tourists traveling alone to be approached by a friendly Korean or two who purportedly just want to chat about culture, but who eventually invite the tourist to come join them for a ceremony or the like.

Further, tarot and palm reading seem popular, at least anecdotally.

TECH

South Korea is well known for its tech, with prominent companies such as Samsung and LG offering all kinds of consumer devices and appliances. Further, people there seem readily open to adoption of new things, and super-fast Wi-Fi is ubiquitous.

However, because South Korea limits what foreign companies can do with geographical data, Google Maps does not provide walking or driving directions in South Korea, and it only provides often outdated public transport details. Therefore, to get around Seoul with a navigation app, one must rely on one or more Korean-based apps instead, such as Naver or Kakao. And restaurant and store info and reviews are much more up-to-date and thorough on these Korean apps.

Despite the ability to easily capture selfies with one’s Samsung mobile phone, selfie studios are amazingly popular in Seoul – we saw booths and studios all over the city. Advantages of leveraging these booths include the use of supplied costumes and other accoutrements, along with immediately receiving a printed set of photos.

TOURISM

We noticed while in Seoul that there were many fewer apparent westerners. Japan is currently very popular with Americans, and it’s probably just a matter of time before South Korea becomes more prominent on the American tourist radar, as it has a lot going for it.

That said, there are already signs of over-tourism in some areas of Seoul, like in neighborhoods with traditional houses, such as Bukchon Hanok Village.

Having thousands of tourists hanging outside one’s home every day must be annoying

FOOD

Just as in Japan, we found the local food offerings to be relatively quite affordable. It was easy to get a filling and delicious dinner for under $10 total. Who can argue against some bibimbap, kimchi, or barbeque? A bonus of Seoul was that every restaurant we visited provided tap water with meals, by default. And boy, all the side dishes! One weird thing about Seoul is that breads were normally pretty heavily sweetened, including whole grain bagels and bacon, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwiches. The latter were so heavily sweetened that Ben and I couldn’t eat ours we bought for breakfast one morning, and we had to throw them away!

NATURE

Seoul is surrounded by beautiful mountains, and the city is full of lovely green spaces. They also do well with adding color with flowers, and there’s a charming multi-mile canal walk through the heart of the city. I hadn’t expected Seoul to be so attractive.

NORTH KOREA

One can’t sufficiently cover South Korea without also discussing North Korea. With years of continued strained relationships since the Korean War, 2024 saw much action between the countries as well, including sending trash and poop balloons from the north to litter the south, more firing of missiles into the sea, sending North Korean soldiers to Ukraine to fight with the Russians, and the blowing up of connecting roads between the countries that had been symbolic of the hopes of future reunification. One trash balloon even reached the South Korean presidential compound the week before we arrived in Seoul.

Ben and I were fascinated by our tour of the DMZ, but I was pretty disappointed to learn before our trip that the joint security area (JSA) was no longer tourable because a US soldier had run across the border into North Korea during a tour to the JSA so that he could escape prosecution for a crime he had committed in South Korea. The JSA includes a collection of buildings set directly on the borderline, such that previously tourists could visit one of these buildings and walk across a conference room to technically be in North Korea, while posing for a photo with a serious North Korean soldier.

Presumably because of the ever-present threat from North Korea, there are various emergency-preparedness items in Seoul, which is only around 30 miles (50 km) from North Korea’s southern border. For example, in the subway, there are racks of gas masks, and in the trains informational videos are played detailing what to do in the event of any of various emergency situations. North Korea doesn’t seem to be mentioned explicitly, but one can never be too careful, I suppose.