A Korean’s Take: Culture, Media & Everyday Life

Ask a Korean where you should stay and you'll probably get questions back. How many of you? Which night of the week? Do you want to cook? Hotels are the easy answer, sure. But there's a whole second layer of places to sleep here that locals book without thinking twice, and the English on the booking page rarely tells you how they actually work. Part of that is legal. Korea has around 27 kinds of lodging business (Yonhap counted them in a fact check this April), and the friendly English label on a listing won't tell you which one you're looking at. The registration decides who's allowed to stay, whether there's a kitchen, and whether the host has to live on site. So here are seven options, who each one suits, and the small print that trips people up. 1. Motels, and the daesil thing Good for: a night or two, weekday arrivals · Watch: Friday and Saturday check-in times · Price: usually quoted for two people Forget whatever the word motel means back home. A ...

Both of my kids are done with the suneung. On a personal level, that's a relief, I won't pretend otherwise. But I still remember how tense I was on their exam days, and it comes back every November. So, to this year's test takers: I hope all that work doesn't let you down. Good luck, every one of you. If you've never heard of it, the suneung is Korea's College Scholastic Ability Test. This year it lands on Thursday, November 19. 551,864 people signed up, about 2,300 fewer than last year. They have to be in their seats by 8:10 a.m., the Korean paper starts at 8:40, and anyone taking the optional last section walks out at 5:45 p.m. Scores come out December 11. You hear a lot of stories about this day. Some are true, some are half true, and one is basically a pun. Let's go through them. Myth Planes stop flying for the English test Fact This one's true, and it gets everybody. Last year, on November 13, 2025, the transport ministry stopped every takeoff...

Seoul has its big fireworks night on the Han River every fall. Busan's goes up over the sea, and to me that makes it a different show. The 21st Busan Fireworks Festival is on Saturday, November 7, 2026, at Gwangalli Beach, with more barges firing off Igidae and Dongbaekseom. The backdrop is Gwangan Bridge, all lit up across the bay. It started back in 2005 as a side event for the APEC summit, and somewhere along the way it turned into one of Busan's biggest nights of the year. Here's what nobody tells first-timers. The fireworks? About an hour. The other ten or so hours go to finding a spot, not freezing, and then somehow getting home. For last year's show on November 15, 2025, the city was bracing for around a million people, and it had something like 7,000 safety staff out. So this is a day plan, not a "show up at seven" plan. The times follow last year's official schedule, because the 2026 program isn't out yet. Check the festival site in early No...

Seongsu-dong is where I grew up. These days it gets called one of the coolest neighborhoods in Seoul. I still find that a little hard to get used to. What I remember is a racecourse, and factories. Lots of factories. Which meant lots of scary-looking grown-ups, at least to a kid. That's the Seongsu in my head. Not latte art. Horses first, then a forest The racecourse was real, and it was big. Ttukseom got its racecourse in May 1954. The war had flattened the old one over in Sinseol-dong, so they needed a new home for the horses. It lasted 35 years. In August 1989 the races packed up and left for Gwacheon, south of the river, and the empty land eventually turned into Seoul Forest (opened June 2005). I've tried to picture a grandstand there among the trees. Can't do it. The name goes back further. Ttukseom comes from dok, the big royal banner that went up when Joseon kings rode out here to hunt. It was a royal hunting ground, flat land by the river. So: hunting field, ra...

Every November, a city best known for TV and phone factories turns its train station into one long noodle bar. The city is Gumi. Three hours or so from Seoul on a regular train. The party is called the Gumi Ramyeon Festival, and in 2026 it's on from Friday, November 6 through Sunday the 8th. Before we get to the festival, a small confession. I honestly don't know whether ramyeon started in Japan or in China. There are a few theories and I'm not going to pretend to settle them. The bagged instant kind is easier. That one is Japanese, no argument: Momofuku Ando put Nissin Chicken Ramen on sale in 1958. Korea took the idea and made its own. Samyang Ramyun came out on September 15, 1963, built with technology from Japan's Myojo Foods. Quick facts Fri Nov 6 to Sun Nov 8, 2026, around Gumi Station Free entry; you pay for the food Restaurant street: Fri 11-9, Sat 10-9, Sun 10-7 KTX stops at Gimcheon(Gumi), not Gumi Station Regular trains from Seoul Station take about three...

Here's what I'd tell a friend landing in Seoul this week: these days you basically can't get a taxi without an app. Okay, "can't" is a bit strong. You can still stand at the curb with your arm out, and sometimes a cab even stops. But on a rainy evening, or near any subway exit after 11 at night, you'll watch one taxi after another slide right past you, already booked by somebody two blocks away who just tapped a phone. The good news? Taxis here are cheap if you're used to New York or London, the meter is honest, and nobody wants a tip. The bad news is that everyone knows this, so they all want a cab at the exact same moment. Here's how I'd go about it, in order. Install two taxi apps before you fly Kakao T is the one Koreans use, and Kakao Mobility says it takes Visa, Mastercard, Amex and JCB cards issued abroad (in your own name). The phone check at sign-up is where some visitors get stuck, so grab a backup too: k.ride, Uber or TABA, more ...

Order "sundae" in Korea and nobody brings you ice cream. You get a plate of dark, glossy sausage slices, a little dish of salt and maybe a toothpick. Sundae (say it soon-dae) is our blood sausage. And yes, I still eat it. On workdays I'll have a bowl of sundae gukbap every now and then, which is probably the most Korean office-worker lunch there is. What's actually in sundae? The classic version is pig intestine stuffed with pig blood (seonji), glass noodles called dangmyeon, chopped vegetables and sometimes sweet rice. Then it gets steamed and cut into rounds. That's it. It's cheap, too. Walk through almost any traditional market in Korea and you'll see it piled up and steaming next to the tteokbokki, and every bunsik snack shop has it. Order a plate and there's a good chance a few slices of liver and lung come along for the ride. People eat it three main ways. Plain and steamed. In gukbap, the soup-and-rice bowl. Or stir-fried. Me? Gukbap, pretty...

Ask a Korean where to go for a proper night out and there's a good chance the answer is hoe (회). That's sliced raw fish, and no, it isn't quite sashimi. Close cousin. Different personality. We take seafood seriously here. By the government's own count we got through about 61 kg of it per person in 2023, and the FAO puts us near the top of the world list. Sure, plenty of that goes into soup. But hoe is the special-occasion version. Somebody got promoted, old friends are finally in town, it's Friday and you've earned it, whatever. Big platter, green soju bottles, and suddenly it's eleven o'clock. So you know where I stand before we start: Japan generally goes for aged fish, while Korea prefers fish that was swimming a few minutes ago. They're a little different. Personally? I love both. I'm not picking sides in this one. Quick facts Gwang-eo (olive flounder) is Korea's favorite raw fish Noryangjin Fish Market: Line 1 or 9, Noryangjin Statio...

On weekdays I take the bus and subway to work. On weekends I usually drive. My family likes to head out of Seoul for lunch somewhere in the countryside, and for that kind of trip a car beats a bus every time. So when friends from abroad ask whether they should drive here, my answer is "yes, but maybe not in Seoul." I also remember what it's like on the other side of the rental counter. On my first business trip to the US, I rented a car and drove, and I worried about almost everything. Would the rental desk accept my papers? Could I really turn right on a red light? Who goes first at a four-way stop? What do I do if a police car pulls up behind me? It all worked out in the end. Most of the worry came from small things nobody had told me beforehand, so this post tries to cover those. Driving here is easier than most people expect. The roads are good, most signs have English on them, and the navigation apps are a little bossy, in a helpful way. Visitors usually get into ...

Every so often someone calls gimbap "Korean sushi" and I feel a tiny twitch in my face. Not anger. More like hearing your hometown described as basically a suburb of some other city. Close enough on a map, wrong in every way that counts. The name is easy. Gim is dried laver seaweed, bap is cooked rice. That's it. You'll find it at little neighborhood gimbap shops, in every convenience store, at highway rest stops, and wrapped in foil in a lot of office bags at 8 a.m. For me it means school picnics. When I was a kid, the class sopung (a school outing, basically a picnic day) never happened without gimbap. It was the soul food of those days, no contest. And I don't think that's just me. Ask any Korean about gimbap and there's a childhood memory rolled up in it somewhere. It used to be the cheap option, too. Still cheap-ish? In Seoul a roll averaged 3,869 won in July 2026, according to the Korea Consumer Agency's price survey. Up 6.8 percent in a year...

Some weekends are for hiking. Some are for catching up on sleep. And once in a while you get to buy clothes straight out of your favorite musicians' closets, handed over by the musicians themselves. My daughter and I got the third kind this holiday weekend. Friday, October 9 was Hangul Day (yes, Korea gives its alphabet a day off), and the band HYUKOH used it for a one-day flea market they called "losing day with friends." I went as the driver and the bag-carrier. My daughter went as the expert. Good call, as it turned out. HYUKOH, for the K-pop crowd If your Korean music diet is mostly idols, here's the short version. HYUKOH is a four-piece rock band fronted by singer-songwriter Oh Hyuk, and in Korean indie music they're about as big as it gets. "Wi Ing Wi Ing" and "Tomboy" got them noticed in the mid-2010s, and plenty of their fans wouldn't call themselves K-pop fans at all. This is year twelve for them. Then came a long quiet str...