Latest posts
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I Deliver Food in Korea. Here’s What It’s Really Like
Food delivery in Korea is incredibly convenient. Before I started doing delivery work myself, I was just another customer. If I got hungry late at night, I opened an app and ordered something. Rain or snow, somehow the food still arrived at my door. I was always grateful to the delivery riders who brought it.…
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Why Do So Many Korean Adults Live With Their Parents?
Korean adults living with parents is common enough that Korea even has a term associated with the phenomenon: kangaroo-jok. I don’t think Korean parents love their children more than parents in other countries do. That would be a strange thing to say. If Korean parents love their children more, does that mean parents in other…
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Why 10 PM Never Felt Late in Seoul
Why 10 PM Never Felt Late in Seoul Looking back, it might sound a little strange. When I think about Seoul nightlife in my 20s, one thing stands out: 10 PM never felt late at all. If I had to describe it, 10 PM back then felt more like 7 PM does to me now.…
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What Is It Really Like to Live in a Korean Apartment?
Korean apartments are a huge part of everyday life in Korea, but I actually grew up living in houses rather than apartments. So I don’t really have any special childhood memories of apartment living. My first real experience with something similar came when I moved out on my own and lived in an officetel in…
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The Day I Left the Korean Countryside for Seoul at Five Years Old
Growing up in Korea in the 1980s, my life changed completely when I was about five years old. I had to leave the countryside and my grandmother behind and move to Seoul. At the time, I was living with my grandmother in Gokseong, a rural county in southern Korea. In an earlier story about my…
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Why Is Korean Culture So Popular? A Korean’s Perspective
Why is Korean culture so popular? As a Korean who has watched this change happen from inside Korea, I sometimes ask myself the same question. The first time I remember something Korean becoming enormously popular overseas, it wasn’t BTS. It wasn’t Psy, either. It was Bae Yong-joon. I remember constantly hearing that the Korean actor…
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What Korean BBQ in Korea Is Really Like: A Normal Family Dinner
Korean BBQ in Korea wasn’t what we planned to eat that evening. In fact, we had absolutely no plans to eat Korean BBQ at all. It was the last day of our vacation. My wife was going back to work the next morning, and we had spent most of the day relaxing at home. Around…
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Korean Convenience Stores: Why Koreans Can’t Live Without Them
I sometimes go to a convenience store several times in a single day. I might stop by for a drink, cigarettes, or alcohol. Sometimes I go because my child wants a snack. Other times, I need to quickly ship something I sold secondhand. If you ask me why I go to convenience stores so often,…
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Do Koreans Really Drink That Much?
I like drinking. And whenever people ask me about Korean drinking culture, I sometimes wonder what exactly they mean. Do they want to know how much Koreans drink, how often we drink, or what actually happens when Koreans get together for a night of drinking? But when I think about it, there are different kinds…
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Why Do Koreans Ask Your Age? It May Be About More Than Honorifics
There’s a question foreigners sometimes ask about Korea. “Why do Koreans ask your age when they’ve just met you?” I’ve heard that some foreigners find this surprising, uncomfortable, or even rude. For someone like me who has lived in Korea all my life, asking someone’s age can feel so normal that I didn’t really understand…