I ordered something on Coupang (쿠팡, Korea’s biggest online retailer) last night. By this morning, it hadn’t arrived yet — and I caught myself getting annoyed. Why isn’t it here? Then I stopped. About ten years ago, delivery in Korea took three to five days, and nobody thought twice about it. But the version of … Read more
One afternoon, a website completely defeated me. I was on my MacBook, trying to do the most boring thing imaginable: log into a Korean bank. The site told me to install a security program first. Fine. I installed it. I refreshed the page. It said the program was not installed. So I installed it again. … Read more
A few weeks ago, the most powerful man in tech pulled on a pair of clear plastic gloves and tore into a piece of fried chicken in Hongdae. A couple of days later, standing on a baseball field in Seoul before throwing out the first pitch, Jensen Huang — the CEO of Nvidia — told … Read more
There’s a green bottle on the table. Someone grabs it by the neck and gives it a quick flick of the wrist — a little spin that supposedly knocks loose the bits from the old cork-stopper days. There are no bits in soju anymore. It’s just a habit now, a small ritual. Then the first … Read more
There’s a Korean word you should know: youngkkeul (영끌). It literally means “scraping together your soul.” It’s not some spiritual thing — it describes what people do to buy a home here. You gather every won you can, borrow every loan you qualify for, and put your soul up as collateral too. The joke stopped … Read more
It’s 7:32 AM. I unlock my phone and there are 47 unread KakaoTalk messages waiting. Not on Instagram. Not on Slack. KakaoTalk alone. A family chat. Two work department chats. A college group chat that’s been alive for 12 years. A chat with the parents of my daughter’s daycare friends. My in-laws’ family group. Scroll … Read more
It’s lunchtime on a weekday in Gangnam (강남, Seoul’s main business district), and almost everyone walking back toward the office towers has a coffee in hand — a takeout cup they haven’t finished, headed back to their desk. Some are hot, some are sweet blended drinks, but the one you’ll spot most is the iced … Read more
Every morning, I make a choice. Comfort, or one more hour of sleep. The answer is always the same. Sleep. People who truly hate the packed train wake up an hour earlier. Not that leaving an hour early gets you an empty car — there’s no such thing as an empty subway car in Seoul. … Read more
The first time a foreigner asked me how old I was, I froze for a solid two seconds. Not because the question was rude — it wasn’t, at least not to me — but because I genuinely didn’t know which answer to give. My Korean age? My international age? In Korea I’d just say a … Read more
A lot of foreigners probably picture it like this: the Korean office worker chained to his desk until the boss leaves, then dragged out to drink soju until he can’t see straight, working until midnight and going drinking until 2 AM. And look — that picture wasn’t completely made up. Fifteen years ago, there was … Read more