South Korea is a real gem to visit as a tourist. A high tech nation with deeply rooted admiration for academic accomplishments, it calls many associations when hearing the name. Out of this world electronics, proficient gamers, excellent food, are just a few of the things we had in our minds when we headed there in 2019.
Two things had enticed our curiosity above all – the famous Korean passion for e-sports (Kiril is a massive fan) bundled with the technological advancements we’d expect from the likes of Samsung; and our friend Chris’s Instagram profile offering a glimpse into Korea’s culture and history. We wanted to see all that for ourselves and it didn’t take much to get convinced to add a stop on our way back from Tokyo to London.
We had an amazing time exploring all the things we had set out to see but Korea, being full of surprises, also presented us with some exciting discoveries which we didn't expect to find there. Read along to discover our top picks.
Coffee
Number one on our list and hands down the most satisfying discovery in Korea is their amazing coffee culture.
Korea’s obsession with coffee has its roots in the late 19th century when apparently the family of the Russian ambassador in the country first introduced King Gojong to the drink. The resemblance in taste to a Korean medicine that only the rich could afford at the time as well as the fact that it was brought from outside the country gave it an association with stature and a premium lifestyle.
After Starbucks opened their first store in Seoul in ’99 things exploded and nowadays there are nearly 50k coffee shops in the country, a density higher than that of famous hipster hotspots such as San Francisco and Seattle. In fact Korea is Starbucks’ 5th largest market in the world which is not difficult to notice as you’re never really far from a shop in Seoul. Things have been taken so far as to make the proximity to a Starbucks a factor in property prices.
Thankfully, Starbucks is only one of many, many cafes you can visit in Seoul and we treated ourselves to some actually great coffee. There is certainly no shortage of other chains but what we really loved were the small (or not so small) independent coffee shops which you can find almost as frequently. A couple of the ones that really impressed us were:
CO:LUMN / Daelim Changgo (78 Seongsui-ro, Seoul): an artsy café finished in the mandatory wooden and black interior in the Seongdong-gu area. The place featured peculiar art work from local artists and was situated in an old warehouse.
Common Ground (200 Achasan-ro, Seoul): a container-ville like location in the Gwangjin-gu area where you can also find other hipster shops and restaurants.
Coffee Tour Roasters (12 Gyeonghuigung 2-gil, Seoul): in a very touristy area of Seoul but not compromising on its coffee quality.
Coming from London where we spent most of our days in Soho at an arm’s length of very high quality coffee it’s difficult to be satisfied by the drink when travelling. This made our discovery of Seoul’s coffee scene all the more impressive.
Fried chicken
Another lovely thing that comes to mind when you think about Korea is the food. It’s not only delicious, it’s healthy too – bulgogi, kimchi, bibimbap, bungeop-pang (OK that last one probably isn’t healthy), you name it. You just can’t go wrong! And then there’s fried chicken…
What? Yes, you heard that right. One of Korea’s specialties and presumably their drunk-food is nothing short of awful – a battered, deep fried, sauce-dripping, spicy chicken. The Americans (because who else) brought this dish during the Korean war with lots of street merchants tailoring to the soldiers and selling one of their home dishes – the fried chicken. Similar to the coffee culture, this trend stayed and has taken a life of its own. The flavours are typically Asian but the whole thing feels a bit out of place to the unsuspecting visitor. Oh and you order not by the portion but by the kilo.
If you are a fan of fried chicken you should definitely give it a go but this was certainly not our favourite thing to discover in Korea.
Safety
Coming from Japan everything in Korea seemed slightly chaotic and closer to your traditional image of Asia with its tiny streets and seemingly poor traffic rules outside the main boulevards. Still, one thing was notable in both countries – the feeling of being completely safe. We haven’t looked up major crime statistics so not sure if this is an issue in Korea, but petty crime seems virtually non-existent.
How do we know? Let’s do a mental exercise together – imagine what you do when you want to save a spot in a café while ordering drinks. It’s easy when there’s more than one person – one of you gets the drinks while the other grabs a spot to sit at. And if you’re alone? You’ll either get your drink hoping there’d be a place to sit after you’re done with your order or you’d leave a disposable item at a table so even if you don’t find it you can still go about your day undisturbed. Not if you’re in Korea though. You can, wait for it, leave your PHONE on the table, go about your business and when you come back your device will still be there. Amazing right?!
Underfloor heating
Picture this – you’re walking through one of the imperial palaces in Seoul, you’ve immersed yourself into the country’s history, it’s summer and you’re simply enjoying life. Then you look on the side of a palace building and you see this small stove-like opening. You look behind another building and you notice something else that’s odd – chimneys coming out of the ground. Then you start imagining what horrid things went on under the pristine, orderly looking palace that needed to be burned. It’s like Monica’s closet but they’d solved the problem by burning the clutter.
Wait, no, it’s not that. It’s actually the ingenious idea of warming up a house in terribly cold weather – the world’s first underfloor heating.
As it turns out Korea has really harsh winters with temperatures that can drop to -20 degrees, so naturally there needed to be a way to make your house survivable in the cold. The system (the way we understood it) is relatively simple – you light a fire in one end of your house, then direct the smoke to go out through a chimney at the other end after going under the slightly raised floor of the building in between. Simple, yet ingenious design and a life changing discovery that the world is taking advantage of to this day.