Hello — I’m Jun.
A friend from Germany, who I met on exchange in Europe, came to Korea on his honeymoon. We had been in touch for almost ten years by then, so afterwards I asked how it went.
He had a good trip. But when he described his week, a lot of it was small stumbles: a place he ended up taking a taxi to because he couldn’t work out which bus went there, a bowl of soup that came far spicier than he expected, a market he walked to on the wrong evening. Nothing serious. Just the sort of thing I could have told him in a sentence if he had asked me first.
That is really all this site is: the little things I would have told him before he came.
What I can add
I work in export sales, so I spend a fair part of the year being the foreigner somewhere else — using the wrong app, ordering the wrong thing, or standing outside a shop that closed an hour ago. It’s a familiar feeling — you just didn’t have the one detail that would have helped.
Here, I have the advantage of being local — thirty-odd years in Korea, based in Seoul. I can read the sign, ask the owner, and go back next month to see whether anything changed. So what I try to offer is the kind of detail a friend who lives here would give you.
In practice that means things like:
- The price I actually paid, and the date I paid it
- How to get there on public transport — which bus or subway line, which stop, and how long it takes
- Whether a dish arrives spicy unless you ask otherwise
Where I’ll fall short
I’m writing about a country I’ve never had to experience as a visitor, and that means I will miss things — the exact ones that are obvious to me but not to you.
So if something here is unclear, out of date, or missing the detail you actually needed, please tell me. I’ll check it, fix it, and note when I did. That part I can promise.