Korean Greeting Etiquette is one of those things you start noticing almost immediately when you spend time in Korea. Nobody really sits you down and explains every little greeting, but after a few days, you begin to notice the small bows, the way people shake hands, and how greetings change depending on who they’re talking…
Chuseok in Korea is a little different from what you might expect if you’re visiting for the first time. You hear about the traffic, the packed trains, and all the businesses closing, but that doesn’t really tell you what Korean families are doing during the holiday. In 2026, Chuseok falls on September 25, with the…
Korean fried chicken history goes back further than the delivery boxes most people associate with it. And it didn’t begin with fried chicken. Some people in Seoul who are now in their forties or fifties still remember their fathers coming home with a whole chicken in a yellow paper bag. Back then, it was often…
Everyday life in Korea is mostly just normal life to me, and I don’t notice most of these things until I try to picture a first-time visitor running into them. I’ve never really questioned them. They’re things I grew up with. So I started thinking about the ones that might make me stop and ask,…
For a lot of people, Nami Island gets added to a Korea itinerary after seeing just one photo. It’s usually the yellow ginkgo road in autumn or that long metasequoia-lined path in spring. Then suddenly, Nami Island is on the list. Why I Actually Like May May is probably my favorite time to walk around…
Go into a gukbap place around lunch in Jongno or Euljiro and you’ll probably see plenty of people eating alone. Most people are too busy with their own meal to care. Koreans call it honbap (혼밥), and honestly, nobody really thinks twice about it anymore. Korean meals weren’t always this comfortable for solo diners. A…
If you’re coming to Korea for the first time, you might be wondering whether you can use Kakao T without a Korean phone number. It’s a question that comes up pretty often when people are getting ready for their first trip to Korea. The good news is that you can, although the payment setup is…
I remember seeing a tourist get stuck at Euljiro 3-ga station because her Climate Card wasn’t working the way she expected. A station worker had to walk over and explain that she needed to pay the fare difference, since she’d ridden past the covered zone without realizing it. It wasn’t a big deal, but she…
I remember seeing a foreign couple leave some cash on the table after dinner at a restaurant. A few minutes later, the waitress came running outside with the money. At first I thought something had gone wrong, but she was just trying to give their money back. They had left it as a tip. That…
A friend from overseas once filled her water bottle from the tap in her hotel room and then asked me, “Is this actually safe to drink?” I remember hesitating because the answer isn’t quite as simple as yes or no. The water is considered safe, but most Koreans have their own reasons for not drinking…
