The two of us were interviewed by the lovely (and fellow UW alum!) Julia Bass at Chincha?!진짜?! web magazine for their blog of the week column.  We talk about some of our favorite stops, our methodology, and just why on earth we wound up in Korea.  You can check out the interview here.  Thanks Julia! Re-published with permission from the author. Check out Seoul Sub→urban for mor ...

I left Yeokchon Station from Exit 1, and one of the first things I passed was a café called Santa House, which, yes, had a small gift shop below the café selling all sorts of Santa figurines and Christmas knickknacks.  Instead of Santa himself or even a reindeer, though, the business’ logo had a black and white dog, a cartoon shepherd, gazing out at customers.  Just a few steps further on I ...

For almost anyone who travels, there’s a certain romance associated with rail travel that other modes of transportation can’t quite match.  Flight had its moment of glam in the postwar years, but few still find anything romantic about the process of contemporary air travel with its steadily decreasing comforts and increasing security indignities.  Boat travel within developed countries all ...

Change is a constant theme on this blog, one that’s unavoidable when you talk about Seoul, but there are few places in the city that have undergone it quite so dramatically as Yeouido.  In the Joseon era, this island, whose name literally translates to ‘Useless,’ served as a sheep and goat pasture, and that’s pretty much how it stayed until the Japanese built the country’s first airpor ...

Almost none of the buildings around Airport Market Station are more than three or four stories tall, and this makes the wide Gonghang-daero (공항대로) just south of Exit 4 seem bigger than it already is.  I used to live close to here – my first place in Seoul was south of the nearby Songjeong Station – but even though I obviously got out to other parts of the city I never really paid att ...

Seoul’s modern history is a tumultuous one, but the city keeps her scars well hid beneath hard-earned layers of development and success.  There are some areas, though, where the wounds have been left exposed, and you can get a glimpse of the troubles the capital and its people have been through.  A good place to do that and to gain a deeper appreciation for how far the city and country have c ...

Gimpo Airport Station presented a rather expected problem, namely, as an airport, there’s not much walking around you can do, and the local topography is limited mostly to three things: big buildings, big roads, and big parking lots.

There are chickens in Myeongdong.  Not stuffed or deep-fried, but real actual chickens, about ten of them, that twitch and peck at the dirt in someone’s small yard.  Administratively speaking, they may technically be in Hoehyeon-dong-2-ga (회현동2가) and not Myeong-dong (명동), but with a strong throw you might be able to hit the station with a stone, and if you get a lucky bounce it mi ...

There are some neighborhoods in Seoul that have their own distinct character or spirit.  Then there are neighborhoods like Chungjeongno that don’t feel quite like their own place but rather sponge up elements of the neighborhoods around them.  West of the station, you quickly find yourself on the edge of Ahyeon’s large furniture market; to the east are new office and apartment towers that s ...

Given that my visit to Sindap coincided with Seollal, coming out of the station’s one exit reminded me a bit of the scene in Westerns when the protagonist steps out of the saloon onto an empty street, the only things a’stirrin’ bein’ tumbleweeds an’ dust. And, OK, my imagination is getting away with me and I exaggerate, but it was awfully quiet. There was a normal-seeming flow of traf ...