I was agonisingly late for barbecue on my first night in Seoul when I emerged at Gwanghwamun Square, flustered and overwhelmed, hoping my dinner companions hadn’t finished the banchan without me. That’s when I saw it: the countenance of a stone warrior staring down at me from his pedestal. I gaped back at him, my galbi cravings briefly forgotten. This was my first time in this plaza, and yet my brain insisted I’d been here before. Amid the disorientation of navigating this unfamiliar place, here was something I recognised – from its role in the 2018 Korean show Memories of the Alhambra.
Even after Psy horse-trotted his way to YouTube glory and BTS built Army, its global fan club, I remained largely ignorant of the Korean Wave, or Hallyu – a Chinese term for South Korea’s ascendant cultural power. But as I pined for far-flung adventures during the pandemic, I found companionship in Korean dramas. My gateway series was Crash Landing on You, an endearing if implausible romance between a South Korean heiress and a North Korean soldier; I blazed through 16 episodes in 5 days, my heart alternately migrating to my throat and melting into a maudlin lump. The fashion, the food, the tableaux, the personalities: This was my world. I lived here now. I added Korean slang to Google Translate, Korean won to my XE currency app, Korean beauty products to my Sephora cart, and Korean ingredients to my grocery list. These viewing sessions became my closest approximation to travel, filling the passport-shaped hole in my life. By the time South Korea’s borders reopened, Seoul had jumped from “someday” to “ASAP” on my travel wish list – and I guess I wasn’t alone. “We’ve seen a huge interest in travel to Korea,” said Grant Ekelund of InsideAsia Tours, which offers tailor-made adventures to the country. “It’s been increasing for years, but the pandemic accelerated it.”
After I arrived, I saw recognisable elements all around me. Searching bleary-eyed for a meal soon after landing, I found comfort in the signage at Angel-in-Us, the setting of Yoon Se-Ri and Ri Jeong-Hyeok’s reunion in Crash Landing on You. So what if it’s Seoul’s answer to Starbucks? At the upscale skin-care emporium Tirtir, I sprang for a purple tube of Collagen Core Glow Mask, whose branding claimed responsibility for the absurd good looks of Hyun Bin – star of Memories of the Alhambra and Crash Landing on You. I passed street stalls selling the ppopgi candy I knew from Squid Game and the fish-shaped bungeoppang pastries I’d craved while watching Vincenzo. Two hours from Seoul in Jeonju, I checked into Hagindang, a century-old hanok house that featured prominently in the period drama Mr. Sunshine. For a place I’d never visited before, South Korea was comfortingly familiar.
My K-drama curriculum had largely inhabited two extremes: slick ultra-modern dramas and historic period fare. Sure enough, I was met with glittering tapestry of lightning-fast Internet and robot waiters and cutting-edge toilets, but at every turn the country’s rich past stood out amid its kinetic future: in the historic palaces dwarfed by gleaming towers, in the traditional hanji paper-making ateliers steps from wacky Instagram-trap museums, in the chic boutiques and cafés nestled amid the atmospheric hanok houses of Ikseondong and Bukchon.