Why is baseball so popular in Korea right now? For one thing, getting a ticket to a big KBO game takes more effort than it used to. Good seats for weekend games and marquee matchups can disappear almost as soon as booking opens, and sellouts have stopped feeling unusual. In 2024, the KBO League drew…
Walk through Seoul on a clear day in late October and you will understand why people photograph the streets. Whole avenues turn the same shade of yellow at once, the leaves fan-shaped and unmistakable, the light coming through them gold. It is one of the most recognizable versions of a Korean autumn. Then you smell…
How one ordinary Korean word connects food, care, relationships, work and belonging, even as the way Koreans eat keeps changing. The Word You Keep Hearing Spend a day in Korea and you will hear this word again and again: 밥 (bap, cooked rice or a meal). Bap meaning in Korean goes far beyond a bowl…
In 2015, South Korea’s cosmetics exports were still under $3 billion. A decade later, they had reached $11.4 billion, making Korea the world’s second-largest cosmetics exporter. Korea Ministry of Food and Drug Safety — 2025 cosmetics export results In 2024, exports crossed $10 billion for the first time. In 2025, they climbed again to a…
Makgeolli feels traditional. So does a bottle of Korean distilled soju made from rice. Strawberry wine probably feels less so. But under Korean law, all three can potentially fall under the category of “traditional Korean liquor.” That sounds strange only because two different questions are being mixed together. One question is: What kind of alcohol…
There is a familiar picture of makgeolli in Korea. It is raining outside. A pajeon, a savory Korean pancake, is sizzling on the table. Next to it is a plastic bottle filled with cloudy white makgeolli. The drink is slightly sweet, a little sour, gently fizzy, and often somewhere around 5 to 6% alcohol. For…
Outside Korea, soju usually means one thing. A green bottle. Clear liquor served cold. Cheap, easy to drink, and closely associated with Korean barbecue and late-night drinking. But walk through a liquor shop in Korea today and that image no longer explains everything on the shelf. Some bottles now name the rice variety on the…
Walk into a fast-food restaurant in Korea and you may see three employees behind the counter. None of them are taking orders. Instead, a touchscreen is waiting for you. At a regular restaurant, the setup may look different, but the idea is increasingly similar. You sit down and find a tablet attached to the table….
Gyeongbokgung is full of colorful rental hanbok, even as traditional hanbok has become rare in everyday Korean life. Here’s why the two look so different.
Yangyang became Korea’s best-known surf town in little more than a decade. Here’s how better access, tourism and property investment changed the scene, and why some locals are now asking what comes next.