I need to be honest with you. My desire to go to Seoul is at least 60 percent the fault of Korean television.
I started watching K-dramas during a season when I needed something that was entirely removed from my own life. What I found was a genre of storytelling that is unlike anything else being produced. The pacing is different. The emotional depth is real. The cinematography makes even ordinary streets look like somewhere you would cross an ocean to stand in.
And then there is Seoul itself, which K-dramas use as a character.
The dramas that started it
Crash Landing on You was the beginning for most people of my generation and I am not ashamed to be one of them. The story is absurd on paper. The execution is extraordinary. And the way Seoul appears in that drama, its streets at night, its restaurants, the Han River, made me want to be there in a way that no travel documentary ever has.
My Mister is a slower, quieter show and more devastating for it. It showed me a Seoul I had not seen before. Ordinary neighbourhoods. Working people. The kind of beauty that exists in a city when you are not looking at its monuments.
Itaewon Class made me want to eat Korean food immediately and then go to Itaewon and eat it in person. It is on my list for November.
What K-dramas actually teach you about travelling to Seoul
More than you would expect. I have a sense of the city’s geography from years of watching. I know which neighbourhoods have which energy. I know what certain foods look like and roughly how they are eaten. I have heard enough Korean to recognise basic phrases.
None of this replaces being there. But it means I will not arrive as a blank slate. I will arrive with a relationship with the city already formed, even if it was formed through a screen.
There are worse ways to prepare for a trip.
And if you have not yet watched any K-dramas and you are considering Seoul, start with Crash Landing on You. You will understand everything I mean by the end of episode two.
