we took a trip to south korea for 10 days with the family. we stayed in daegu, one of the largest cities. we visited some friends who helped show us around, and it was a great time. i've been to cities in the US and a bit in other parts of the world, but this one felt busier and more walkable than most i'd been to. for someone who has spent their entire life in rural or suburb living, it was a shock.
obviously i don't have full cultural context, but here are some observations. definitely these will be one-sided and incomplete. hope i don't say anything too dumb
we felt very safe there. combination of strict gun control and high amounts of cctv surveillance meant that even in a busy city, people seemed to walk freely even at night. i saw a *lot* of women walking alone at night. i passed them at night in the street--i being a man, an obvious foreigner, at that--and they didn't seem even slightly hesitant. that's freaking awesome
also because of the strict gun control, they sold toy assault rifles and stuff in stores. no red cap on the front to indicate it was a toy. if that's not telling you they're doing something right, i don't know what is
everything was *cheap*. most delicious bowl of ramen i've probably ever eaten? $7. entire meal of fresh meat and veggies and sides for 4 adults and 4 kids? like $70. big bag of chips? $2
because of how cheap it was, we ate at restaurants almost every day. got a huge variety of delicious food. every meal was awesome. one of my favorites was what my friends called a "beef 'n leaf". they give you raw meat and let you grill it at the table. then you get a bunch of different types of leaves, wrap the meat with sauces and other toppings in leaves and eat those. so freaking good.
people were universally polite, even with crowded streets and so on. very little yelling in public.
not a lot of car horns. contrast with Mumbai, which is nonstop car horns every second of the day
in the morning, old people are out and about and there are 90000 deliveries happening
in the night, say 9 pm or later, there are 90000 attractive young people doing night life
I walked with my buddy to a part of daegu we called the Overstimulation District (complimentary). that is where all those young people congregated. lots of restaurants and bars, also some shopping.
not a lot of diversity. yes obviously there are koreans with many different backgrounds and many invisible differences, but I saw almost nobody who wasn't korean. I felt the contrast starkly when i went to the store after coming back home and saw 50 wildly different ethnicities or backgrounds represented within my field of view
there were a *lot* of cute tiny trucks. the Porter II was very popular, as was some model that said "damas" on the side
motor scooters were extremely popular for deliveries. we saw them everywhere
almost all cars were black or white. not a lot of colorful cars
for that matter, the style of dress was mostly black, white, or other muted colors. not a lot of bright colors where we were
the style of dress was also a bit conservative. sleeveless tops for women were basically nonexistent
we rode the bullet train to busan and it was super cool. it was deathly silent on there, like a library. everyone sleeping or quietly working on their own thing. no loud talking at all. ridiculous. the train itself was also smooth as butter, quiet, and of course absurdly fast. similar experience to riding the taiwanese high speed rail from Taipei, which I was able to do several years ago
i was able to go clothes shopping for some baggy pants using a translator app for help. cool to be able to do that in another country
the weather was very hot, like 85-90 F the entire time, and more importantly like 80+% humidity the whole time. just absurd walking around and sweating that much for a week
everything there is decorated. taxi cabs have cute characters on the sides of them. random buildings have light-up parts. informational videos on the train had cute animations. most of it was purely decorative and not functional. i thought that was neat
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