Seoul, again

April 24 - May 2, 2025

I didn’t think I’d be back to Seoul so soon. It has only been a year, so everything is familiar. The same departure gate at SEA, the same discombobulation driving out of Wenatchee at sunrise, and landing in Incheon several hours and a day later. The same cultural whiplash. The familiar strangeness of listening to my husband conversing in fluent Korean, a language he never speaks at home. Seoul for a few days is a feast for the senses.

I’m physically more slow this time around. The broken ankle from December has healed remarkably, but at 15,000 steps a day, the plate and screws remind me they’re there. Seoul is a walking city. And stairs! Steps down into the depths of the subway system, steps up to pedestrian overpasses, steps to get on buses, and steps just because. Coming from the wide open spaces of rural Washington, it’s hard to fathom the incredible human density that is Seoul. If I stand on the sidewalk, there are millions of people above me, in towering skyscrapers and broad overpasses, and just as many people below me, deep in the subterranean tunnels of the city. I felt like a rock parting a sea of humanity as I limped down another flight of stairs.

My favorite experience was grocery shopping on a routine Saturday morning in a neighborhood Emart. In some ways, it’s just like any suburban American grocery store. But then you look around and the fruit is unrecognizable, the brands are all strange, and there are salespeople with loudspeakers in the meat and produce section hawking the daily specials. It’s chaotic and fun.

Our hotel room came with a full kitchen, and we were able to create some epic meals with local ingredients. Salmon with stir-fried bok choy. Canned hot pepper tuna with kimchi and rice. Pan-fried mackerel with sautéed unnamed vegetable (it was leafy, fresh, and tasted great, but neither of us could read the identification label, so I have no idea what it was). We went happily overboard with the selection of ready-made banchan (Korean small side dishes): anchovies, pickled radish, marinated perilla leaves, quail eggs. Local beer and a Pinot Noir from New Zealand. Seasonal fruit for dessert: chamoe, mangosteen, and Korean grapes.

Just like going to the gym, the restrained home cooking in the hotel kitchen was really a justification/mitigation for the splurge the rest of the day. We checked off a list of favorite foods: Jjajangmyeon (noodles in black bean sauce), seolleongtang (ox bone soup), grilled Hanwoo beef (domestic Korean beef of unparalleled marbling and flavor), samgyeopsal-gui (grilled pork belly). In between meals, we found milk buns, castella cakes, red bean and sesame pastries, and bingsoo (Korean shaved ice dessert). Our home base was the Yongsan subway stop, which is connected to a mall with a mind-boggling 4 floors of eateries. I could stay a month and still have more to try. And just in case we got hungry, there was a tantalizing little shop selling fish cake-on-a-skewer at the station entrance. More times than I care to admit, I’d start the morning or finish the evening standing with a crowd of locals, holding my paper cup of steaming hot broth, trying to eat my fish cake off its skewer without dribbling everything down my front.

Family was the purpose of this trip. A member of Won’s family passed, and we came to pay our respects. Here in America, we say that blood does not family make. Rather, family are the people who stand by you when everything goes to hell, who accept you for who you are, who believe and respect you, who are present when you need them most, who share in both your joys and your sorrows. Perhaps because we are a country of immigrants, and children of immigrants, many of us lost our blood family to distance and cultural disconnect. Our friends become our chosen family, and our chosen family becomes our tribe.

It is a profoundly beautiful experience to find that your blood family can become your chosen family too. When you look across the dinner table and see the same chin, sense the same introspective sense of humor, hear the stories of grandparents and great-grandparents going back generations, it feels like belonging. The people we met, some for the first time, are family, both blood and chosen.

This trip was bittersweet. Seoul is still a city of contradictions for me, more so now than ever before. There are unfathomable sadnesses here. Yet also resilience, authenticity, goodness, and family. I am deeply grateful for Won’s family that showed us kindness and belonging. Be happy, as you are. We are, and we will.

May 7, 2025