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There was no telling what I would find when I arrived in Seoul.
I knew the greatest hits of South Korean pop culture — BTS, “Oldboy,” Psy, “Parasite,” Blackpink — but I had never visited the Korean Peninsula. North Korea, though the subject of endless fascination among both beltway pundits and TMZ aficionados, seemed eerily unknowable.
And yet, as a new editor on the International desk at The New York Times, I was tasked with running coverage of the Koreas. Not only that, I would be based in Seoul, not Hong Kong, as was originally planned. (More on that later.)
Little did I know that the unexpected change in my Asia itinerary would lead to three of the most thrilling years of my career as a journalist.
In the fall of 2020, before the United States presidential election, the world was still in the thick of the coronavirus pandemic. South Korea had introduced robust measures to mitigate the spread of infection. There were limits on gatherings. You needed a QR code to enter public spaces. Masks were required everywhere.
When I arrived that October, government alerts chimed on my phone every time a new infection was found in the city. Visitors — including my husband, who had moved to Seoul with me — were subject to a two-week quarantine. Covid cases were lower than in the United States, but as a result of its efforts, the country felt especially closed off to a new resident like myself, adjusting to a new city, job and country.
People mostly stayed at home, which led to a surge in delivery orders that proved deadly for some couriers. Traveling outside the country required exit permits, putting the kibosh on my grand plan to spend weekends gallivanting around Asia. Unable to easily travel outside South Korea, I hopped on the bullet train and visited cities around the country to arm myself with the knowledge I needed to do my job well.
Though I remember feeling especially claustrophobic, I look back at that time fondly for what it was — an opportunity to take a closer look at Korean traditions, history and geography, topics that The Times examined in its articles. One focused on kimjang, the process of preparing kimchi. Another followed yakult ajummas, women who sell a drinkable yogurt. A third dived into the legacy of the Korean War, which keeps the peninsula divided.
Two auspicious things were happening simultaneously: The Times was setting up its first digital newsroom in Seoul after relocating from Hong Kong, where China had stepped up its effort to subdue the freewheeling territory, and I was digging deeper into the ways in which South Korea had spent decades expanding its global reach.
The pandemic could have dimmed those ambitions, but it did not. Instead, the country gave us “Squid Game,” a mega-hit for Netflix about death, violence, wealth and poverty in South Korea. Its commentary on the country’s growing class divide felt particularly poignant against the backdrop of the real-life housing crisis I was beginning to observe.
I also began to notice a growing disenchantment among young people. The awful night in October 2022 when more than 150 people where killed in Seoul during a crowd crush seemed especially devastating knowing that so many young South Koreans had grown disillusioned by the country’s bleak economic outlook.
But I was moved to see those same young people become a powerful voting bloc in the last presidential election, with both leading candidates appealing to young voters and their frustrations. Yoon Suk Yeol, the conservative, won a narrow victory after promising to reaffirm his country’s alliance with the United States.
As pandemic restrictions lifted over time, I noticed a new rhythm in the city. The way pedestrians scurried along to make a traffic light. The smell of street vendors selling tteokbokki, or rice cakes, and hotteok, a type of fried pancake. Though I had lamented not being able to travel in the early days of my time in South Korea, I found myself soaking up all that the country, back open, had to show me.
As I end my tour of South Korea this year and head back to New York, another United States presidential election is fast approaching, the early days of the pandemic feel like a distant memory and The Times’s digital newsroom in Seoul is fully up and running.
What I will remember most about my time in South Korea is the gift of watching a city like Seoul, so cold and lonely during the pandemic, transform into a buzzing Asian metropolis, its streets filled with nine million people proud of their heritage and culture.
Though Korea was once referred to as the hermit kingdom, I found the opposite to be true. South Korea has its arms wide open today. I didn’t know what I would find in Seoul. But after three years of living in the city, I know that there will always be more for me to discover.
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