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Continue reading →: Itaewon, Post-TragedyMinutes to death: Itaewon Halloween selfies help families piece together tragedy that killed 158 Two of my friends and I celebrated Christmas and New Year’s Eve in Itaewon. “Celebrate” is a loose term, as we merely went out to an Irish pub for an afternoon Christmas buffet dinner. On the…
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Continue reading →: Day Trip to Busan, 10/30/22At the end of October, I won two tickets to the BOF K-Pop Concert, part of Busan One Asia Festival. When I submitted my application for the contest on The Venti’s Instagram page, I had failed to read that it was in Busan, and when I won it, I was…
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Continue reading →: Korean Self-Service Convenience StoreEvery now and again, you’ll come across a self-service convenience store in Korea. It’s unmanned and boasts a variety of drinks, snacks, and other sundries. This particular one had a shaming poster on its door. I’ve seen these kinds of stores but had never wandered into one, so I thought…
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Continue reading →: Giving Blood in KoreaI’ve wanted to give blood for a while now, but I finally managed to do it. The basic requirements for a foreigner are: There are other requirements you must meet, such as age, weight, medications you can’t give blood while taking, and countries where you’re ineligible if you’ve spent time…
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Continue reading →: 수능 Suneung, the College Scholastic Ability Test
At 1 o’clock this afternoon, the skies of South Korea were silent. All planes were prohibited from either taking off or landing for an hour while (senior) high school students were taking the English listening test of the suneung, or College Scholastic Ability Test. Imagine the SAT or ACT, but…
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Continue reading →: Cafe Review: Cafe Onion, Gwangjang Market“Guys. GUYS. I found the fourth Onion.” I had seen the Instagram posts about a fourth Cafe Onion but assumed, due to the location of the place and the photos they posted, that it would be a pop-up location or that it would be some time until it opened. You…
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Continue reading →: In the Aftermath of the Itaewon TragedyThese are links to news and op-ed pieces about the tragedy in Itaewon. These are by no means the only news and op-ed pieces out there, but just the ones that popped up on my radar, as an English-speaking expat living in the greater Seoul region. I have no ties…
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Continue reading →: Cafe Review: Blue Bottle, Samcheong HanokBy reservation only, it’s Blue Bottle’s Samcheong Hanok cafe. “A setting where traditional and modernism coexist Around the corner of Blue Bottle Samcheong Cafe, one will find a serene, winding backstreet which leads to a wooden gate. Upon entering lies a cozy, ‘ㄷ’ shaped hanok (traditional Korean house), a place…
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Continue reading →: Prayers for ItaewonPlease keep everyone affected by the tragedy in Itaewon in your thoughts and prayers.
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Continue reading →: Rubber Ducky, You’re the One…Get yourself some friends willing to travel with you into downtown Seoul to visit an 18-meter-tall inflatable rubber duck. This was the second time for ol’ Rubber Ducky to float in the Seokchon Lake–back in 2014, it did so to celebrate the opening of Lotte World Tower and its attached…
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Continue reading →: Korean LaundromatRecently, two laundromats popped up in my neighborhood. Here’s a quick tour and how they’re different from laundromats in the US! For starters, no need to lug around your detergent, as these washing machines will automatically add it. If you want a dryer sheet, however, you’ll have to pay 500…
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Continue reading →: Review: Warm Glow Candle CompanyThere are a few things I try to do when I visit my parents, and going to Warm Glow Candle Company in Centerville, Indiana is one of those things. (And if I don’t have time to go, I just take the candles my mom has bought from the store “for…
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Continue reading →: Remembering Sara HolmesSara Holmes, aka “HojuSara”, passed away in early September of 2022 after a short, yet fierce, battle with leukemia. Sara was one of my favorite YouTubers, the kind of person that you hope one day to be able to meet and say hello. An Australian, she loved everything about Korea…
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Continue reading →: Café Review: Café Onion, MiaCafé Onion, Mia, was actually the first Café Onion I visited in Korea. Located in the Mia district of Seoul, it stands unassumingly next to a post office, under an awning. Unless you know what you’re looking for or spot the signage, you could easily walk past this gem. This…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: Concerning My Daughter, Kim Hye-Jin“Knowing that this is the reality for the majority is no comfort to me. Rather, knowing my daughter is one of them shocks and alarms me daily and brings down upon me the full force of my disappointment and guilt. Maybe she’s spent too much time studying. Maybe I’ve allowed…
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Continue reading →: Finding John Reichard (Woodland Cemetery)It isn’t a trip home if there’s not at least one visit to a cemetery. This visit was a little different than most, as we were going to check in on a new gravestone. My mom, a genealogy aficionado who keeps fake flowers in the trunk of her car “just…
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Continue reading →: Take Me Home, Country Roads
I left Korea last week for a two week trip back to the US to see my family, who I haven’t seen since Christmas of 2019. The first flight, the long-haul one, was alright. I had an aisle seat, which I liked, and I was sitting next to a mother…
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Continue reading →: Café Review: UnicoffMy current favorite café is Unicoff, located near Uijeongbu Station. I believe credit goes to Mine for finding this café and saying something along the lines of “it looks like it’s your type of café,” meaning they offer hand-drip coffee. Ever since I realized that I’m lactose intolerant, cafe trips…
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Continue reading →: Café Review: Blue Bottle, YeouidoSet in a sky garden (35,583 ft2) on the fifth floor of the Hyundai Seoul skyscraper, in the vicinity of the National Assembly building, our cafe offers respite to urban professionals and residents in Seoul’s bustling financial center. Filled with natural light, trees, and pathways, the atrium invites people to…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: “Tower,” Bae Myung-HoonI went into Tower rather blindly, and was tickled by what I found. Beanstalk is a 674-story building with 500,000 residents and exists not only as a building, but also a sovereign state. It’s referred to as a “modern-day Tower of Babel” by detractors. Each story is about a part…
Welcome to Koffee & Kpop, adventures of an errant American barista living in South Korea.
Koffee & Kpop 