All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission. I was agonisingly late for barbecue on my first night in Seoul when I emerged at Gwanghwamun Square, flustered and overwhelmed, hoping my dinner companions hadn't finished the banchan without me. That's when I saw it: the countenance of a stone warrior staring down at me from his pedestal. I gaped back at him, my galbi cravings briefly forgotten. This was my first time in this plaza, and yet my brain insisted I'd been here before.
Amid the disorientation of navigating this unfamiliar place, here was something I recognised β from its role in the Korean show Memories of the Alhambra. But as I pined for far-flung adventures during the pandemic, I found companionship in Korean dramas.
My gateway series was Crash Landing on You, an endearing if implausible romance between a South Korean heiress and a North Korean soldier; I blazed through 16 episodes in 5 days, my heart alternately migrating to my throat and melting into a maudlin lump.
The fashion, the food, the tableaux, the personalities: This was my world. I lived here now. These viewing sessions became my closest approximation to travel, filling the passport-shaped hole in my life. After I arrived, I saw recognisable elements all around me. So what if it's Seoul's answer to Starbucks?
I passed street stalls selling the ppopgi candy I knew from Squid Game and the fish-shaped bungeoppang pastries I'd craved while watching Vincenzo. Two hours from Seoul in Jeonju, I checked into Hagindang, a century-old hanok house that featured prominently in the period drama Mr. For a place I'd never visited before, South Korea was comfortingly familiar. My K-drama curriculum had largely inhabited two extremes: slick ultra-modern dramas and historic period fare.
