The chaos of people being able to build whatever, wherever, is probably why Seoul and Tokyo both have remarkably reasonable rents relative to their size, prosperity, and national importance.
These cities are a bit like slamming NYC, SF, and LA together into a single megacity. And yet rent prices there are generally much lower than the most comparable big cities in the US.
To add to your point, you can rent a gosiwon[1] in Korea for as little as $230/mo. I'm sure these would not even be allowed to exist in any city in the US. The hallways are not ADA compliant. The rooms don't meet some minimum sq.ft. requirement. There are too many occupants per toilet. And so on.
Not to mention you would have NIMBYs block the development of such cheap housing.
One of the things that I love about Seoul is the flexible zoning in residential areas that allows folks to use their space as a commercial entity. While having a coffee or barber shop next to a row of homes may seem weird for many folks in the US, I find that it adds a great deal of charm, diversity, and convenience to areas.
That said, one of the biggest criticisms of this approach to zoning in the city is that it leads to a faster pace of gentrification which can price people out of the areas, so it's not all peaches.
Seoul real estate prices are through the roof right now because of a heavily speculative market and shaky regulations though. A 100m2 in an apartment complex in the out-of-center parts of Seoul will cost you roughly 1 billion Won (1 million dollars).
In addition to what others have said there is no "chaos". American cities are chaos, not because of the building code but the massively failed social policies. Saying Seoul or Tokyo are chaotic compared to the likes of NYC and LA is like comparing Oslo to Mogadishu and saying the latter is less chaotic.
That is "rent" price. You pay 1m at move in but you don't own the apartment. The landlord gets the interest on it as your rent. When you move out you get the 1m back.
> The chaos of people being able to build whatever, wherever, is probably why Seoul and Tokyo both have remarkably reasonable rents relative to their size, prosperity, and national importance.
I think the premiss is not true. They cannot build whatever wherever. They have different zones, which determin, what kind of buildings are OK to be build in them. See for example this video: https://invidio.xamh.de/watch?v=wfm2xCKOCNk
But there does seem to be some increased flexibility.
I lived 10 minutes from Shinjuku 2 minutes from a station and 5 mins from another, surrounded by a popular shopping and dining street with 4-5 supermarkets and lots of greengrocers to buy food from, for $550/mo, together with my wife in a super bright and pleasant, but very compact (23 m2) 1 bedroom apartment (not a studio). Loved that place, and can't imagine rent like that near any US city.
I meant Seoul. I think San Francisco isn't a great yardstick for rent. Average salary of software engineers in Seoul is $45k, in SF $135k (according to Glassdoor).
I can rent a studio in Seoul for a little over half the price in Seattle. The salaries trend higher if you work as a software engineer for one of the newer companies. Korea also has unique offerings opposed to the usual monthly rent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeonse
Tokyo doesn't really have a "city center", to my understanding. At least, not a single one; it's more multi-polar.
But going off the spirit of what you meant, even if you compare city center to roughly city center, Tokyo is still much cheaper than places like NYC or SF, I believe.
I suppose that depends on what you define as "city center". Just checking Ikejiriohashi (arguably walking distance from Shibuya) I see plenty of 2LDKs for $2k-$3k a month. If you want inside the Yamanote line there's tons in East Shinjuku and north and east of that area that are "cheap".
And of course like you mentioned, going out of the city it gets even cheaper.
Other lines can be even cheaper, if you're looking for a minimal studio you can live within 10 mins of a major central station for < $600/mo especially if you choose less popular lines like Seibu Shinjuku/Ikebukuro line. $2k-$3k is already living quite nicely for many Japanese people, my mother in law lives in a 3 bedroom apartment for ~$1,000/mo in exchange for being ~20 mins away from Ikebukuro by train in a sleeper suburb.
Definitely, A friend had a place on the Seibu Ikebukuro line, 20 mins from Ikebukuro, 3 bed, 2 bath, 3 story duplex for $1k. Similarly 20 mins from Ikebukuro on Saikyo line 3 bed, 1 bath apartment for $1k. In both cases though it was 20 mins by express.
I wouldn't consider those close to downtown though. If you're into night life downtown and you want to go home at 3am it will cost $100 to get home (though I guess with the money you saved on rent you can do that every weekend and you're still ahead! :P )
If persuading people to adopt such zoning in your area matters to you, then you probably want to describe this more accurately as "zoning that blocks nuisances but does not micromanage"
> Seoul is not a pretty town, not at least by most Western senses of beauty.
Seoul is one of the most intensely aesthetic places on the planet. It's ugliness wraps all the way around into a kind of brutalist cyber punk thing that I find to be one of the coolest aesthetics of any city anywhere. I don't think I've ever found brutalist stuff to be beautiful outside of Seoul
Really grateful for the countless hours of my life I've gotten to spend walking around Seoul between 3-6am
It's a shallow analysis, and I say this as a fan of Arnade's prior work. Cartoons and "cuteness" are symbols expanding one's palate of expression.
LINE was the first messenger app to roll out stickers. Those stickers, mostly cartoons, do a vastly better job of encapsulating expression, especially online, than GIFs, Emojis, and Emoticons do.
Stickers are commonplace messages in Korea. Stickers in America, on the other hand, have not caught on. If I had to speculate, it is because the art is shallow, soulless, and an commercial grab.
From Arnade's piece:
> If you make anything and everything a lovable character, that dampens the edges. Makes a life of buying and selling stuff a little less dreary. A little less pointless.
You could say the same for every culture. If you talk to Koreans, they cannot fathom America's addiction to hyperbole, whether it be in everyday conversation or in advertising.
Examples:
"That was an amazing meal."
"It was to die for."
"Absolutely."
"You are the best!"
"What a killer deal!"
Now let's transform Arnade's original observation:
> If you make anything and everything a hyperbole – "perfect" or "the best" – that dampens the edges. Makes a life of buying and selling stuff a little less dreary. A little less pointless.
It fits, no? Would I describe American hyperbole as cope? No, it's merely how we encode emotions into language. Cartoons are the same for Koreans.
Edit: I'd like to proffer a different reason for their prevalence: many cartoons are government-sponsored and are ways for the government to signal that they are welcoming to children as a response to the declining birth rate. You could interpret this dystopically – I just see it as cute.
As someone born in Korea and have lived 20+ years in Seoul, I can say your “preoffered” reason for prevalent cartoon characters is simply wrong. They are not just government propaganda. They are deep into every fabric of life and psyche of Korea’s younger generation. Arnade’s analysis is not shallow. It is insightful beyond any that I have ever read.
Can you expand on that? I just can’t agree with this assertion. It seems like a projection to me.
Take the Jongro logo, for instance. Here’s its origin:
> It was developed and donated free of charge by the Environmental Design Research Institute of Kookmin University in 2001; through opinion surveys and expert advice, it was born in a friendly, resident-centered form that cannot be found in other local governments.
How in any way could you ascribe it’s existence to a deep emptiness?
I feel uneasy dismissing this new way of things and harkening back to the more meaningful old days, because the crispy clear meaning back then often stemmed from war. When you had adversaries threatening to destroy your country of course it felt so much more fulfilling to train to be any number of supporting or active roles. Without that pressure, things seem to lose that sharp drive but perhaps we are better off. It is also probably true that we have not evolved to live in a state of peace, and have a long way to go as a race to become accustomed to it.
I’ve lived in Japan—in and near Tokyo—for four decades, and on the trips I’ve made to Seoul I’ve enjoyed observing similarities and differences between the two cities. One of the differences was uniformed soldiers riding the subway in Seoul, something I’ve never seen in Tokyo. Another was what looked like emergency supplies stored on subway platforms; I’m guessing they were there in case the subways had to be used as bomb shelters. (I can’t read Korean, so I might have misidentified the items or their purpose.)
Postwar Japan has done a lot of preparation for natural disasters but has had essentially no civil defense measures against military threats. That might be changing, though. Just a couple of weeks ago, for the first time, the city of Tokyo designated 105 subway stations as emergency evacuation sites in case of missile attacks [1, in Japanese]. This was prompted not only by the continued threat from North Korea but also by what has been happening in Ukraine.
Disaster preparedness is different from feeling threatened. Visiting Seoul rubs off differently than actually living there. For instance, seeing military men on the subway is nothing out of the ordinary to Koreans because military service is compulsory. To outsiders, it may evoke images of heightened threat or militarism. To insiders, it's "oh hey, it's some young men."
I am tempted to speculate that the average Japanese civilian is more worried about the threat of North Korea than the average Korean civilian.
I was mostly thinking of a much more severe war cycle like WW1 or WW2 which have been out of most living people's memory at this point and so don't drive the culture as much any more. Before that it was constant bloodletting. We truly live in unprecedented times.
As a Korean I can tell you we mostly don’t care about their threats day to day. Their missiles don’t even make our news cycle sometimes. But we did care when they were more brazen (like sending specialists to assassinate our president) and now anti-communism is one of driving ideologies of our society, for better or worse. Calling someone “socialist” can be an insult :p
I didn't get that from day to day life, but you'd probably feel it in things like mandatory military service, and the fact that escalators going down to subway stations were deeper than normal.
> When you had adversaries threatening to destroy your country
They have exactly that threat from North Korea. But I suspect that the culture of "rampant consumerism and materialism" is part of how they deal with that (also the cuteness thing he mentions possibly plays a part)
Materialism and rampant consumption, yes. But thinking this as a generational affect seems a superficial analysis. Older generation is pretty materialistic (like many countries that became rich quick) perhaps more so than the young. Showing pictures of old people hanging out enjoying hobbies to back this point is silly because younger generation would be either in school(or 학원) or working!
Cuteness out of emptiness you feel inside is also for me fall short. My reading(armchair psychology, yes. But as a Korean who thought about this a lot) is that this is more to do with patriarchal culture where man and woman appeals there take-careablity(woman: man would want to take care of me/man: I could be a good protector). In confucious culture there's lot of emphasis on who takes care of whom and familial analogy is applied to every relationships.
> Materialism and rampant consumption, yes. But thinking this as a generational affect seems a superficial analysis. Older generation is pretty materialistic
I guess I didn't read it as him saying "the young are more materialistic" but more as "the young are dealing with the fallout of a culture of rampant consumption and materialism". The young are generally too young to have built the culture of rampant consumption and materialism, but it's all they've known.
Or, cute things are just fun. One of my favorite things about Korea and Korean products is that they take the time to make even small things like pens pretty. I would love for American society to "embrace the cute" more.
> “monotonous ruins of a nation-state… perfectly realized in the name of capitalism.”
> Urban isolation and rapidly advancing technology have helped erode reality in favor of representation. Connection with real human beings becomes less desirable; cartoon characters to which you will never be held accountable become ideal friends.
> a cartoon dog, soft and cuddly, with no blood, no fragile network of organs, no accountability and no ability to hold others accountable.
I live in Japan, I don’t really find most day to day architecture to be “stunning” but on the other hand I think it remains aesthetic thanks to the people and the integration of the whole urban form, not its individual buildings. Western cities usually do have nicer looking (but less functional) architecture.
I think some of it also the absence of cars in places you'd see them in the west. In particular absence of parked cars. I didn't realize that that was part of it till I learned that street parking is highly restricted in Japan and now I cannot unsee it. Similarly the tiny backstreets are super charming and also not car friendly. It's human friendly though.
Edit: another thing that really sticks out as adding to the charm is the more diverse usage of building space. You might find businesses on floors other than the ground floor and many of them are much smaller than you'd ever find a similar business in Europe and especially not the US. It gives a feeling that there are always things to discover.
The no-street-parking thing goes hand in hand with another restriction: you have to prove you have an off-street parking space within a short distance (I seem to recall 800m when I was registering, but internet suggests 2km) of your residence. If you don't, you can't buy a white plate vehicle. Ownership of vehicles is much more regulated than north america
Agreed on the smaller businesses - I love that aspect and always wondered if a faked version of that in NYC or something (subdivide a typical restaurant space into a number of 6-10 seater counter bars like you'd find in Japan) would take off.
I wonder if the overhead in the US somehow makes small businesses like that not viable. Maybe there is something here about minimum needed profit to even live?
I don't see any good reason why it's so rare to have businesses on more floors. I wonder if it's a zoning or simply a cultural thing.
the "average" building / neighborhood in Japan is pretty ugly or at least super bland but there is amazing exceptions all over and of course all the parks, temples, gardens, forests, and other things.
It's true - as well as the occasional eccentric piece of architecture randomly in an otherwise standard neighborhood. There are also certain neighborhoods that really do have a lot of nice buildings (the area around Komaba Todaimae comes to mind) but that is the exception not the norm.
It's weird, I visited Seoul a lot and I guess I've internalised the fact that it is not pretty ... but it doesn't really register when I was there. It's a fairly buzzing city with a decent transport system, good food and a lot going on ... so it kinda doesn't matter on some level that it's a bit unspectacular visually.
The only place I've been to in Korea was Busan, but I found it beautiful. There was a gorgeous temple on a rocky cliff (Haedong Yonggungsa), a vibrant neighborhood of colorful houses (Gamcheon-dong), lots of nice parks, and a great beach area.
I just went over just for the day during a trip to Japan, but it certainly convinced me that Korea should be the destination for a future trip.
I lived in Seoul for almost two years about 10 years ago and I'm stricken with how the photos depict it almost exactly the same as I remember. It seemed at the time there was an un-ending amount of construction, I suppose there are probably many new buildings, but seemingly still in the style that I remember.
I was particularly fond of buying beer and sitting at the little tables in front of the convenience stores on warm summer nights, just enjoying the sights.
He also mentions the number of scooter deliveries, something that blew my mind at the time, was when we ordered delivery, someone would arrive on a scooter and drop the food off and it was all on re-usable plates wrapped in plastic. When you were done, you put the dishes in a bag in-front of your door and the delivery person would come back later to pick the dishes up. I wonder if that still happens.
> When you were done, you put the dishes in a bag in-front of your door and the delivery person would come back later to pick the dishes up. I wonder if that still happens.
It’s all one-use plastics now as delivery apps like Yogiyo replaced most of in house delivery drivers.
> I was particularly fond of buying beer and sitting at the little tables in front of the convenience stores on warm summer nights, just enjoying the sights.
You'd love the coffee and beer culture in Hanoi =)
Regarding the buzz of delivery scooters, I agree it's annoying as a Japan resident, they're the noisiest thing in the city. Much worse in SE Asia though. And I was amazed when I lived in Shanghai, they electrified what seemed to be the majority of scooters (and my expat friends with motorized scooters were avoiding the police to avoid getting ticketed for having too large motors), so there were just as many scooters but they were much quieter. Nice.
If you’re ever looking to scratch a travel itch while relaxing at home, the subgenre of “video walks” on YouTube is well worth a look. There’s a channel called Walk Together that regularly posts walks through all sorts of districts of Seoul, which can be absolutely fascinating to explore virtually.
Fell on this YT niche earlier this year, and I’ve fallen in love. Have them playing in the background on one of my monitors during the work day. I took a break from the extreme airpod abuse and Spotify productivity playlists combo for these city walk tours. Really enjoy the ones in the rain or an NYC walk tour while it’s snowing.
seoul has city planners, hell, my cousin applied to be one. it's just that unlike in the us, city planners are empowered to get nimbys to shut the hell up and go and build things
it's less a case of city planners being empowered and more a case of property rights being absolute (similar to Japan, France or Germany) which gives property and land owners the right to do whatever they want (within the confines of national regulation), which leads to development towards economic demands naturally.
This is also why Seoul or many Japanese cities look so individualistic and mosaic like from one lot to the other as the author describes in the article.
I have been to Korea. I'm not Asian and was born & raised in the US. I'll just say: I think this is an odd take. I don't agree w/most of his conclusions.
In the very first line, he says "Seoul is not a pretty town." I live in San Francisco, conventionally thought of as a pretty place, and I would say: I think Seoul was pretty. It wouldn't have occurred to me to say it wasn't.
Go back and look at the article again. The first few photos, showing commercial and chintzy/cheap shop districts - that's as ugly as Seoul gets. That's what passes for 'urban blight' there. Now go to your city, and take a few photos of urban blight, the ugliest city areas you can find. I'll bet you, easily, that in terms of beauty, Seoul wins that competition hands down.
As an American, what really strikes you about Seoul is how clean and well-run it is. Related, you also notice how polite and pleasant it is: no one screaming, either randomly at nothing, or at you, to get in line or do things a certain way or whatever (something I noticed when I flew from Seoul airport back to USA airport, and immediately some worker was yelling at us to get in the baggage line). There's no piles of trash that have been forgotten for weeks, there's no neglected areas that are just falling into worse and worse disrepair.
The overall feeling is this. Have you ever thought, "Why can't everyone just be reasonable and nice?" Seoul is a place where it feels like that came true; if you want to know what that would be like, go there. So it's 'pretty' (without question, to me) in the way that a building or an office is pretty, that people work to keep clean and crisp and well-organized. That's a form of beauty which Seoul has in spades.
Also: the thing about "but there's no religion" is a cheap shot, and apparently untrue, as someone else has pointed out (Seoul has the largest churches in the world by attendance). There are more cute things, but that's neither here nor there; I totally disagree that Hello Kitty has replaced Jesus, if that's the implication. People like Hello Kitty type images & toys there, but it's an overstretch to pretend like Hello Kitty is their God, or something equally ridiculous.
> Have you ever thought, "Why can't everyone just be reasonable and nice?" Seoul is a place where it feels like that came true;
I haven't spent much time in Seoul but that sentence describes by feeling of Japan and Singapore where I have spent > 10 years. I know American's (and Europeans) get defensive about this and try to start pointing out the negatives of both places of which there are plenty but, it's hard to come back to the USA after being away so long and just see how much everyone is only out for themselves, being dicks in one way or another. Some are small (I see people not waiting their turn at the signal and blocking people's who's turn it is), Some less (saw some guy eating a bowl of chicken, pulling the lettuce out and just throwing it on the sidewalk), (Seeing people blaring their stereos to what showoff? not really sure what's up with that one except to show you have power over others by showing you can do something, blair your stereo, and they can't do anything about it), Some awful (all the car break ins and packages stolen and the attitude that it's the victim's fault)
This comes at the price of an insane amount of pressure, to know your place and shut up and do what you're being told.
This is why westerners love these countries because they get to enjoy the orderliness while benefitting of their foreigner status which exclude them from any expectations.
If they were held by locals to the same expectations they'd have a different opinion of these societies.
After living in Japan for three years I just have a hard time taking western interpretations of Asian countries seriously (not directed at you but the article)
-- only real issue walking in Seoul is the fine folks of said city have not yet selected a uniformed direction of travel per side of any given walkway - that is to say - they meander all over - i've always found this quite challenging - i like to look a head a plan my path through the pedestrians - a difficult endeavor in this city -- that said - still easily my favorite city in the world for walking around --
they had a campaign a decade back to get people to walk on the right side and put stickers everywhere in the subways for it. didn't work out 100% because the previous direction was left. when the ad campaign finished, some people reverted
> Churches and temples, far rarer than in most cities, are wedged into tiny hard to see and find nooks.
The largest churches in the world by attendance are in South Korea:
In 2007, five of the ten largest Protestant churches were in South Korea. The largest megachurch in the world by attendance is South Korea's Yoido Full Gospel Church, an Assemblies of God (Pentecostal) church, with more than 830,000 members as of 2007.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megachurch
I wonder if this means there aren't a lot of church buildings because they tend to gather in large numbers in a few very large venues instead of gathering in smaller groups in more numerous smaller buildings?
I think a lot of church congregations in Korea meet in spaces that are not purpose-built church buildings, e.g., the floor of a commercial high-rise building. I lived in Seoul on and off from 2004 - 2006 and one of the things I first noticed when taking the airport bus into the city from Incheon at night was how many otherwise ordinary buildings had illuminated red crosses on their roofs.
I think there are many, many beautiful and charming spots in Seoul, but I don’t see any of them here. And through thousands of years of history and various wars, Seoul definitely is a mosaic.
My impression is that this author doesn’t have a particularly great sense of photography - he just faces a storefront and snaps a photo.
I enjoyed reading someone else’s perspective, though.
> Places where the only thing that ends up happening is fiddling around the edges. Like building bike lanes through neighborhoods where nobody ever bikes.
This stood out to me within the article as a rather dumb statement to make. Like writing, "nobody ever seems to drive through this plot of land that has no roads."
Regarding religion, I've heard that the Talmud is a popular book in South Korea. I'm surprised by this. Is it appreciated for being analytical? For its tradition and lore? I'm Jewish, so I'm really curious about this.
As far as I understand, Talmud was sold as a distillation of "Jewish wisdom" that raises smart kids, and Koreans are really crazy about raising smart kids, and somehow the marketing stuck. There may be other aspects to it but I think this is the biggest factor.
But then again, books purporting to teach you how to live your own life have always enjoyed a steady demand in Korea, and Talmud (at least as seen in Korea) fits the mold very well.
A common perception of Jews in Korea is that they're a formerly oppressed minority who are now rich and powerful. I think some Koreans see a parallel there given the history of their own country and its recent ascension to the world stage. I believe the Talmud and "Jewish education" is touted as one of the reasons that Jewish people have been so successful and people in Korea are seeking to emulate it.
I'm less sure about this as I ponder. So there is definitely such a stereotype, and there is also a long-running meme of "be a rich" (부자되세요), originated from a 2002 credit card advertisement, which cemented a notion of money being a virtue to the general public since then. The problem is that the Talmud craze definitely predates this meme, probably dating back to 1980s. But I can't conclusively say that this was nothing to do with that stereotype at that time---it might be just that jews are seen as a model minority.
As someone grew up in similar environment, I don't miss this at all.
I would rather buy grocery once a week with a huge load put in the trunk and drive back home, instead of buy a little bit every next day and walk home carrying the bags. I don't want to carry a gallon milk or a Watermolen, or push/drag a cart on the street.
I think people who envy this kind of environment just don't know how inconvenient it is for a working family with a few kids. But it is kind of OK if you live with grandpa / grandmom, who will do grocery almost everyday, or if you don't do grocery just eat in restaurants or buy food online.
Counterpoint: Many American parents spend a large portion of their time simply shuttling their kids between home, school, and other activities, because none are within walking distance and buses are all but absent in most places.
I'm now raising my kids in the Bay Area, and I'm fortunate because the kids' schools are within walking distance, but that's a luxury not enjoyed by most people around here.
Yes. You may have a few things in walking distance, but I don't believe you can have most things (schools, grocery, public library, gyms, bike ground, soccer ground, tennis court, etc.) in walking distance, you will need other transportations other than legs.
Not sure if your comment was confined to the USA or not, but I live in outer suburban London, and I have the schools, small Sainsbury's supermarket, libraries, a small gym, soccer grounds and tennis courts within an easy walk. Larger gym and larger supermarkets are an easy bike ride away. There is nothing at all unusual or remarkable about my particular part of London.
From where I'm sitting a 15 minute walks gets to two schools, a grocery store, the library, two gyms, a bike path, and a soccer field. The tennis court is 19 minutes away, and the high school would be the furthest, at 40 minutes.
And this is in a smallish town, one advantage of which is that things cannot be that far away in a town that takes an hour to walk across.
Around here in Europe, the kids ride the city bus along with the adults or hop on a bike/scooter. And in fact, most of the things you listed are within a medium walk or short bike ride from most urban neighborhoods in my city. It's not a particularly big or important city, about 400k, but has extremely human friendly urban planning (hooray communists?)
Counternarrative: I live a few blocks from a grocery store, with kid, and frankly, I don't mind it at all. Maybe kid does. But it's nice to be able to just walk there and not worry about parking, loading, etc. Looking to move to a place even, amusingly, closer to the grocery.
now, the kid might decide that he wants a huge SUV and to drive to the store every 1-2 weeks, that's going to be interesting. But for me, the parent, I like it.
We have two kids born and raised in Seoul. It is a bit of a pain, but also the price, quality, and quantity of prepared food outside makes it way more feasible to bring that burden down somewhat. If your children are small, I could see it being a pain. We did have the help of a grandma, though pretty inconsistently.
When I grew up, we didn't have food market close, except for breakfast. Grocerying was constant pain when the weather was not perfect, like too hot, too cold, or raining, snowing etc.
As someone who lives in Tokyo and cooks regularly I for one don’t mind this at all and in fact prefer it to my life in the USA where all the produce tastes like nothing and all the food is packed with preservatives to last long beyond their natural expiry dates to accommodate said lifestyle.
I think even in a very walkable city it can be inconvenient not to have a car. I enjoy buying groceries for the next day or two and making multiple quick trips per week in tiny stores. I also like taking the car over to the hypermarket and loading up on heavy, bulky and pantry items. I also sometimes get free grocery delivery instead. It's really about choice. In the US, often your only choice is Walmart.
I agree. This is why I'm excited to have a house where I can buy in greater bulk and do groceries less often. Even doing groceries once a week is a hassle
Got somewhat homesick opening the article and the first photo is a place I've walked right by many times, it's right around the corner from my in-laws. At least one other and maybe three others are within 100 yards of first photo as well.
I enjoyed that article a lot. I just started working remotely for a South Korean AI startup and I really look forward to visiting. I worked in Singapore for a while, apparently very different than Seoul!
Just about everything this person wrote can apply well to any large and old city, where things had to be jammed together to make it work. Manhattan jumps to mind.
These cities are a bit like slamming NYC, SF, and LA together into a single megacity. And yet rent prices there are generally much lower than the most comparable big cities in the US.