K-Pop Culture Hunting in Seoul

"In the city's vibrant historical center, hanoks -the traditional curved-roof wood houses that give Seoul its distinctive heart-stopping skyline-are jammed next to sleek art galleries, fashionable glasses shops, and pop-up boutiques. And my God, the cafés. How to convey the love for coffee in this high-octane, thrilling city of late-night barbershops and 4 a.m. Tuesday karaoke? Seoul bursts with, at some estimates, more than 15,000 cafés, many of them freshly opened, and the number keeps escalating."

"Lee and I grab coffee from a different café, then queue outside Art Sonje Center, which has been one of the city's most influential private art museums since it was founded in 1998. An astonishing postapocalyptic installation by Argentinian Peruvian artist Adrián Villar Rojas has visitors entering at timed intervals. While Lee and I talk, locals and tourists bustle past. People from both categories are dressed in hanboks, the sumptuous, intensely colorful traditional clothing of Korea, full skirts shaped like upside-down blown-glass flowers, pants billowing."

"Some of the locals are having engagement photos taken. The tourists, Lee says, dress up, in part, because shops in the neighborhood often give discounts to anyone clad in a rented hanbok. "We are blessed with a society that values its culture," Lee says. Increasingly, the rest of the world values South Korean culture too. You've probably encountered a significant aspect of it in the past week, if not today"

Seoul’s historical center pairs hanoks with modern art galleries, fashion shops, and pop-up boutiques. The city’s café scene is extremely dense and keeps expanding, with many cafés opening and disappearing quickly. Art Sonje Center, a private museum founded in 1998, draws locals and tourists to major contemporary installations, including timed-entry experiences. Visitors often wear hanboks, with locals using them for events like engagement photos and tourists renting them for discounts at nearby shops. The city’s cultural value is presented as a foundation for both local pride and increasing global attention to South Korean culture and pop culture.

Read at Conde Nast Traveler