The thing about being jet-lagged is you don’t really know you are until it hits you out of nowhere and the next thing you know you’re waking up at 7PM from a DEEP sleep.  

This past week I was in Seoul, South Korea for a quick 4 day rip.  I figured I would just try fighting through the timezone change and ignore signs of being tired or anything else my circadian rhythm was trying to tell me, in hopes I’d make it back to Toronto fresh as a daisy. 

Yeah, nope.

I’ve probably started and paused writing this 4 times in 4 days but like the Minnesota Timberwolves (who currently haven’t won a playoff series in 19 years) we all eventually get there - the T-Wolves are up 1-0 against the Suns in the 1st round.  There’s a science behind beating jet lag though, at least in my mind there exists one: sleep for as long as you can during the times you’re actually supposed to sleep, stay wide awake at all other points in the day.  It’s a bit of a mental battle if you think about it - convincing your mind you aren’t tired mid afternoon while only a couple days earlier it would have been the dead of night. 

Typically I’m up early and wide awake for the first few days after coming home from Asia but this time around I was just wiped out daily.  I attribute that to the fact that I don’t think I fully adjusted when I landed in Seoul and then came back just as my body was getting used to Asia time.  

The real science says it takes about a day or two to recover for every timezone you crossed on your way to or from your destination.  From Toronto to Seoul you cross over 8 time zones so with this week’s issue being a couple days late, it doesn’t feel all that bad anymore. 

Anyway, here’s a random Monday edition of Dulture 🙃 

This week's issue is a 4 minute read:

🤯 The missiles that get ignored

🚶‍♂️ Seoul’s coolest neighbourhood

📚️ The tourist’s library

Missile Alerts and Lost Old People

Back in 2018 Canada implemented an expansion of its emergency broadcast system called, “Alert Ready”, to display notifications on phones across the country on the cellular network.  I’m sure you know EXACTLY what I’m talking about - those notifications that wake you up either with that loud piercing noise or the vibration of your phone like it became possessed. 

The majority of alerts that have been sent to people’s phones since the system’s adaptation have been for weather alerts.  Recall when it smelled like camp fire outside last summer for a couple weeks?  While I was in Seoul I received the below alert which reminded me of the Canadian equivalent for a lost child or elderly person. 

While I’m not dismissing the danger and emergency surrounding typical alerts from forest fires and missing people here in Canada, when talking to my Korean colleagues about their alert system, I realized that they see similar alerts around missing people too.  But they also get warnings from missile launches in North Korea.  If you live in Seoul you’re about a 2 hour drive from the North Korean border and a 3 hour drive from Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital.  

To put things in perspective, it’s like if Buffalo launched missiles into Lake Ontario while you lived in Toronto.  So crazy. 

Luckily ain’t nothing going on in Buffalo 😏

The kicker is in speaking to my colleagues about it, they were fairly non-chalant about the missile warnings as there’s been so many over the years and they land in the ocean every time.  Also South Korea is in the midst of implementing its own “iron dome” similar to what Israel has so I suppose the threat becomes less worrisome? So crazy nonetheless!

The Brooklyn of South Korea

I did 12,000+ steps on one of the days of the trip as we had several walking meetings that took us through all kinds of neighbourhoods in Seoul.  One of said neighbourhoods was Seongsu-dong, one of the “coolest”, if not the coolest neighbourhood in Seoul and subsequently richest, home to Seoul Forest and what I called, which I’m sure no local would actually agree with, Seoul’s billionaire’s row. 

Gangnam (yes, that Gangnam) is technically supposed to be the most affluent part of the city but Seongsu-dong has started to become the coolest part of the city.  As we walked through Seoul Forest it felt like you were in the equivalent of Central Park.  And as we walked through the neighbourhood and to the eventual hole in the wall Korean BBQ restaurant we ate at, it was evident we were in a much more stylish part of the city. 

Seongsu-dong was Seoul’s most hash-tagged neighbourhood on Instagram in 2022.  In the 1960’s and 70’s Seongsu-dong was known for its shoe manufacturing but not really a desired neighbourhood to live in.  After the 1997 foreign currency crisis in Korea, a lot of manufacturers shut down leaving behind these high ceiling buildings, just ripe to be eventually repurposed.  Sounds like Brooklyn in NYC or Liberty Village in Toronto, doesn’t it?  

Cafes, trendy restaurants, indie fashion and luxury brands alike have moved into the neighbourhood.  Alongside them celebrities have bought luxury apartments in the condos overlooking Seoul Forest (see above photo) as well as the Trimage building which apparently is heavily populated by Korean celebrities and pro athletes. 

The neighbourhood has become one of the most desired areas of the city to hang out in because of all the cafes,  photo spots and the general “hip” vibe.  For me it was the Korean BBQ (see above photo).

The Most Instagrammable Library

One of the many reasons why I love going to Asia is that where ever you need to go in a major Asian city is often times interconnected through a mix-mash of tall office towers, shopping malls, subway stations, and everything in between.  This becomes so clutch on rainy days or when it’s hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk.  And although we have “The Path” in Toronto, it might as well be called “The Dungeon” - useful for walking underground to avoid the elements but otherwise a suit filled, bank advertised, over-priced bagel-laden walkway.

Asia continues to live in the future in my opinion as we continue to catch up in North America.  The hotel I stayed at was attached to the COEX mall which was a bright, CLEAN, convenient underground shopping mall that connected to hotels, restaurants, subway stations, a million stores, and this super cool library.

The Starfield Library is 100% a tourist stop for anyone visiting Seoul.  I stumbled across it as I walked through the underground mall to get to the convention centre I needed to get to.  Once again, Asia underground walkways stay undefeated.  As you walk through you get this instant sense of calming like a library typically provides, even with all the tourists stopping to take pictures.  And although there aren’t that many spots to sit and actually read, the library is a nice little compliment to the hustle and bustle of the ever busy COEX mall.  

In all honesty, I feel like if we had something as nice as this laden in the middle of a downtown Toronto pathway, people in the city would somehow find a way to mess it up.  And this is why all the nicer things are in Asia.