{"id":5470,"date":"2021-07-14T22:32:51","date_gmt":"2021-07-15T05:32:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=5470"},"modified":"2021-07-14T22:33:20","modified_gmt":"2021-07-15T05:33:20","slug":"korea-blog-stroll-through-the-real-cities-of-korea-with-youtubes-seoul-walker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=5470","title":{"rendered":"Korea Blog: Stroll through the Real Cities of Korea with YouTube\u2019s Seoul Walker"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In recent weeks, Seoul looked about to get back to how it used to be. Or at least it looked about to resemble how it used to be, with an impending relaxation of certain restrictions \u2014 on the size of gatherings, on the hours of bars and restaurants \u2014 implemented at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. Alas, a new \u201csurge\u201d in the number of COVID cases has pushed back even this small step toward normality. Despite having once been\u00a0the second-most-threatened country in the world by the pandemic<\/a>, South Korea hasn\u2019t had life disrupted anywhere near as severely as many other countries. The streets of Seoul never really emptied out \u2014 at least not before 10:00, by which hour most businesses are now ordered to close. In response, no few Seoulites simply begin their evenings earlier, some of them now managing to get smashed while it\u2019s practically light out.<\/p>

Still, it\u2019s not quite the same. I feel the difference even in my own neighborhood of Sinchon, especially when I compare it to\u00a0a video from two years ago<\/a>. Shot from a first-person perspective, its unbroken 15-minute shot captures a walk along streets that look both familiar (I\u2019ve never spent as much of my adult life in any other neighborhood) and strange. Some of that strangeness comes from the absence of masks and some from the presence of Westerners \u2014 not in great numbers, but certainly greater than one sees today. Whatever their origins, nearly everyone who passes through the frame is young. With no fewer than three major universities in the vicinity, Sinchon has long been a youth-oriented part of town. That manifests even amid its now somewhat diminished liveliness, but it did so much more vividly, so I\u2019m reminded, in the summer of 2019.<\/p>

This video\u2019s YouTube channel,\u00a0Seoul Walker<\/a>, launched just a few months earlier. Its creator, who calls himself Nathan and seems to be Korean, describes it as \u201ca channel where you can experience as if you\u2019re walking in the cities, including Seoul.\u201d Of course, when it comes to Korean cities, the capital \u2014 with its metropolitan area home to half the population of the entire country \u2014 is dominant, never just included. The bulk of Seoul Walker\u2019s most-viewed videos depict Seoul, and most of those focus on one part in particular: Gangnam, the only neighborhood someone who doesn\u2019t know the city, or indeed Korea, is guaranteed have heard of. Of course, as those familiar with Seoul understand, Gangnam isn\u2019t actually a neighborhood but rather a variously defined area south of the Han River, one home to new buildings, new cars, and \u2014 as virally satirized by PSY \u2014 new money.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Read the whole thing at the Los Angeles Review of Books<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In recent weeks, Seoul looked about to get back to how it used to be. Or at least it looked about to resemble how it used to be, with an impending relaxation of certain restrictions \u2014 on the size of gatherings, on the hours of bars and restaurants \u2014 implemented at the height of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5470"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5473,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5470\/revisions\/5473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}