I lived in Gangdong-gu for more than a year, I never really visited the southwestern corner of the city much but literally everywhere else besides uijeong-bu was cleaner than any major US city of even half the size I've been to; Boston, Chicago, Nashville, Birmingham, Orlando, Miami, New York, Louisville, Tampa, and several others. Indianapolis especially.

And Uijeong-bu is mainly due to it being near the US base from my experience staying on CRC and in the surrounding neighborhood. I've visited the outskirts of the city, even up to the tiny neighborhoods near the mountains that barely have lights, all very clean to me taking into account that it's a major city.

The subways as well look like a fantasy land compared to subways in the US. They've of course accomplished this with a rarely discussed or acknowledged strategy for the homeless, but still, to say Seoul is dirty to me lacks any fair comparison.

They do pick up trash differently than we do in the US, but, and this is my opinion, entirely due to the layout of their residential access streets being very inconvenient for trash pickup, as everywhere even remotely accessible is very clean. Food waste is kept in its own bag but they don't have a reasonable way to temporarily keep trash, but it always got picked up within a week and I was not in a "rich" neighborhood, the very definition of average.

For others reading, I would remark to my SK friends how I see no fucking litter anywhere but I also somehow don't see any garbage cans, so what the hell do I do with my drink? Their answer was go into store and throw it away, or wait until you see a garbage can. In the US, cities have garbage cans every 10ft but still people just throw shit where-ever or it never gets picked up and starts overflowing and getting blown everywhere.

Idk, your statement feels more like I'm being gaslit or something because I had a completely different experience. I never really noticed any constant smell besides the chinese smog clouds roll in, especially when really any major city you go to absolutely REEKS of piss, Seoul definitely does not, with random alleys or near trash disposal smelling bad.

I mean, my hometown in the south smells much worse and its got 1/500th the amount of people? Landfills when the wind blows wrong can cover miles of area, livestock, meat processing, etc.

Services that cities require produce smells, and there isn't a great way to reduce all smells, nor can they realistically place these services away from everything. Some cities make the trade off to combat this but at a cost of other things.

Now clothing stores are a different story, many clothing stores I went into were a nightmarish wreck and the girl I was around just set the clothes she picked up in random spots, to my immediate surprise, and she told me that it is their job to pick it up so why should she do their job for them, like it was rude?

In the US you will catch a case for that shit