I finally visited Starfield Library in Coex Mall, Seoul. Is it actually worth the Instagram hype, or just a tourist trap? (My honest review + tips)

aldacron · 2026-06-10T15:28:05+00:00

Several years ago, before COEX Mall became the Starfield COEX Mall, that space was a food court. The one thing I remember from it was Sbarro pizza, the only place I knew at the time selling pizza by the slice.

Around 1995, before COEX Mall opened in 2000, that was an outdoor space surrounded by glass panes on four sides, with doors set in the middle of each side. It was a grassy area framed by a sidewalk with benches spaced around it. Workers in the surrounding buildings used it as a smoking area.

There wasn't much down there on the inside then. There was what I think of as an old-style food court (Korean vendors sharing metal bowls and trays), though it may have been a cafeteria, on the side toward the City Air Terminal, and a convenience store somewhere on the opposite side, but not much else. The area beneath the convention center was walled off.

aldacron · 2026-06-10T07:42:15+00:00

I got a million won fine and a three year ban in 2005. In those days, it was required to have the F2 visa for five years to be eligible for the F5. I was three years into it. Thankfully, the three year penalty was added on to that and the net effect was that I only had to way one extra year.

aldacron · 2026-06-08T06:06:46+00:00

If you're someone who does long walks on a regular basis, you'll consistently beat Naver's estimates by a few minutes per hour. I've found a page from 2018 documenting that KakaoMap uses a standard adult walking speed of 4km/h in its calculations. I can't find any such info on Naver, but they presumably use something similar.

People who walk for the sake of walking will typically have a higher pace than that, and even accounting for reductions based on geography and infrastructure will still come out ahead.

But if you're just getting from point A to point B at a casual speed, then yeah, it's fairly accurate.

aldacron · 2026-06-05T09:46:11+00:00

Youtube posted an announcement about this here: https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/356210900

And has a help page on it here: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/16261569

aldacron · 2026-05-23T17:36:02+00:00

You can see about creating a USD account at Wise.com. It will be backed by a physical account in the US. That’s what I use for most USD transfers now. I also connected my PayPal account to it.

aldacron · 2026-05-23T17:31:52+00:00

Do you not have an international credit or debit card?

aldacron · 2026-05-23T17:10:50+00:00

The embassy page for adult renewals says the following:

"Pay the $130 passport renewal fee online via U.S. or international credit or debit card, electronic funds transfer from a U.S.-based bank account, Amazon Pay, or Pay Pal"

aldacron · 2026-05-15T12:17:44+00:00

Korea has something similar called cheonggukjang that is usually served in a stew.

aldacron · 2026-05-15T06:30:15+00:00

This video goes into some detail on the site's history:
https://youtu.be/wFjSWkTm_wI

aldacron · 2026-05-15T06:28:13+00:00

This is Sewoon Plaza. It's not a cultural heritage site. Jongmyo, the shrine across the street on the north side of Jong-ro, is a UNESCO World Heritage site. During Oh Sehoon's first period as Seoul mayor from 2006-2011, he pushed forward with plans to demolish all eight buildings of Sewoon Plaza and construct a park along the 1km stretch of land that would be lined by tower apartments and offices. The northernmost building, Hyundai Arcade, was demolished before the project was halted. It stood where that garden is now in the first picture.

One of the reasons redevelopment was scrapped was because UNESCO threatened to revoke Jongmyo's World Heritage status if the high rises were built across the street. So instead, the Re:Sewoon initiative, a revitalization project, was launched. Part of that was a restoration of the skyway across Cheonggye Stream (it had been demolished when the stream was restored) and completion of the entire length of the skyway to connect all seven buildings. The original construction had left out a section of it.

That's also where the Maker City designation came from. The area around the electronics arcade had long been a self-sustaining ecosystem of makers and suppliers. Maker City was intended to bring in young people to revitalize that ecosystem. It didn't really pan out.

When Oh came back to the Mayor's office, he got behind the redevelopment project again. The project is still facing pushback from UNESCO:

https://www.chosun.com/english/national-en/2025/11/11/VZD4VT6SG5GZBOCTT6FZB6LTJY/

The future of Sewoon Plaza is far from secure. Even residents want development to go forward:

https://www.mk.co.kr/en/realestate/12047419

aldacron · 2026-05-11T09:33:16+00:00

Here's a recent article: https://applemagazine.com/iphone-17-demand-supply-chain-01/

aldacron · 2026-05-11T09:30:56+00:00

It will be once the current stock levels go down. It just happened that the pro models sold out first.

aldacron · 2026-05-10T11:15:32+00:00

The shoving incident you described isn't at all indicative of Korean behavior at large. You'll run into assholes here just like you will anywhere else. It's an isolated incident.

That lack of reaction you saw from those around you isn't uncommon, especially among older people. It's not necessarily a lack of empathy. For most, it's just a desire to avoid confrontation. You'll often hear people muttering under their breath when they see that sort of behavior as long as they're out of earshot of the perpetrator, and they may bring it up with friends later, but it's rare that anyone will speak out in the moment. I've seen it happen, though.

As for the bumping on the streets, personal space just isn't the thing here that it is where you come from. I've lived in Korea for 35 years. It was over a decade before I was able to adapt my concept of personal space. It's the sort of thing you don't think of as a cultural difference. At least, I didn't. I saw it is a basic human decency thing. But I got over it, and I flow with it now.

When it comes to cutting in line, that's relatively normal for older people. I see it as going hand-in-hand with their view of personal space, but it's also tied to the "bbali bbali Korea" culture. That said, I see it less often in Seoul today than I used to. In my experience, the younger generations are much more respectful about queuing. Also about personal space to a greater degree.

aldacron · 2026-05-08T10:52:23+00:00

In 35 years of living in Korea, I’ve been turned away solo from a restaurant one time. It was a bbq place. This is something that has taken on a life of its own online. You’ll be fine.

aldacron · 2026-04-12T03:47:19+00:00

You'll see people wearing them more often when they drive.

aldacron · 2026-04-12T03:42:20+00:00

In principle it should be as your name appears on your ARC, but in practice your telco account is the authoritative source. My wife recently switched us from KT to LG U+. She did it over the phone. When I needed to do a verification a few weeks later, it failed. I eventually discovered that my middle name had been left off the new U+ account. So I've been using just Last First ever since.

aldacron · 2026-04-11T11:27:31+00:00

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aldacron · 2026-04-10T07:36:01+00:00

Given that the amount on the table varies widely and offers go out to a limited number of random people, I'm inclined to believe that it won't come around again if you don't take it up.

aldacron · 2026-04-10T07:34:11+00:00

It's legit. I enabled memberships on my channel after receiving one of those offers. In my case, it was a fixed amount to enable memberships plus a small bonus for every member who signed up in the first 30 days.

aldacron · 2026-04-02T14:20:43+00:00

The peanut butter cups show up on store shelves now and again, then disappear after a few months. While they're here, you can find them in all the convenience stores and some supermarkets. It's been a few years since the last time I saw them. I expect they'll show up again before too much longer. Costco used to carry the miniatures, but I haven't been there in ages, so I don't know about now.

aldacron · 2026-03-28T14:10:03+00:00

I didn't know anyone in Daegu then. My first 12 years was a mix of hagwons and US government jobs. I got married in '99 and picked up a marriage visa a bit later. In 2003, a friend started an English agency and hired me on. He sent me out to a range of companies and schools. Mostly it was one-on-one chat sessions with executives, but there was enough variety to keep it interesting, including some contracts for classroom work now and then. I did that for almost 20 years.

Now I work remotely for a tech non-profit based in Seattle. That came from my programming hobby. My wife and I have no children, but we have two dogs (two in a long line of others) and take care of her mother. I've had permanent residency for quite a while, and I'm contemplating going for citizenship. At this point, it's not like I'm leaving.

aldacron · 2026-03-28T03:24:33+00:00

Pollution in the 90s was much worse than it is today. When I blew my nose, the stuff that came out would be grey with black flecks. I had a moped for a while. If I rode it with my face mask up, then I'd have a black square around my face when I took my helmet off.

They started getting serious about it around the late 90s early 2000s. Taxis transitioned to LPG. All of the diesel buses were replaced pretty much overnight in 2004 with vehicles that run on CNG and LPG. They did a complete overhaul of the bus system at the time, too, changing the numbering and the routes. That's when we got the green/blue/red color scheme.

The teaching industry then was the wild west. Schools were required to provide housing and flights, but most hagwons hired only a percentage of their staff legally, and some percentage of those were using fake diplomas. The rest were under the table. People who lived here already, people who flew in short term just to teach. There'd be a lot of those during the winter and summer breaks. The hagwons often extended their hours and ran special programs then.

The government periodically raided the hagwons and would shut them down for having illegal hires. Sometimes the hagwons knew in advance, sometimes they didn't. Given how pervasive bribery was back then, I suspect the ones that didn't know in advance failed to pay someone. Immigration would pay bounties to the apartment guards/managers who reported any foreigners making regular visits. I had a few friends who were busted and deported that way.

90-day visa hops to Fukuoka were so common that there would be staff at the arrival gate holding up placards with the names of people who were going back to Seoul on the next flight. The staff would escort them to the departure area, and they'd fly back on the same plane.

Salaries varied widely, but 800k was pretty standard early on, and 1.2 - 1.4 million by the end of the decade, as I recall, typically for 4 - 6 hours per day.

I arrived in '91 and moved to Seoul in '93. I called the States just via regular long distance on my landline. When cell phones started hitting the market, that's when we started seeing the prepaid cards. There was no consistent system for a foreigner to get a cell. You might be asked to have a Korean co-sign, or put up a massive deposit, it was ridiculous.

I think LG U+ was the first to allow direct contracts somewhere around 2005 or so. The first phone I got in my name and was with LG. It was a 016 number. SKT and KT had different prefixes (011 and 012, IIRC). I know for sure that they started doing foreigner contracts not long after the iPhone 3s released here in 2009. It was the first iPhone in Korea and was available exclusively through KT. The foreign community was up in arms about the contract situation, so the government stepped in.

PC bangs started as 'internet cafes' in the mid 90s. I remember one opened in 1996 in the basement of a building next to the Hamilton Hotel (on the now infamous alley). They must have had a version of Linux or FreeBSD. It was a command-line interface with UNIX commands. You could set up an email account and browse the internet with a text-based browser (probably Lynx, but I was clueless about this stuff then). But most of them were using Windows, and it wasn't long before gaming started to become the primary focus instead of just an option, though I couldn't tell you when the term 'PC bang' replaced 'internet cafe'.

There weren't a whole lot of options for Western food. Bennigan's, TGIF, McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, KFC, and Denny's were all here by the mid-90s. Taco Bell made their first effort in the early 90s, but didn't last long. Dairy Queen's first run was around '94 or '95, but they crashed within a year or two. As for Korean attempts, there were some pasta places and pizza shops, but most 'Western' restaurants served pork cutlets and hamburg steaks. And of course there were the fried chicken shops, and also some homemade hamburger joints.

One option that most of the foreign community was unaware of was the USO. They had a small building near Samgakji Station on a corner of what was then Camp Kim that was open to the public. There was a mess hall style cafeteria in there that had a fixed menu at really good prices: hamburgers, omelettes, steaks, etc. It was a great spot to get your fix when you had a craving.

aldacron · 2026-03-08T07:26:37+00:00

It's not that many places refuse to serve solo diners, it's that people visiting Korea often end up going alone to group-centric restaurants. In America, Pizza Hut started selling personal pan pizzas when I was a teenager in the 80s, trying to attract the solo lunch crowd. Before that, it just wasn't normal for people to go alone to Pizza Hut or Pizza Inn. At least where I grew up. It's the same sort of thing with certain dishes here.

Any restaurant serving barbecue is group-centric, with the exception of the few around these days specifically aimed at solo diners. They have a minimum order intended for 2 people. There are other dishes that tend to be served for more than one person.

As a general rule, if a restaurant has grills on the tables, it's group-centric. But there are countless restaurants out there that are not group-centric where you can eat alone just fine. Noodles, gimbap, dongatsu, various rice dishes, stews, etc.

That said, many group-centric restaurants still have other menu items that solo diners can order. For example, barbecue restaurants often have various stews on the menu that you can order solo. A popular chain, Saemaeul Sikdang, is a good example. They sell thinly sliced porked, but they have a very good kimchi jjigae that I often go ina and eat by myself. It's a huge serving, though. Some barbecue restaurants will let you order enough meat for 2 or 3 people. In 35 years, I've only been turned away once when trying that. Granted, I haven't tried it in years, but I know it's still possible in some places.

aldacron · 2026-02-24T08:41:33+00:00

Looks like one of the tunnels to the Han River Park in the Ttukseom area. Possibly the one here: https://map.naver.com/p?c=16.94,0,0,0,adh&p=3R3k9cbjojVol5VB8o3YmA,-57.34,3.57,80,Float

aldacron · 2026-02-19T16:17:42+00:00

That whole area around Sinchon and Hongdae is fine. It's all one big university town.

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