Personal opinion about South Korea. Some interesting facts and a couple of photos from my personal archive. I hope this will help every reader better understand the mysterious Korean soul.
Only the lazy didn’t write about South Korea (hereinafter, for simplicity, I will write Korea). So I decided to describe those phenomena and facts that surprised me. 
Many people say that the most beautiful thing in Korea is the cherry blossoms. It is really very beautiful and romantic, especially when in the last days of flowering the petals cover everything around.
1. Democracy with a taste of its own teeth. Around the world, South Korea is considered a model of democracy. There has also been a fairly large American contingent there since 1953. And of course it was they who brought democracy to Korea.
The Koreans' democracy turned out to be quite original. I once saw thousands of police officers dealing with a peaceful demonstration. Tear gas, batons, zip ties on your hands, a bag on your head. No one looked at the gender or age of the demonstrators. Nobody paid attention to the tears and blood. The demonstrators were warned by megaphone, but this did not stop the crowd. Everything was decided quite quickly and firmly. Immobilized and screaming demonstrators were thrown onto buses and taken away in an unknown direction. Those who remained were caught until nightfall. By the way, Korean youth have a cult of Americanisms. It is enough to tell the company that you are from the states and you will not be left without the attention of girls, and guys will be interested in how much you earn and how you spend your time. 
I managed to take a dozen photos and several videos and miraculously saved the phone until the officer came to pick it up.
“The President’s Curse” or “The Curse of the Blue House”, this is an interesting term that exists in Korea. The fact is that not a single president has passed his way calmly and with dignity. Presidents were killed, overthrown, impeached, imprisoned for bribes, their children, wives, etc. were imprisoned. Every president has a trail of scandals and political crimes. In this regard, such a term was born. I recommend reading on the Internet for more details. 
This is the throne the last emperor of Korea had.
Hierarchy is everywhere and in everything. In the family, at work, in the company of friends, etc. The hierarchy is rigid and unforgiving of mistakes. In this regard, immediately after meeting each other, everyone tries to find out the step on which their interlocutor stands. The easiest way to do this is with a business card. So business cards have become a Korean cult.
A family person is slightly higher than a bachelor who graduated from a suburban university, lower than a person who graduated from a metropolitan university, etc., the hierarchy by gender and seniority is also very noticeable. By the way, misunderstanding and non-compliance with hierarchy is the main reason why foreigners are not liked. And if a tourist can be forgiven for this, a foreign employee or student most likely will not be forgiven.
Well complete Suneun! The most important day in the life of any Korean comes in November, after graduation. Day of the Unified State Exam (Sooneun, Scholastic Ability Test, 수능). The whole country turns into a ball of nerves for a day. And for 35 minutes complete silence is declared; it is during these minutes that take-offs, landings and even descents of aircraft are prohibited, except in emergency cases. Thousands of police officers and volunteers are on duty in cities to help people get to the exam center on time. And many businesses and even stock exchanges are staggering their opening hours by an hour to avoid preventing test takers from getting to the exam center. On average, more than 500,000 Korean teenagers take the exam each year, and the exam lasts 6 hours and 2 minutes. All the newspapers and news are busy discussing assignments from Suneung, all the temples are filled with people praying for their children, and in the offices there are radios that broadcast live the next assignment assigned to high school students. Job leaks are controlled quite interestingly. People involved in preparing the exam are isolated from the outside world until the envelopes are opened on “day X”; even the cleaning lady will not be allowed out of the exam center. And in case of emergency to leave the isolated zone, a special guard is sent with the person. By the way, this exam is considered the toughest in the world. One exam includes all subjects (the examinee must choose what he will do), and based on the results of the exam, you can enter any university in the country. The intensity of passions on this day is very difficult to imagine. Believe me, this is more interesting than cherry blossoms, and on a larger scale. 
No matter how the world changes, the most important thing in the life of every Korean is study and work, and only then family and everything else.
Soju, or how to drink too much Korean. Alcohol in Korea is loved at the national level and they prove this love in all available ways (One of the most drinking nations in the world, according to most world rankings, although sometimes for some reason they forget about Korea). The country's main drink is Soju, or Korean refined rice liquor. It comes in classic, banana, mint, strawberry and a hundred and fifty other chemical flavors that you can imagine. The strength of the drink varies from year to year, depending on local legislation and the place of production. Either it is 45%, or even 19% (by the way, after the soju level was reduced to 19%, a demographic “boom” began in the country, according to the alcohol manufacturer). Soju is drunk in bars, at home, at train stations, etc. And if you’re embarrassed to drink from your throat or don’t have a glass with you, you can always buy a cardboard bag with a straw and happily get drunk on the go. The attitude of people and the state towards alcohol is very specific. It is not customary to talk about the dangers of alcohol, and it is almost impossible for a Korean to relax without soju. Sometimes the state introduces original bans, such as a ban on alcohol advertising by local pop stars (remember the hierarchical system) or a ban on alcohol advertising from 19.00 to 22.00, but all these attempts are very sluggish and are associated more with external pressure than with a real desire to ban drinking. Getting drunk is also quite original. They mix everything in a row, soju with beer, then a little more soju, and then a little more beer, and now the average Korean has completely forgotten English and talks in his native language about the successes of his children, about how he survived suneun, etc. Having visited Korea for the first time, I was struck by an advertisement on TV, in which three cute Korean women, after a hard day at work, sat with sad faces and waited for the train, and then one took out soju, and the second took glasses and off we went... It was very strange to see that it was mostly girls who advertised alcohol. 
A friend of mine from Japan said this about Soju: “If you want a tasty drink, take Sake. And if you want to wake up in the morning with a clear head, take Soju.” 
This is, of course, not a private house, but a small restaurant, but such an artillery of empty bottles can be seen on Saturday morning in almost every home
The land of morning freshness or what does it smell like?! And this smells like the national treasure of Korea - Kimchi. Every autumn, housewives begin a competition in preparing fermented cabbage. Locals say that previously, employees of enterprises were paid bonuses during the pickle harvesting period, so that they could prepare as much as possible for the whole year. Now the tradition has been made a little easier by refrigerators and large enterprises selling hundreds of types of this wonderful snack, but in the villages the smell is still the same in the fall. By the way, Korea's collective culture of making kimchi is included in the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage of humanity. 
Kimchi was prepared in such clay pots. In cities they use modern dishes, but in villages such pots can still be seen today.
Let's go eat. It would seem that with such a rhythm of life, when you work 12 hours a day or study for 18, and in the remaining time you are drunk and cannot remember who you are, food culture should fade into the background. I poured boiling water into a glass of noodles and was satisfied. But everything turns out to be a little different; in Korea there is a cult of snacks. For any dish, even in a very inexpensive cafe, they will bring a dozen small bowls with different salads, pickled vegetables, mushrooms, kimchi, etc., and the complexity and freshness of some dishes is simply amazing. By the way, in Korea I tried the freshest sashimi, so fresh that it was fluttering right in the plate, and the octopus tentacles were actively trying to escape from my plate, and it was all very tasty. If you go to Seoul, you should definitely go to the fish market, the variety is amazing, and in the back rows you will be greeted by the smells of fermented shrimp, fish sauce and other fragrant delicacies, and on the second floor they will easily prepare everything you just bought. Only lazy people haven’t written about food in Korea, so I won’t dwell on it in detail. If you go to Korea, be sure to try street food, seafood at the fish market, soups in small cafes (by the way, most restaurants with the most delicious dishes are designed for visits by large groups, they bring you a pot right away, so take your friends and go), try not to try the dishes with bloody shellfish (there is a chance of catching hepatitis), and everything else is just super. 
I couldn’t resist posting more photos from the fish market. 
The abundance of delicacies makes your eyes wide open. 
Dedicated to all shrimp lovers. What a pity that there is no measuring stick next to the shrimp. 
Fermented goodies. I’ll wait until they start attaching imitation smells to the photo and I’ll go and take a photo again so everyone can “enjoy” it.
Oh, what a cute dog. Korea is famous for its ability to combine absolutely incompatible things. On the same metro line, literally 6 stations from each other, there are two completely opposite establishments. A dog market where specially bred dogs are slaughtered with sticks, butchered and they give you a ready-made meat kit. And a cafe where Koreans, who cannot afford to keep a dog due to small space and lack of time, happily spend time squeezing and feeding these animals. Dog meat is eaten mainly by elderly people or families with Mongolian roots, and young people go to cafes to cuddle dogs. While I was writing this text, I decided to check with a friend from Seoul whether he had eaten dog. So it turns out that at the moment all dog slaughterhouses in Seoul have been closed and now dog meat can only be ordered in “special” restaurants.
Coffee, just coffee. I was extremely surprised when at several meetings I was offered coffee rather than tea. It turns out that coffee, with a slight amendment, can be called a national drink. It has been drunk and loved in Korea for several hundred years. And as my friends admitted, what attracts them most to coffee is not the drink itself, but the lifestyle and atmosphere that this drink brings. 
It was in Korea that I first saw oval straws for a coffee lid
We drank, ate, and we can get treatment. Medicine in Korea is conventionally divided into three types: classical, folk and plastic; there is also spiritual medicine, but in this part of the world less attention is paid to it. All three are at an incredibly high level. The level of classical medicine is determined by good doctors, our own developments, advanced equipment and, of course, the desire to develop medical tourism. With folk medicine, everything is more complicated; absolutely all Koreans are ready to take “bat eyes”, “pieces of ancient dragon ass”, dried frogs, etc. together with classical drugs. Locals say that this is how their ancestors were treated, this is how their parents treated them, and this is how they will treat their children (hierarchy and traditions again). Due to such popularity, many traditional medicine shops are equipped like chemical laboratories, there are autoclaves, crushers, distillation cubes (or not laboratories, but home-based moonshine production enterprises). In a small shop, for a reasonable fee, they will give you a recipe for any occasion. And large enterprises have long been producing the most popular folk recipes in an easy-to-use form. When I got a little wet and cold, I just ran into such a shop. While we were talking with the hostess about what I should take for a headache, her assistant prepared a warming decoction for me (simply stirring the powder from a factory-made bag). You can write a separate article about plastic surgery in Korea, but I’ll give you the funniest facts. The most popular procedure is eye enlargement (anime immediately comes to mind). A certificate for plastic surgery is usually given as a gift on different dates. In a family, it is considered quite normal if a husband gives his wife a certificate for breast or eye enlargement, and no one is offended (can you imagine such a gift in our family realities?), and sometimes they give it to children (“hello daughter, you’re so scary, you look like me, go for plastic surgery?!”, it probably looks something like this). The popularity of plastic surgery has reached such a level that entire streets of specialized clinics have appeared. The most popular role models are K-POP stars (this is a local musical direction). 
Foyer of the metro station closest to the traditional medicine market. Even the station itself speaks of how seriously they take this here. 
The equipment of the potion shop allows you to distill “vampire saliva”, boil “virgin dandruff”, etc. 
Just dried frogs
Twenty-first century in Korea. Korea has unique chemical and technological production, advanced mechanical engineering, some of the best shipyards in the world, owned by Samsung Group, Hyundai and Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering, etc. Koreans are proud of the achievements of their industry, but in most homes, on the shelf next to the ultra-modern dishwashing detergent, it says that it can wash children’s dishes and fruits (I have never met a person who would wash fruits with detergent, although probably such yes), it costs regular baking soda, which is used to clean baby food bottles. And so it is in everything.
Love and ladies. I thought about not writing about it, but as practice shows, exactly 70% of guys are always interested in what’s going on and how they get acquainted. And here it is: Debauchery and modesty in one bottle, but the path to debauchery is very thorny and complicated. The ideal of any girl would be the star of some soap opera or K-POP group, or, in extreme cases, a young American with gorgeous teeth and gel on his hair, but they understand that there is not enough for everyone, so they are ready to consider all the proposed options. Most unmarried girls live in their parents' house, and their dates are organized by acquaintances, matchmakers, parents or colleagues; they even invented a special word for this (Sogetkhin). It is very difficult to invite an unfamiliar girl on a date, in 95% of cases you will receive a cultural refusal, it is advisable that you are connected by some social groups (classmates, work in the same field, mutual acquaintances), and if she nevertheless agrees, it is not a fact that the date is not it will be similar to a job interview (in Korea, dating is often used to acquire the necessary contacts). But if you succeed, the girl will not mind if you pay for her in a restaurant (if you liked the girl), and on subsequent dates she will be glad to be given sweets or flowers and other courtship familiar to us from childhood. You should be very careful about your clothes, appearance and planning a date; in Korea this is one of the keys to success. Any meeting is preceded by a multi-volume correspondence. And subsequently, 100-500 messages with cute bullshit, “what did you have for breakfast today,” are a common thing for Koreans. The girl will be pleased if, before the date, you discuss with her the restaurant she wants to go to and how she wants to spend her time. For the first date, it is advisable to choose a restaurant near her home, this is considered respectful (and there is a chance that if everything goes well, and it will be difficult to call a taxi, and she has no one at home, well, you get the idea...). The chance that after the first date a girl will go to you is quite low (or maybe it was just my Korean friends who reassured me so much). If the get-together at the restaurant went well, an invitation to go for a walk to a coffee shop will be considered a cultural continuation (and if a girl likes you, you shouldn’t resist, if she pays for the coffee herself, that’s how it’s done) It’s advisable to end the date before 23.00 and, if everything goes well, then you can try your luck and invite a girl to your place to watch a movie and eat snacks, the girl will understand everything correctly, but you should still prepare snacks and a movie, just in case. And most importantly, you shouldn’t be upset if after the first night they stopped communicating with you as before, it’s just possible that the girl was interested in you just for once. And now pay attention, little subtleties, if you managed to bring the relationship to the stage “it looks like we are dating, and I can already pronounce your name without an accent,” then the fun begins. Korean women love the process of courtship, joint photos, identical items in clothes or jewelry, they always celebrate all sorts of dates like 100 days together, etc., you need to be mentally prepared for this. Fortunately, there are a lot of shops in Korea that are ready to help you choose such offerings for the altar of relationships. I could write about a few more cunning moves in communicating with Korean girls, but I’ll leave that to your imagination. 
All of the above reflects everyday life and mentality. But the most amazing thing that strikes me in Korea, on every visit, is the ability to combine history, culture, traditions and the “soul of the people” with the modern world. In no other country in the world have I seen such an organic interweaving of ancient temples and high-rise business centers. Korean parks are perfectly integrated into the landscape, just like Cheonggyecheon Park, located along the riverbed in the center of Seoul. Korea, and Seoul in particular, is a must-visit destination for any person who wants to enrich their inner world without giving up modern society. There are many more amazing and unusual things in Korea (Public baths where people spend their days and nights. Specific clubs and discos. Natural parks. Unique villages. Engineering), but I don’t want to overload the article. This is such a mysterious country for me, South Korea. People who permanently live in this beautiful country may not agree with my conclusions from this article, but that’s their personal opinion. Unfortunately, I haven’t been to Korea for three years and many of the facts might be outdated. Photos used are mine, which happened to be at hand. If you like the post, then in my free time I will write about several more countries that have sunk into my soul and which I managed to study quite well.
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