Dec 7, 2025 Dec 6, 2025 2025-12-07

If you read my blog on a regular basis, you know that during the last couple of years I’ve been spending a lot of time in Asia. Among all the countries I’ve been in here, South Korea holds a special place. To the extent that I actually learned Korean myself and spent in total more than 6 months there. Here are 7 random facts about South Korea discovered while actually living here.

1. The Jeonse System: A Unique Real Estate Approach

The entire real estate market in South Korea operates on a distinctive type of loan system called jeonse (전세), which relies on the tenant providing a massive advance deposit to the landlord. This isn’t just some modern financial innovation—it’s one of the oldest processes in South Korea, with roots stretching back hundreds of years into Korean history.

Here’s how it works: instead of paying monthly rent, a tenant provides the landlord with a lump sum deposit that can amount to 50-80% of the property’s actual value. The landlord then invests this money during the lease period (typically two years), and at the end of the contract, returns the entire deposit to the tenant. No monthly rent. No interest paid to the tenant. Just the deposit returned in full.

This system emerged from Korea’s agricultural past, where trust and long-term relationships formed the foundation of economic transactions. In a country where banking systems were underdeveloped for centuries, jeonse provided both security for property owners and affordability for tenants who could save money over time rather than hemorrhaging it through monthly rent payments.

The practice has survived modernization, economic crises, and the digital age—a proof of how deeply embedded certain cultural and economic patterns can become in a society’s fabric.

2. Kimchi Is More Than Food, It’s Family Initiation

Kimchi is the most frequent ingredient in Korean cuisine, appearing at virtually every meal as a staple food. But it’s far more than just fermented vegetables—it’s a cultural cornerstone and a rite of passage.

When someone joins a new family in Korea, particularly through marriage, one of the traditional trials they must endure is learning how to make kimchi according to that family’s specific recipe. Each family has its own variation, passed down through generations, with subtle differences in spice levels, fermentation time, and ingredient ratios that carry the weight of lineage and identity.

The annual kimjang—the communal kimchi-making ceremony before winter—is so culturally significant that UNESCO added it to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. It’s not just about preserving cabbage; it’s about preserving community bonds, family traditions, and cultural continuity in a rapidly modernizing world.

3. The Study Room Buildings: 24-Hour Academic Monasteries

Throughout South Korea, especially in big cities like Seoul or Busan, you’ll find entire buildings dedicated entirely to study rooms—spaces containing nothing but a few chairs, a table, and perhaps a small fridge. Each room has a locker with a number pad and access code, creating a personal study room on demand that students rent by the hour or day.

These dokseosil (독서실) or reading rooms are just one of the symptoms of the intense dedication to education that permeates Korean society. Students don’t just visit for a few hours—some spend entire nights there, studying until dawn, then heading directly to university for morning classes without returning home.

The rooms are almost ascetic—deliberately stripped of distraction, designed for one purpose only: focused concentration. There’s something both admirable and haunting about buildings filled with young people, each locked in their individual cells of voluntary confinement, sacrificing sleep and social life at the altar of academic achievement. As part of one of the hackathons I participated in Seoul (yes, I did that too) I also had the experience: we locked our team in such a room during the night, with the only goal of finishing our hackathon idea implementation. It was one of the most interesting experiences of my life.

4. Public Drunkenness as Social Badge of Honor

In South Korea, drinking is not just socially accepted—it’s practically a competitive sport. Unlike Western societies where stumbling drunk through public spaces earns you judgmental stares and social ostracism, Korea treats public intoxication with remarkable tolerance. Even admiration.

Fall asleep on the subway after a night of soju? No one blinks. Stumble out of a pojangmacha (포장마차) – street food tent – barely able to walk? You’re not seen as a problem—you’re seen as someone who gave their all to the evening’s social obligations.

There’s an almost warrior-like respect for those who drink themselves into oblivion. The person passed out on the sidewalk isn’t viewed as an outcast but rather as a mighty warrior who fought incredibly powerful demons in the form of endless rounds of anju (안주) – drinking snacks – and geonbae (건배) – cheers. They didn’t back down. They didn’t quit early. They honored their companions by drinking until they physically couldn’t anymore.

This cultural approach to alcohol seems to emerge from the deeply embedded Confucian workplace hierarchy, where refusing a drink from a superior is essentially unthinkable, and the evening drinking session—hoesik (회식)—is where real bonding and business happens. The hangover the next morning? That’s just evidence of loyalty and dedication.

5. Karaoke Rooms: The Psychological Pressure Release Valve

Karaoke in Korea isn’t the public performance anxiety-fest it often is in the West. It’s a psychological necessity—a social valve that helps an entire nation maintain its collective mental well-being.

Throughout Korean cities, you’ll find entire buildings composed of isolated noraebang (노래방, literally “song room”) chambers. These aren’t open stages where you perform for strangers; they’re private spaces where you can rent a room by the hour, close the door, and sing your lungs out without any audience at all if that’s what you need.

You can go completely alone—no friends, no public, no judgment—just you, a microphone, a screen with lyrics, and whatever emotional release you need to achieve. Belt out power ballads. Scream through rock anthems. Whisper sad love songs. No one can hear you. No one is watching. It’s pure cathartic release.

In a society with strong social hierarchies, grueling work hours, and cultural pressure to maintain chemyeon (체면) – face or dignity – in public, these private karaoke rooms serve as essential decompression chambers. They’re where the mask comes off, where you don’t have to be the dutiful employee or the respectful junior or the capable adult—you can just be someone releasing steam by singing out loud, alone, in a soundproofed box that asks nothing of you except your presence.

6. Plastic Surgery: The National Sport of Good Looking

In South Korea, plastic surgery isn’t whispered about or hidden—it’s a national sport, discussed as casually as someone might talk about getting a haircut or joining a gym. It’s so normalized that kids receive plastic surgery as graduation gifts, birthday presents, or rewards for finishing high school.

The most common procedure? Double eyelid surgery. Most Asians naturally have monolids (single eyelids), but in Korea, having double eyelids has become a sign of beauty, modernity, even emancipation. Some estimates suggest that nearly half of South Korean population have had this procedure done—a staggering statistic that speaks to how deeply beauty standards have penetrated the culture.

Walk through any Korean neighborhood, particularly in areas like Gangnam in Seoul, and you’ll regularly see women traveling around with bandages covering their faces—post-surgery recovery worn as openly as a sports injury. There’s no shame in it. No attempt to hide it. The bandages are almost a badge of commitment to self-improvement, visible evidence of investment in one’s appearance.

This isn’t vanity in the Western sense—it’s economic pragmatism in a hyper-competitive society where appearance can genuinely affect job prospects, marriage opportunities, and social mobility. In a country where your photo is routinely required on job applications and first impressions carry enormous weight, plastic surgery is often viewed not as frivolous indulgence but as strategic career investment—a way to level the playing field in a society that openly judges books by their covers.

7. Hangul: The Alphabet Designed for Democracy

The Korean alphabet, Hangul (??), was invented in the 15th century by King Sejong the Great—and it represents one of history’s most intentional acts of linguistic democratization. Before Hangul, Korea relied entirely on Chinese characters for written communication, which meant literacy was essentially restricted to the educated elite who could afford years of study to master thousands of complex ideograms.

King Sejong recognized this as a barrier to social progress and deliberately created an alphabet system so logical and intuitive that, as the story goes, “a wise man can acquaint himself with them before the morning is over; even a stupid man can learn them in the space of ten days.”

Hangul is built on visual logic—the shapes of the letters actually represent the physical position of the tongue, lips, and throat when making those sounds. For example:

• ㄱ (g/k sound) – the letter’s shape mimics the back of the tongue touching the soft palate
• ㄴ (n sound) – represents the tongue touching the roof of the mouth
• ㅁ (m sound) – shows the closed mouth position
• ㅏ (ah sound) – the vertical line represents the upright human body, with the horizontal mark indicating where sound originates

You combine these into blocks to form syllables. The word “Hangul” itself (한글) is written with two syllable blocks: 한 (han) and 글 (geul).

This systematization had a big impact on Korean society, by eliminating their linguistic reliance on Chinese characters. It wasn’t just about reading and writing—it was about intellectual independence, cultural identity, and giving common people access to knowledge that had been gatekept by an aristocratic class for centuries. King Sejong didn’t just create an alphabet; he engineered a tool for social mobility.

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There are many other things that could be mentioned here, from the amazing street food you’ll find in Myeongdong-ro, the pharmacy level cleanliness of the subway (which has its platform completely isolated by plexiglass panels, so no one can jump on the rails), up to the incredible Haeinsa temple in the South – to mention just some of the things I experienced directly.

So, if you ever have the chance to visit these places, just go for it. Thank me later.