South Korea: Seoul, Busan and Jeju Island

I landed at Incheon a little after dawn, and the first thing Korea did was reorganize my idea of speed. The airport train glides into Seoul almost silently, and in the carriage everyone is already living three lives at once on their screens. By the time I climbed up into the morning light, my phone had been quietly online for an hour without me lifting a finger. That sounds like a small thing. It set the tone for the whole trip: a country that hums.

I came for the cliché I had heard a hundred times — tradition and hypermodernity sharing the same subway car — and I left convinced the cliché undersells it. You do not toggle between old and new here. You stand inside both at once, often at the same intersection, often in the same breath.

Seoul, where the palace and the skyline share a wall

My first morning belonged to Gyeongbokgung. The great palace opens onto a vast stone courtyard, and behind its curved tiled roofs rises Bugaksan, the mountain that has guarded this city for six centuries. I timed it for the changing of the guard — the drums, the slow choreography, the costumes in deep blue and red — and then I simply stood there as office towers caught the light just beyond the gate. Visitors in rented hanbok drifted past, phones held high, and nobody seemed to find the collision strange. It is just Tuesday in Seoul.

From there I wandered uphill into Bukchon, the hanok village where narrow lanes of tiled wooden houses fold over a slope between two palaces. Then down into Myeongdong, all neon and skincare and street-food steam, and later across the river to Hongdae, where the buskers and the students keep the night awake. I finished, of course, at the top of Namsan, watching the N Seoul Tower glow while the whole valley of lights breathed below me.

« You do not choose between the palace and the skyline here — you stand inside both at once. »

Korea is one of the most connected places on Earth, and you feel it the moment you arrive: real signal in the deepest subway tunnels, free wi-fi in cafés and stations, almost nowhere left to drop a call. So I will be honest — data is genuinely not a problem in this country. What my eSIM gave me was simpler and more useful than salvation: I was operational the second I stepped off the plane at Incheon, with no kiosk queue and no fumbling for a physical SIM. From there it just quietly powered the Seoul metro maps, the navigation between palaces, and the camera I held over every untranslatable menu.

Busan and Jeju, the coast and the volcano

The KTX dropped me in Busan in barely over two hours, and the city felt looser at once, salt in the air. I climbed up to Gamcheon, the culture village that spills down the hillside in tiers of painted houses — pastel blues, pinks and yellows stacked like a box of sweets, alleys threaded with murals and little galleries. I lost an afternoon to it happily. Down at sea level, Jagalchi fish market roared with vendors and tanks and the smell of the morning catch, and Haeundae's long beach gave me my first real pause of the trip.

Jeju was the gentler chapter. The island is volcanic to its core — black basalt walls around the fields, lava tubes listed by UNESCO winding underground, and Hallasan, the dormant volcano, standing at the center of everything. Along the coast I watched for the haenyeo, the women free-divers who have harvested the sea by breath alone for generations. I did not summit Hallasan, and I never made it to Gyeongju's royal tumuli or Bulguksa temple on this trip — Korea is generous enough to keep some things in reserve for the next one.

The table, the bath, and a quiet border

Between the sights, the country fed me well. A Korean barbecue with friends-of-friends turned into hours of grilling and laughing, kimchi and a dozen little side dishes refilled without asking. I steamed myself pink in a jjimjilbang, the communal bathhouse where the whole city seems to come to slow down. And yes, I gave in to a theme café — there is one for cats, one for sheep, one shaped like a cartoon, and resistance is futile.

I also spent a sober half-day at the DMZ, the demilitarized zone along the line that has divided the Korean peninsula since 1953. It is a strange, still place — observation decks, fences, a quiet you do not expect — and it asks for respect rather than commentary. Standing there, with Seoul's neon only an hour behind me, the contrast did the talking on its own.

What I take away

South Korea is the rare place where the future and the past do not argue. A palace roof and a glass tower, a bowl of kimchi and a robot café, a silent border and a city that never dims — they all live in the same subway map. I arrived expecting a contrast and left understanding it as a conversation. Bring your appetite, your walking shoes, and a phone that is already awake.

— Léa, still smelling faintly of grilled garlic and sea salt.