Marc's Blog: southkorea2025 - Back in South Korea 9 Years Later, Trip Wrapup

I had been a full 9 years since I first and last visited South Korea in 2016, you can read my notes here. I do invite you to read those notes as my previous trip was longer than this one.

Now that it's out of the way, this trip allowed me to see how Korea had changed in 9 years, as well as do the Western part of the Korea tour (last time I only had time for the Eastern part).

You can go here for the list of posts for this trip

the new cars were quite cool

I had seen most of the relevant parts of Soul last time, so this time around it was a few extra things, including Lotte Tower and the brand new skywalk

That said, I found South Korea became more China-like with government surveillance, national ID system required to make any purchase online (I was unable to buy skywalk tickets)

Similarly, the government outlawed google maps navigation as well as any navigation app that isn't their own sponsored naver.

And naver is not close to being great, as well as obsolutely impossible to use or register for on a computer without speaking korean. Seriously WTAF? That felt so over-reaching and unnecessary

But while I don't like government overreach, I do have to say that while South Korea is technically still in a state of war, they had no annoying searches while entering buildings or museums, unlike let's say Turkey, which was quite annoying on that front, or even the UK which honestly is pretty annoying on that front too.

For the rest, compared to my previous report, I don't have a lot to add. I was super excited to have seen my first mudskippers in the wild during the western tour. Glad to have been back.

Otherwise, being there for EDC Korea was loads of fun! (clickme)