Travel diaries are less about the places we visit than the visitation of these places on our souls. Scottish philosopher Dr Fraser Logan visits South Korea for some much needed “Seoul searching”.

Late evening in ‘Seoul Garage’ bar—two guys absolutely destroying it on the sax. I ordered ice cream. I think it cost only a few pounds. My first impressions of Korea… A young city, wild at night, remarkably new looking. Everything – the cars, the clothes, the culture – is fresh out the box.

This place was packed a few minutes ago. Now I’m alone. I have no idea what to do with myself, but it seems I could walk down the street (종로14길) and something would find me. It’s almost midnight on a Thursday. Don’t tell the locals: clearly they think it’s Friday. This place may be a tourist trap, but who cares? Everywhere is teeming with energy and flashing lights.

Walking the Streets of Myeong-Dong

Cuteness is everywhere. Cute girls, cute font, cute signs, cute bears. Even the men are cute. This city feels safe, and ecstatically fun. I wonder where I should go to meet people. Most places seem to revolve around alcohol, even more than back in the UK, and I don’t drink.

A few Koreans tried to talk to me already, and a few waved at me from a distance. Not sure why. Perhaps they were keen to practice their English. I think I could make friends in this city, but I’m not yet sure what sort of friends. My Korean friends back in the UK are academics: they are reflective, considered, mindful. I am surrounded now by outgoing Koreans. Is that typical of Seoul? Is it typical of this area, Myeong-dong? Is it typical of Korea? I have no idea. I know so little about Korea other than the facts that appear on Google: nothing of its soul. Who are these people? What do they want in life? Do they want the same as everyone else?

Jump from insight to insight. Pin thoughts to the page, as collectors do to butterflies. Form unintended sentences—a kaleidoscope of unintended thoughts. That’s how this works. We turn up with instruments but do not control the catch. What is Seoul’s energy bill, in all honesty? —This thought came to me, not I to it.

I am sat here, overwhelmed, in a positive sense, by light and sound only a minute before midnight. Now it is midnight. I want to wander the streets…

Midnight Writing in Seoul

The loudest people I have seen so far are foreigners. Koreans, even when agitated, seem not to lose their cool. In itself this is a sincerely attractive characteristic: it helps a people smoothen over conflict and maintains a certain bubble between groups that other, more expressive cultures, might pop. But it would be rash to mistake their quietness for introversion: Koreans, at least those in Seoul, seem quite outgoing.

Honestly, I have no idea. This is a people that defies stereotypes, as all people should. It forces the visitor to meet Koreans on their own terms, whatever those may be, and to treat each human as a unique marvel.

I think I’ll go and walk around some more.

Late night writing, near midnight on the 23 August, 2024. I again am alone, writing without any clear purpose except to let Seoul speak through me. I have no notion or idea. I am here, not of my own accord, but as a passenger. This travel diary is less about the places I visit than the visitation of these places on my soul. Seoul, my soul: already the two are tethered.

In Korea, as always, I am something of an outsider. Wherever I go, no one speaks to me except the homeless. Occasionally someone eyes me, often in bewilderment, that I might sit and while away the evening hours with pen in hand. There is a force in me that counteracts the pull towards the nightclub. The night, for me, is pensive. Watching people pass by, proud of their weekday and daytime accomplishments, more awake now than in the morning, not yet faded with the setting sun: —these people wear their active eyes, ready to shop, ready to fall in love…

‘Okay, it’s just that you seemed depressed.’

I… Where am I? I see words: HBAFF, KKanbu Chicken, Momo, Bonappetit. It matters not where I am, but how. Do I care for anything? Yes: for the moment. I care for the waking moment, the sober experience, the chance encounter, the bittersweet surprise—as much in words, upon the page, as in the world, upon these streets in Seoul.

Shopping, late night shopping… From store to store they go. I wonder what Koreans think they need; what hole is being filled, and where? inside their hearts, their minds, their souls? —Yet they seem happy. Are they? Do Koreans drink and smoke this much from happiness or are they missing something?—genuine soul food? I cannot tell, but if another person walks past me and points in earnest to some overpriced merchandise…

Holy smokes. A teenage boy, no older than fifteen, approached me in that moment and asked if everything is alright. ‘Yes, I’m fine’, I said—a lie, of course. He replied, ‘Okay, it’s just that you seemed depressed.’ Now, of course, I am depressed, good sir, and helplessly so, but that’s beside the point. What do I project onto the world for you to reach such a conclusion? That I am alone on a bench at midnight on a Friday evening? Sure, it might be telling for some… That I am sat here writing, alone, at midnight on a Friday evening? Sure, it might seem a bit odd… That I am doing all of this at thirty, with ghastly lines etched on my brow? Well, but all of this is quite normal back where I am from, isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

Isn’t it normal to sit and write, alone, through the early hours? Is Korea such a conformist society that I am that much of an outsider, merely by sitting and writing at particular times and with particular aspects—a look more of sorrow than of anger? I am here for material. The night always provides. I write. A teenager is surprised; he is incorporated into my prose.

He spoke to me, at any rate. For this I am grateful, and I go to bed with one more interaction than I would otherwise have had. I’ll take this to the grave, hold it close, and think all the while that I am a little richer having travelled.

I’ll go home now, back to the hotel, grateful for these compassionate people who look out for others. Although they seem rather beset by consumerism, Koreans are dignified and exemplary in the stuff that matters. You can tell. They are good, not merely agreeable and courteous. They are good. I am safe here. Things are cute, protective, placating. I could do with some more grit and grime, a little punk, but it’s fine, we can love Seoul for what it is, or what it seems to be. —The arrogance of a Scot, two days into his trip to Korea, thinking he knows the essential character of a people of fifty million. Consider these sketches, attempts to join the dots and, if I dare, to colour in the blanks.

*****

Korea.

You’ll have a great time wherever you go. Just wander around. Dive in.

*****

Sorrows In Gangnam

Sorrows in Gangnam. I am nothing. I am no one here—nothing of purpose or consequence. Every travel diary is a confession of its author, and a species of involuntary and unconscious autobiography. My life has gone to shit; therefore Seoul is soulless. In Gangnam all I see are superfluous fashion brands: Loewe, Louis Vuitton, Prada, Dior, Gucci—all of them in a row, all of them as empty as the cosmos above. Poor French girl, the face of Louis Vuitton, the latest face, posing happily before she, too, is decomposed by worms.

I went for a massage today. The masseuse was elderly. Sixty or so, which by Korean standards means she looked about forty. This was a traditional massage, fully clothed and professional, with foot baths and rice tea.

A bench. Beside me, bicycles, strewn and bedraggled. Tomorrow they will be used and abused. “Seoul never sleeps”… —it does where I am. These girls are too pretty for me: I look away. These people are too rich for me: I look away. These streets, at this unhealthy hour, ask me one question, and one question only:

What the fuck am I doing with my life?

Re-Jeju-vination

Another day on Jeju. This time I did little. I learned some Korean. I am ready for something new, for change, for uncertainty. I am ready to step outside of my abode, to conquer myself, my fears, my qualms, to iron out my creases, make something of myself…

I spent an hour or so this evening in the pool, knees on the tiled floor, chin dipped in the water, almost submerged, inflating and rising with each inhale, watching the sky darken, listening to children playing as slender Korean mothers leaned into the outstretched arms of happy men, all of them settled down, all of them content. I meanwhile am drifting, simply drifting in the currents mustered up by overactive children. My own currents affect no one. In some ways I have ruined my life, pursuing fantasies. In other ways I have made a life amongst the ruins.

I am done with the UK: a resentful, bitter place, rife with incompetence. Or am I the resentful one?

To Korea we go—or someplace else. It matters not. I am going where the winds blow on my back. In the UK the chest is pummelled. In Korea I can afford to live, at least. The cost of living in the UK is beyond absurd. I would earn less in Korea, granted, and I’d work more hours, but at least I could afford food. It is, in effect, half the price of food in the UK. I would like to immerse myself entirely in a different culture. More time in Korea means more time outside myself, and when I return I’ll bring the outside in, cleansing myself as fresh air does to a stuffy home.

It is not the conformist’s lifestyle that we detest, but the lack of subtext. When they go to work, they go to work. When free spirits go to work, they consciously fight demons, or cultivate virtues, or avoid suicide, or gather “material”. I am quite ready to return to the UK to prepare for a way to leave the UK.

In case you were wondering what he’d been up to the past 2,000 years…

A long time without seeing a therapist.

Returning to Seoul

‘All that Jazz’, Itawon, Seoul. This place has one of those genuine jazz bar vibes, though it’s a shame everyone here is American. Where are the Koreans jazz afficionados? I ordered some overpriced mocktail, but it came with a plastic rose. I feel loved. Play me some jazz now. I am a broken human like the rest of them. Sadness overwhelms. Jazz makes me feel alive in some way, but I’m not sure I like the feeling. It is all too predictable. Everything seems predictable. When everything seems predictable, we are the ones who need to change. How do I change who I am? In truth, I know not. Perhaps I might encounter someone who changes me, someone with an alternative outlook, someone with spice and gumption. In effect, all I am doing with my life is taking delight in the unexpected combination of words. I like how “spice” and “gumption” sound alongside each other.

The band is tight, a little too tight: this feels rehearsed. Of course it is. The bassist is in time, the drummer is in time, the chap on guitar… I’m not yet sure what emotions he’ll bring. From his beard and attire he seems tidy, which is…a good thing—? I know nothing about jazz. They are playing something slow now—no, never mind, it’s a track, a prerecording. I’m quite deaf. It seems this is the first time the guitarist has been here. He is somewhat nervous. A few Koreans showed up, which is nice; I wish more would appear.

I am going through some things, that much is clear. What am I writing? Do we ever really write anything? The best writings write themselves. Writing yourself writes itself.

I would like to meet some people. I am, or can be, sociable. But in Seoul I am no one. The problem with jazz bars is that everyone in attendance inevitably falls prey to some timeworn stereotype. All the guitarists and pianists wear scally caps. I am the clichéd writer by the bar. No doubt the conversations are predictable, too. Americans probe a little too hard—for me, at least. Their accents, at times, are, well, a bit grating; they are, it could be said, somewhat direct and forceful with their questions and comments—though, of course, I’m quite a sensitive soul and we shouldn’t generalise. I just wish they would, as it were, mumble more, or stutter, or struggle to find words, you know? But they rarely do. Insecurity, I feel, would make them more, not less, complete. A tentative American is a unicorn: let them propagate the world and spread hesitancy wherever they go. I am far from Scotland now—the middle of nowhere, that’s for sure. Scotland is a distant dream, and I remember playing with Lego.

Four by Six, Wes Montgomery—the second piece I didn’t catch the name. Did they turn the AC up? My left arm is blue. What other fun words can I combine? Gargantuan irreconcilable prima donna. Jazz with words? I am out of my depths.

I just dribbled three peanuts on the floor. No one saw.

*****

Morning!

I’m now at… Café fabulous? Something like that. Why am I here?—it’s more of a restaurant. I’m outside at a table by myself. The waitress is pretty. Last day in Korea. I have had a fairly relaxing holiday, though also productive. I have a clearer sense of Korean culture, but still it is shrouded in mystery.

Health is wealth. The simple joys of sitting outside mid-afternoon on a Monday, enjoying the sunshine: for a Scot, this is a luxury. I could live here forever, had I a salary of some description. I long to work on days like these. I could go to the university, work, then hang out in a café with a friend and practice some Korean. M—— and Y——, my Korean friends, might be here by then. Through them I could make new friends—not materialistic friends, real friends. I live for real moments.

What keeps pretence at bay? Spontaneity.

Spontaneity keeps pretence at bay. There is pretence in spontaneity, to be sure: for we might absolve ourselves of responsibility, or try to, and act as though we were mere conduits of “something more”. We are conduits, but never mere conduits. We act upon all that acts upon us.

Don’t forget to smile—the world is a thousand times brighter if you do.