Korea: Gwangjang lights

It's been some time since I dedicated an actual post in and of itself to my time in South Korea, and after unearthing a treasure trove of photos I hadn't even gotten to processing yet, I dove in deep and found lots of material worthy of sharing on this here blog, so if you've been missing the Korea posts you're in luck. I seem to have a propensity towards taking few photos early in my time abroad, whether it was my move to Japan (where I also made a conscious decision to go without a cell phone for the first 6 months, which contributed to that lack of photos) or during the move to Korea... towards the end of my stays, though, the finality of it starts to seep in and I find myself growing more frenetic in my efforts to snap visual reminders of the experience for conservation, like the mad dash to check off the bucket-list when an impending sense of mortality settles in sometime around middle age. Memory is a tricky and fickle thing, so I always find it far preferable to try to capture things in a very literal photographic sense, trying to seal a singular moment in time in pixel form for eternal preservation. 

And I have to admit, there's something surreal about Seoul at night, especially looking back through the haze of nostalgia. Maybe it's all the glittering neon and LED lights fiercely defying the creeping darkness, or the billowing plumes of steam tumbling from the nearest damp place, whether it's a steaming pan of tteokbokkie at a street side food stand or a manhole cover concealing subterranean secrets. I hope these photos can convey a bit of that sense to you, the reader. Whether it's the perplexing button configuration on the elevator I rode, day in, day out, or the color-changing tunnels at Gwangjang market. It's all a bit sci-fi, isn't it? Or maybe that's just me, getting lost in the uncanny valley. Neon, after all, reminds me a bit of home, the bedazzled Las Vegas strip beaming away at night like an angler fish trying to lure in prey. Maybe Seoul has more in common with home than I thought...  

Until next time~

💜

XOXO,

NAU