There's Nowhere in Korea I Haven't Been

From childhood until now, there's almost nowhere in Korea I haven't been.

Because my father ran a construction business in the Gwangju and South Jeolla region, every corner of Gwangju and Jeonnam is familiar to me.

From Ttangkkeut at Haenam — land's end — to islands like Sinan and Wando, to the small inland towns and districts, I visited them all naturally.

We also traveled as a family in my father's car — to Busan and Gimhae, South and North Gyeongsang, Gangwon — many times over.

My father has worked tremendously hard his whole life. Hard labor that most people couldn't do. He works on construction sites himself, sweating, breathing dust and chemicals.

Even now, well past sixty, he still works as a plastering and waterproofing man, sweating through the day.

Work seems soaked into my father's body. Maybe it's the engine of his life.

He was always busy, without weekends. In every memory I have of my father, there is work. Running a specialized plastering-and-waterproofing business, his phone never rested.

And yet, busy as he was, he often took the family traveling around the country. We ate out often, too.

So for our family, getting in the car and going somewhere, eating in a new region, passing roads we'd never seen, and coming home again was not a special event but a natural part of the schedule.

Beyond Korea, I got a little taste of other countries early. In middle school we visited Kyushu, Japan; in high school, Hong Kong, Macau, and Shenzhen.

The Hong Kong–Macau–Shenzhen trip, especially, was the one my family took during the very hard stretch after I dropped out of high school.

In a painful season, walking foreign cities with my family, looking at unfamiliar scenery — that time clearly remains a scene of my life.

Jeju, too — counting childhood trips with family and later ones with friends, I've been about five times.

Personally, the Jeju of my elementary-school years (the 2000s) held better scenery and better memories.

Winter 2018, after failing my first re-take year, I went to Osaka with friends.

After starting university I kept moving. No longer following my parents — traveling with friends, on my own steam.

Through university I went on about twenty MT retreats, visiting Gangwon, Incheon, and many other places, stacking up memories.

And dating through my university years, I walked so much of Seoul that there's genuinely nowhere I haven't been. I know Seoul's neighborhoods better than my friends who were born here.

Now I live in Seoul. Honestly, I love it. Living here, working, meeting people, riding the subway from place to place — this life fits me. But I'm not only in Seoul.

In fact, at this very moment, I'm writing this from Busan with my friends.

I've never really thought of travel as a special hobby.

Going somewhere was simply familiar from childhood. Arriving in a strange region, eating a meal, walking its streets, seeing different scenery, and returning — all of it natural.

So when I look back through my memory, alongside home and school there remain so many highways and rest stops seen from a car window, first-time restaurants and the nights of unfamiliar cities, seas and islands, the landscapes of other regions.

Looking back, my father was not someone who taught me in words that the world is wide. He worked more than anyone, and still kept loading the family into the car and taking us everywhere. Riding in that car I saw so much of Korea, and the experience carried naturally through middle school and high school, university, and to this day.

Now I move on my own. I live in Seoul, come to Busan with friends, and in time I'll go to other cities.

Come to think of it, I've always lived this way. Not staying in one place imagining the world, but going myself, seeing, eating, spending time with people, and returning.

And at the start of it all, there was always my father's car.

Haha — by the way, the photo is hilarious.