Seoul is a huge city. That fact cannot be understated. It’s different than any other city I’ve ever been in. There are no houses, no multi-families. There aren’t any townhouses or adorable little apartments overlooking the river. Seoul is a full of apartment complexes that are astonishing in their size. They house enough people to fill a small American town. The complexes are full of 20-story buildings; over a dozen of them. In terms of efficient housing, it’s hard to think of a better way of packing people together in such a small space. In addition to this, Seoul doesn’t look like the average American city in any way. The downtown is not full of astonishingly large buildings. Even if it was, one would be unable to tell, as the numerous apartment villages block the view. Instead of the “traditional” setup with a size taper proportional to the distance from the city center Seoul is perpetually 20 stories tall. The Seoul metropolitan area is the second largest in the world. Put simply, there are a shitload of people here.
The most obvious thing about these people is that they’re all Asian. This may be an obvious statement, but it is shocking how homogeneous the Korean population is. This is made abundantly clear to any White person wandering around Seoul. While walking around the historic National Palace my Korean friend informed me that one of the little girls visiting the site yelled out “foreigner” in an excited voice as I walked by. It was driven home when walking in the traditional Korean shopping district he pointed out how many White people there were walking around. Including me, we totaled 3.
This is not to say that people treat you poorly for being White. Hell, the average Seoul citizen might see upwards of 2 White people a day. It’s more like you’re an interesting oddity. And to be fair, I understand. By the second day there I would become notably excited whenever I saw another White person. It’s almost like the games you play as a child in the back of a car on a long road trip, the difference here being that instead of looking for a cow pasture or Michigan license plate you’re looking for somebody without black hair, or who might actually get a sunburn. And if you were playing White people jeopardy, seeing a Black person is like picking the daily double.
Despite all my fun being the final space in “weird things to see in Seoul bingo” it was about time for me to leave for Daejeon to start school. One final thing I needed to acquire was a few passport photos for the forms I would need to fill out when I arrived. To do this, my friend took me to a photography studio near his house. One thing you notice in every house in Korea are the large framed family photos. There is the standard full family picture as well as a picture of the adult children taken around the start of college. In addition, there may be pictures of every possible combination of two family members. For fun, they might even throw in a picture of the family pet. The national love of portraits means that there are cheap photography studios on nearly every corner. The one my friend took me to seemed fairly straightforward. My friend explained that I needed a few passport photos. The man told me to sit down. He then barked orders at me in Korean while motioning for me to tilt my head to the left or right about 2 degrees. It was reminiscent of the elementary school photographers who would make you sit on a stool and turn your head until you were eventually looking over your shoulder while saying “Great. Just a bit more. Yeah. Just a smidge more. Just a bit. Good. Gooood. Just a bit more. Perrrrrfect!” 30 minutes later I held the pictures in my hand. They were about what anybody would expect from passport photos except for one aspect. They had been photoshopped. I have to admit that while light photoshopping on a portrait may make sense, the reason behind photoshopping passport photos to improve somebody’s appearance escapes me. In addition, this wasn’t a minor touchup. I ended up looking like an overly airbrushed magazine cover model. It was just like one of the examples that you see on the internet where the person has lost a leg or has an arm sticking out at entirely the wrong angle. This worried me. I was concerned that perhaps I’d be apprehended at the airport, documents in hand, with somebody shouting at me that the picture presented clearly wasn’t of me. I pondered this point for a while. In the end though, I’m pretty sure it won’t matter, because as everybody knows, White people all look alike.
