#116 Air pollution in South Korea cannot be escaped

Transcript

Alright, mask time today, a little Darth Vader style. Man, oh man, oh man. So last episode, I hopped on the subway for my first time in Busan and I went down to the beach and just explored around and had a great old time. What I've been doing mostly while I'm here is kind of one day on one day off. One day, you know, to go to a new part of town or to go try to hike up a mountain or whatever.

And then the next day just go to a coffee shop, just chill out. But I had so much fun going down to the water and taking the subway and exciting, you know, I've been kind of enjoying Busan already. And then to hop on the subway and go to a new part, I'm like, yeah, exciting, this is cool.

So I woke up the next day which was yesterday and I thought, you know, instead of a day on day off, that was kind of a half day anyway. I think I got another day on. I think let's fucking go somewhere, let's go explore. But then I pulled up my little air quality index app and shockingly the air index was well over a hundred. It's the worst it has been since I've been in Busan. So let me just tell you my brief history of pollution in South Korea. It started with quite a shock because I never knew about this. I never heard of it. And to be fair, as far as, you know, just watching YouTube vloggers and stuff, I mostly watch Japan stuff. But there is crossover, not just to go visit South Korea, but people that have moved to Korea and switched over to being Korea vloggers and then they'll move back to Japan or whatever. The amount of Korea stuff that I've absorbed is not nothing, you know, and I'm not talking just like locals who, you know, they're just living in total fucking denial and just walk around with no masks at all and just they're buying an early death. I mean, like, Westerners that I feel like should be mentioning this fucking shit, should be reporting on this fucking stuff and I have no fucking idea why they don't. I know people that have moved here who live here. Americans who moved to South Korea and never fucking brought this up one fucking time. It angers me. What the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you hiding this? Why is this not being brought up? This is important to know. Anyway, it was winter time and the pollution level was fucking crazy in Seoul. You can see my previous episodes for details, but it legitimately felt like being in an apocalypse movie. It's fucking scary and weird and depressing and demoralizing and again, just shocking to me that I walked into this not fucking ever having heard of it. That's not, that's not, that's not fucking okay. I didn't realize I was this mad until I started talking about it and it's like, yeah, I'm pissed off, man. This is bullshit. Not the situation. I mean, the situation is complicated and hard to reverse. It's this weird, just like, I don't know, maybe we'll just be nice. It's the polite thing to not bring it up. Fuck that. Fuck that.

Even now that I know and I'll look up stuff like people's pros and cons of living in South Korea, or I moved here 10 years ago and here's what I learned from living in South Korea for 10 years, and none of them fucking mentioned this. Fucking none of them. I found like one weird little random vlog where this person was like, yeah, you know, on a heavy pollution day, there's these botanical gardens. Or I think they even called it just a bad air day. You can go to the botanical gardens in Seoul if you want a sense of the outside. And that's like the one little reference. It's fucking weird as fuck.

And if you're a fucking westerner doing a pros and cons of living in South Korea, or I've lived here for 10 years video and you don't bring up the pollution, you are a disingenuous liar. You're a fucking liar. Fuck you. You can't just let people walk into this and not fucking tell them. You fucking assholes. Fuck you. Because this shit is insane. So anyway, I'm trying to piece together what the hell's going on on the ground while I'm there because I'm already booked for like, I don't know, is there for like a month and a half? Because again, I had no fucking idea. So I'm trying to piece together the situation. And a lot of people are saying, oh, it's just Seoul. It's just Seoul. It's bad like this. And it's only in the winter that it's bad like this. And I happen to be in Seoul in the winter. So I'm like, oh, well, maybe it's just the worst 5:00 ever luck. So I started doing my own experiments. For the first experiment was, okay, let's go to Chechan, which is 90 minutes away. It's only a little ways away, but it's not Seoul. Seoul is an industrial hyper city, you know? Like, I don't know anything about pollution. I've never experienced this type of shit in Canada. So I don't know how it works. I don't know the causes. I don't know, I mean, maybe it really is just in Seoul that this happens. Because you know, it appears to be a combination of weather patterns, dust from the goby desert, air pollution coming in from China, and local domestic pollution. All mixed together in a bad stew. Maybe it's just in Seoul.

So my first experiment was go just outside of Seoul. And it was a little better, but fire from great. You know, I checked the air quality index and it would be worse in Seoul, but it was pretty comparable, still definitely a problem in Chechan. So next experiment, Busan.

As far away from Seoul as you can get the other end of the country, by the ocean, I definitely got the sense from people that, oh, Busan's a lot better. And that's what I thought when I got here, but it was just, it was just lucky timing. That's all. It's just lucky timing that I got here when things were okay. Because then things would get a little dicey here in there. And it's like, well, it is still better than in Seoul. I'd still look at Seoul and Seoul would be over 100 in these dangerous zones. And Busan wasn't. So it's like, yeah, whatever. I won't keep bringing it up because it is better. It is what it is. But the scale, which again, I'd never even heard of this scale. I didn't know this was even a thing that existed. But it's 0 to 50 is little green, happy little face. It's like, hey, everything's okay. 50 to 100 is like orange. And the person's like, I don't love this. Above 100 is where it turns like dark orange. And that's where things are getting to be real bad. And then above 150, it turns red. And if it hits 200, the world is fucking ending. Above 150 is really fucking bad. And Seoul does get there.

So anyway, I was shocked to wake up the day after and think like, oh, I should go do a little more exploring in Busan. And it was way over 100, nearing 150. And then by the end of the day that day, it was over 150. And Seoul is not today. I mean, Seoul is not great. But it's not like Seoul is the worst and everything else is better. It's completely erratic and totally fucking weird and random. Maybe on average, Busan is better than Seoul. But it's still like, whoops, whoops, we're in a nightmare, nightmare time. And then it's weird because I still went outside briefly to go because that's what I'm doing today is just, just gonna walk across the citizens park to a coffee shop and just at least get one coffee and do some work and then go home. Because I like little cheap Airbnb rooms, but man, you go stir crazy if you stay in them all day. I just got to go outside for a fucking hour.

I got my mask on. I'm sure it's not the end of the world. But no extended exploring, certainly no hiking and shit going on. That's for fucking sure.

But it was weird when I first left the house because in Seoul, it was winter. So on top of the pollution, it was also the gray darkness of winter weather. This was weird because it was still sunny and bright out. So I went outside and I'm like, is it really that bad?

As you really, you got to check two different weather systems. You check the AQI and you check the normal weather to try to determine what the day is actually like. But then as I saw deeper into the distance, you know, once you get, because that happened in Seoul too. I just didn't realize right away how bad it was until you get a view of the horizon off into the distance and you realize like your field of vision. It's like an Nintendo 64 game where they had to put tons of fog everywhere or PlayStation 1. Silent Hill 1, you know, it's like we don't have the draw distance. We cannot show you what's happening in the deep background.

So we'll just fog it out. Same thing here, just the sunny version. You know, it's still nice, sorry, I guess, but differently creepy. I was like, oh jeez, whoa, that sucks.

And last night I had my first checking the air quality index dream. I actually dreamed about it.

And in my dream, it was the little man. It was just grayed out like zero. Like a thing that just doesn't exist around here. I don't think a zero day even exists. But it was like zero in a NA kind of way. Like the whole system was like, we just don't even need this anymore. There's no possibility of air pollution. That's what happened in my amazing dream. But I woke up, check the thing. And it's so eerie because the app I've got, you know, it starts with whatever the last amount was and then it updates. So it's kind of weird where I'll see a number and think like, oh shit, that's what it was yesterday. And then I realized I just got to wait a second and it changes.

And unfortunately did not go down. It went up. It's worse today. It was at like 170. And then when I left the house, it was up to like 184 or something totally fucking insane, totally insane. I really shouldn't even be outside today. But again, I'm just walking across the park. I'm almost at the other end of it. Go hit up the coffee shop. Fuck. But it's just like, dude, what the? So I don't know. I just again, I feel like someone needs to fucking mention this shit and this podcast is not usually useful or about anything important. I can at least be the person who brings this up. I can at least be the person who doesn't put my goddamn head in the sand pretend that this shit is not happening. If you've if you've talked at extended length about South Korea and never brought up the pollution problem, it's like it's extremely irresponsible. You can't just send people over here without knowing. You can't just not prepare people for what's going to happen when they get here. You're a fucking asshole if you do that. Fuck you.

So anyway, this was bad enough. I was looking it up and like found some news articles about it because yet it's just blanketing the whole country, this particular batch and then found people on Reddit talking about it. And it's standard internet discourse where it's so annoying, where it's just so many people coming from different angles. But all acting like, oh, I got the answer. I'm the authority. I know how it works. So it's either like, ah, who can we blame for this? So how suspicious that we're right next to China. And then other people were saying like, yeah, well, it's not China. It's it's Seoul. It's it's South Korea. It's domestic. And then they're trotting out all their weird evidence of like, oh, yeah, well, then what about North Korea numbers or what about days that things are bad and then aren't bad? What about this? What about that?

Where it seems pretty clear that it's a combination of factors. You know, you can't pin it all on domestic problems. You can't pin it all on China. You can't pin it all on the desert.

It's a whole big mash of shit happening together. And again, I'm not criticizing the place. I feel bad for the place. I'm looking at these mountains in the distance. I'm in this park with all these flowers around me. Beautiful park. Beautiful city. Beautiful mountains. Beautiful nature. And it's all just covered in this fucking gross haze. It's extremely unfortunate. It's depressing.

It's sad. You know, I do kind of feel like cities are people. Have I ever brought this up before? I feel like my relationship with cities is very much like with a person. You know, there's some people that you burn out on real fast and you just don't want to deal with anymore. And that's New York. And you know, there's people that just seem to have some new, endless font of interesting stuff going on in their lives. And that's Vancouver.

Busan and Seoul and Jeju on all of South Korea so far that I've, as I've been here. I mean, it seems obvious at this point that there's no escape. That's, I guess, the point. That's the thing that makes me feel bad. There's no escape. I'm going to Jeju Island pretty soon, but it appears that it's, you know, it's, I mean, it's not that far away. It's an hour flight.

It's not going to be that different. Where if South Korea was a person, it's like that person you know who's like got a incurable medical fucking ailment or something, you know? And you just don't know what to say. You don't know what to talk to them about. You don't want to just bring it up and you don't want to make them feel worse by just dumping your sympathy on them.

Where it's like, you know that feeling sorry for somebody isn't going to help, but you can't help but feel sorry for them because their situation is so bad, but you don't know what to do to help. That's how I feel about South Korea.

Anyway, I think maybe that's it too is. There's always that, like, maybe that's why I'm so worked 15:00 up today. There's always that little hope springs eternal. Ah, maybe it'll be different once I leave Seoul. Oh, I just didn't go far enough away. Then I got to Busan and just through happenstance and, you know, that it is statistically a bit better, but mostly it was just the luck of the draw that it just happened to have a nice run of pretty good weather. But then something like this happens and you realize like, no, there is no escape. There's nowhere you can go. This is the state of this whole country and this is just how it is going to be. Blah, anyway.

I have some other little dumb things on my mind, but they're much smaller and much dumber, so let's just save them. Save them for later. Save them for another day. Hopefully, I'll do a little fade out now and we can come back on a day. That's not like this, but I mean, who knows, man, who knows? They've got the little weekly forecast of the air quality index just like with the normal weather, but it's I'd say even less predictable than normal weather because it's never fucking right. It's never correct. It said things were going to pass by and they sure didn't.

So who knows, but anyway, things are bad all over. That's all. That's the report. That's, I just think it's important to bring that up.

All right, it's the next day. I'm back at the Citizens Park again. I didn't even make it to, well, like the first coffee shop I passed. My whole plane yesterday was just go to a coffee shop and head home. And it's like they had the fucking door open on the Super Insane Mega Pollution Day. It's like, are you having a laugh? Are you taking the piss mate? What? I was like, well, whatever. I'm not, that is insane and I'm not going to bother walking to, like I just just went home. I shouldn't have been outside anyway. And today's not that different. But yesterday really was nuts. It topped out at over 250, 250. It's like this purple image like that I've never seen, I've never seen it go beyond red. And the guy is wearing like a for real gas mask. He also looks like it looks like you bought a fucking role-playing game book about the game fallout and you're just reading through it. And it's like, hey, here's a, a gas mask you might want to buy for your time in the wasteland. I was a little curious, like what happens at 250? What's the next picture? But the 200s only have the one picture. It's all just terrible. There's no need for a specific delineation in there. So anyway, today it's down to 150. And people are saying within the next day or two, hopefully this will all pass. But yeah, I think again today I'll probably just walk across the park and just head home. Because again, I shouldn't be out here, just want to, just want to get a teeny little touch of exercise in my day. But yeah, this is apparently a different thing from the normal pollution. So I was seeing all this stuff about how the pollution is worse in the winter. But then as I was researching stuff yesterday, now I start seeing all this like, oh yeah, no, no. It's the spring that's the worst. Oh yeah, never go in the spring. The spring is when you get the super duper dust cloud blowing in from the desert. Everything is insane. And this is very evidently different than what was happening in Seoul. Seoul was a lot of ups and downs and they got pretty spiky and pretty bad. But like how it is now, 150 was like, I believe about as bad as it got.

It never got the two fucking 50. But apparently this does happen in the country in general and in Busan. In particular, every spring, they do have one of these big crazy spikes and this one is extra bad. Usually it's a day or two. But because of different cross winds and meteorological stuff that I don't understand, it's like four days it's been sitting here.

But it's like annoying too because it does feel a bit like the goalposts keep moving. I was like, okay, so winter is bad and I happen to get here right in January. Okay, just bad luck here during the bad time. But then it's like, no, no, spring, that's the real fucking bad time.

And like, I mean, I just won't be here that much longer by necessity. I'm running out of runway here. But I just like, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, right? Like, am I going to get to the summer and they're like, oh yeah, but no, no, the summer has this other fucking awful thing. And the fall, don't even get me started about the fall. Like, what are the 20:00 chances that everything is actually going to be better? It's like such a game of musical chairs. And even at the very least, it's six fucking months. It's half the year that's a problem. Oh yeah, the winter and the fucking spring. That's half the year, dickheads, that's half the fucking year. At some point, it's a little disingenuous to be making these claims at all that, like, oh, this time of year, that time of year. How about just all the fucking time? How about just everything's fucked? How about that? Just fucking be honest about it for God's sake. Okay, I did this yesterday. I'm not going to get all worked up again.

I'm really, I guess it's like, it's that extra, I think why I have to try to psychoanalyze myself.

My little, my childish response is because, you know, it's one thing to just step into a bad situation and I found it just kind of depressing and demoralizing when I got here. But this is like having, having something yanked away from you. You know, like when a bully holds your toy up above your head and is like, jump for it, you know, where I had it in my head that it was just because of the winter. If I just make it through the winter, things will be okay. And if I just make it to Busan, things will be okay. And then when I got here, that seemed to be true. Everything was so nice. I mean, you can hear it in those podcasts. They're called shit like Busan's amazing or Busan. Wow, like I was like, wow, okay, I made it through the darkness. I made it through the wilderness. Somehow I made it through and now I've found the place to go. This is where you can go in South Korea. This is where it's fine to hang out. This is where I can come in the future. This is the place that's 200 kilometers from Fukuoka. I can take a fucking ferry. Wonderful. Wonderful. This will be the thing. This will be the solution to visiting South Korea. And then to get dumped on harder than ever, worse than ever.

And it just, it's just like, fuck, like, is this whole, is visiting this whole country just a right off? Do I just need to take this off the itinerary?

Because it's just so completely erratic and random and insane. It's just insane. Like, I just, how could it be worse than Seoul? And then it's significantly worse. 250 on the AQI yesterday. What the fuck? And yeah, I mean, today it's 150, but but the remains, like, it's obviously still in the air. Like, again, I shouldn't be out here. I stopped in a store just because I needed to break a five. Because I just needed a couple of $1 bills for the dryer at my Airbnb. It takes little 1,000 one bills. So I just bought a little $3 Starbucks fucking drink. So I could pay with a five and get two ones back. It should be enough to do to dry laundry while I'm here. And then I took off my mask just to drink this thing, just to guzzle it down and the first inhalation without a mask. It was like, it was like the cinnamon challenge. It's like you're inhaling. You know, I could just feel the dust. I could feel that I was inhaling something that that my throat couldn't handle. Instantly, instantly, you know, it's not some subtle fucking problem. It's fucking man. It's so, it's so, it's so hard.

So, you know, I mean, that's my initial jerk response. It's like, maybe I just can't come here anymore. Like, what the fuck? But I think maybe it's like similar to the feelings ahead about jet-john. Just maybe this is on a larger scale. Where in the moment when I was getting a little stymied by jet-john and not able to figure out how to navigate around the city. And it was just kind of being a little frustrating. And I was thinking like, yeah, in my, I don't know if I ever will come back to jet-john. But then, you know, I let my mindset all for a day or two. And it's like, oh, I probably will though. It's actually not that bad. It's kind of a nice place.

That's kind of, I guess, how I'm feeling about this whole country is my jerk response. It's like, I just should just get the fuck out of here. I shouldn't even finish out this visa. And I should just explore more places, find other places to go. This is, this is fucked. But now that it's even just a day later. It's like, yeah, maybe not. Maybe that's a little excessive. I mean, there's so many cool things about South Korea. And I have found so many cool places. Right now, I'm walking like over. It's like a wooden walkway similar to the one down by the beach the other day. But there's 25:00 like a coy pond here. There's tons of coy fish swimming around. And on the other side, not an official member of the park, just a natural thing that lives here. Our turtles, just little turtles chilling out swimming around. It's fucking beautiful. It's amazing. Just don't look at the horizon. Just don't look at the deep distance. The horrible desert sands. I was going to say Lawrence of Arabia sands, but Lawrence of Arabia was clear as shit compared to this. Those were some beautiful desert days. However, I do think, you know, I'm going to go explore some more places and try to get more familiar with this part of the world. But I think it's just got to be less time spent in South Korea. I mean, I didn't expect it to be a six-month visa, and I've pretty much. I mean, I've been here quite a while now. But I don't know, because I guess I have read people's reports, too, of like, I don't know. I was there and everything was really cool. And that doesn't make sense. Like, or my friend Brad says he knew people he lived in Fukuoka. So he knew quite a few people that came to visit here, because it's so close. And they all had very good reports. And that does make sense, because you had the last two weeks, not bad. Little up and down, but not a big deal, you know, pretty damn nice. And then the hammer of the devil smashes you in the fucking face. It just comes out of nowhere. But you might have a two-week period that's really good. So I just think maybe spending too much time here is, you know, you're just increasing the odds that you're going to get a bad dice roll. Six months is an insanely long amount of time to visit somewhere. So I think maybe that's just the problem. Like, in the future, I'm sure I will be back to South Korea someday, but it'll have to just be like, you know, stop in Seoul. Go hike up Wisconsin. Say hi to the mountain dogs. Maybe swing by Jetsha and even. Go to the unmanned coffee shop, you know. Definitely swing by Busan. It's still undoubtedly my favorite place.

I really like it. But, you know, limited exposure. Anyway, I guess I don't want to just rehash everything I said yesterday. But I did, I don't know. It's always a sign, I guess, of if I am emotionally distraught when I actually go on the internet. And I don't just lurk around. I partake a little. I did go on Reddit a little and just the travel Korea Reddit. Just to feel it out. Like, has anyone else had this experience and many, many people were like, yeah, this is exactly what happened to me. I showed up. I checked my weather app. And that's when I learned. I learned once I was on the ground that I was in the middle of a fuck fest suck storm, a pollution gangbang.

And it's so much worse for other people that have like eczema or respiratory problems or allergies. Like, people will get rashes from this stuff. They'll get nose bleeds. Like, one guy was saying his nose was always stuffed up and he was up till six or seven in the morning every night, totally unable to sleep in like really bad situations. And then, of course, you get the occasional dickhead that's like, I've been in Korea for a year and I go running five times a week and I don't even know what you're talking about. And it's like, hey, good for you, buddy. Good for you. But you're not doing anyone any favors with this deliberate ignorance. You know, I mean, it makes sense. No one told me about the pollution and I didn't realize for some time till I noticed the effects, till he noticed my lungs burning. If some guy moves to Korea and no one tells him about the pollution, and he's not affected by this stuff, that makes total sense that you could go jogging five times a week and not know. But that doesn't mean you're not putting yourself at danger. It doesn't mean it's not happening. And I still have to feel like if you've been in Korea for a year and you didn't notice, you're not paying attention. It's visible. It's a visible phenomenon. You fucking dickhead.

Not extremely helpful. But yeah, many, many people have very similar experiences. I got surprisingly little pushback, you know, the internet's a land of arguing, but it's pretty hard to argue this. Some people did bring up. They were surprised. I wasn't aware of this type of thing because I mentioned as Canadian. Because just recently, as of this recording was only like a year ago, there were a ton of wildfires in Canada that ravaged the environment really bad for all of North America. Like the 13 most polluted cities were all Canadian for that one in only year because of 30:00 the fires. And it went down to America. I know New York got fucked really hard by it.

But to be honest, I'm a bit of a fucking koku lander. And I happened to be in a part of Canada that didn't get affected on the East Coast. It just passed us by. So I actually forgot that that happened. I didn't directly experience it. And as we've learned from this podcast, I only learned by directly experiencing things. So I didn't experience the effects of the forest fire myself. Maybe that would have taught me about AQI. I'd never heard of AQI. I didn't know anything about this. I just didn't know. And now I do know. And I know to check this in the future. And not just here, but even back home. Apparently the worst in Canada is like Toronto. And it's still not bad. It might be like 30. But I wasn't even aware of that. None of this was anything that I knew about. And now that I'm learning about it, then other people are saying like, oh yeah, you think souls bad come to this place. Come to that place. We'll show you what bad is. And it's making me realize like I need to be aware of this everywhere. You know, like I couldn't get defensive about it. All I could say was like, yeah, I guess I just didn't know what I didn't know. I didn't even know. Like because people were like, you know, you really should do your due diligence. It's on you to look this stuff up. And I was like, yeah, I know that now. But I didn't know what I didn't know. I didn't know to look it up. I didn't know what AQI was. I just had, I guess I knew that other countries had pollution problems to some degree. But I never experienced it myself. So I just, I just didn't know. And now I do. So to carry on from yesterday's rant, I do I do think it's very important to bring it up. It's definitely something that is not brought up enough. And that man, I got a wave of support on that one because yes, so many other people have that exact experience of not knowing what they're getting into before they come to this part of the world. As I figure out where to put my Starbucks can, my Starbucks bottle, a nice garbage song, nice garbage music.

But anyway, I get to also help out some people that are like, oh shit, like a lot of Canadians, like I'm also Canadian, you know what, she's so am I. And anyway, I'm coming here, I'm coming there, I'm coming at this time. So even just to just to give the little heads up, they're like, what should you do? It's just like that, you know, I don't want to sound like like it's the worst thing ever. It's just, just something to be aware of, you know, it's not going to ruin your trip or anything. Just make sure to check the AQI separately from the weather.

And I just told them about Daiso. I think you just go to Daiso, you can get these masks, the K-94 masks for fucking 50 cents a piece and you'll be fine. Just don't walk blindly into it. Just don't go hike up a mountain with no mask on a red danger day like I did. That's all, you know. I mean, yeah, again, I just, it's just, yeah, it's the severity of how unprepared I was and how you know, it's not a, oh, you can never go to Korea or it's not a, oh, we got to change the entire world somehow. It's just, you know, just got to let people know. That's all. Just don't let people walk into this situation completely unaware. That's all.

Okay, let's wrap up the least fun episode ever of this podcast, but again to tie into how I learned stuff by doing. I really, you know, I'm like, hey, here's a lesson that I learned. I learned about AQI by being in it. Maybe if I had read about it or heard about it, I wouldn't even quite get it. Maybe it wouldn't sink in. Maybe I needed to walk straight into it. But it is fun to just learn about stuff.

That I learned. Man, I'm in this little hedge maze in the Citizens Park. It's, you know, not huge. It's kind of, kind of small, but I did do this the other day, and I was surprised how much I got lost. But I realized today, as I wander through it, you can actually tell which way to go because the path is more overgrown on the wrong route. If there's too much grass on the path, that's not the way to get out. Sneaky. Again, like a video.

Like a clue in a video game, like a hint. But yeah, I guess let's just talk about food. So I think I mentioned when I first got here that one of the things in the kitchen were eggs, hard boiled eggs, and those kind of come and go. They're not there all the time, but they were brown. They were like caramel colored.

And I looked that up, and apparently it is quite a common Korean thing. They call them sauna eggs. And it's just something to do with how they cook it. You know, they take their time to cook it, and they cook it slow and for a while, and it like caramelizes. 35:00 Again, I know these words, but I don't really know what all this stuff means. I know you can caramelize onions or caramelize, I don't know, meat, I guess. You just brown things. You cook it so that it browns. It has a bit of a different texture and a different taste. And you can do that with eggs.

The white part just becomes brown all the way through. And it's kind of neat, and apparently they taste different. I didn't really notice, but I mean I just had them tossed in, you know, a little ramen bowl thing.

But that's pretty cool, a distinct Korean experience. But even more so than that, the super Korean experience is the kimchi. There's always a big Tupperware container full of kimchi in this place.

And it's so good, which is like I've kind of complained about the convenience store fair here, and I just find it kind of strange and a bit unpleasant. But I think it's really not representative of Korean food, because I think mostly I've kind of enjoyed Korean food. Like if you go to a Korean restaurant and you get like the 10 little side dishes of different stuff, there's going to be one or two that I don't love. But then the other eight are all pretty good. Oh my god, I like all this stuff. I think I generally like Korean food. I just don't like what they sell at the convenience store. The convenience store stuff just doesn't. It's not doing it for me.

But kimchi, it was so good and so powerful. And like I just put it in with my noodles or put it in with rice. And it like overpowered everything, but in a good way. Like this is so delicious. And I've definitely had kimchi. And I mean kimchi, kimchi flavored noodles you can get in Canada, where my favorite kind. But obviously that's just some, you know, it's like some freeze dried noodles with little packaging and stuff.

It's pretty artificial. I don't think I've ever had like for real homemade kimchi before.

And it's so fucking good that I like looked it up a little like what exactly is this? I know it's like spicy cabbage.

But yeah, there's all kinds of different ways you can make it in different spices and stuff, but it's like sour and spicy and all this stuff. But I guess the trick that I didn't realize, maybe the secret sauce that gives it that zing is that it's fermented. So they used to make kimchi back in the day by like putting it in like a, in a pot and burying it underground for a while. So it would stay at the right temperature and letting it ferment. But what they have now is there was this, you know, in the kitchen of this place, there's the rice maker, there's the coffee machine, there's the microwave, there's the fridge. There's all the normal stuff. There was this other device that I was like, I don't know what this is, what is this thing? And I opened it once and I still couldn't tell, it just had some containers in it.

It turns out that's a dedicated kimchi fridge. They eat so much kimchi here, like with every meal, that you can get a dedicated fridge. That again, I don't know the specifics of what it does or how it works, but it basically keeps the right amount of air flow flowing through and the right level of temperature.

That's just right for kimchi that will just allow it to ferment properly.

And apparently it's one of the most sort of desired appliances that people want to have in their house is the dedicated kimchi fridge. And that's just so cool. I mean, that is just something that surely only exists here.

It's so specific, but it really is so fucking good. I could see eating kimchi every day. It doesn't seem crazy to me. And I love stuff like that, like this place alone between the eggs and the kimchi. It's like I got to have two very legit, you know, examples of Korean cuisine, of Korean food.

I'm sure I've had homemade kimchi before because like I had people in Vancouver, Korean friends of mine take me to Korean restaurants with the aforementioned tons of little side dishes and stuff. But I guess it was just like one part of a giant meal, where this is cool because like this has just become part of my routine. I can plan around it, like I know when I get home. It's like I got a Korean mom or something. It's like I'm in a Korean household. There's going to be a Tupperware container filled with kimchi. And you know, when you get through one of them, there's another one on the shelf underneath it, ready to roll.

And it's just so good and so delicious. I really think a history show based more on food, like a combination history cooking show would be a great series. 40:00 And I'm sure these things exist, but like one that's like just very super dedicated to this premise. Because I just feel like you can learn a lot about the history of a place by their food. Like even with Korea, I went to in a white rock, New York, me and my roommate at the time, just for a thing to go explore. We went to white rock and we just went to a random restaurant, which happened to be a Korean restaurant.

And it was like these, this like crock pot, kind of like bimbimbop, but way more boring. Vegetarian, kind of flavorless, this like health food. It was bad, actually, it was terrible. But it was an experience, and I always remember it, because like walking through those mountains, Bukhansen and stuff, it made me imagine like, if I was the guy back in the day, walking these mountains, this is the kind of shit I might have eaten if I didn't have any spices that day or whatever. Just kind of Korean gruel.

But it made the experience stick with me, you know, or the knowledge of what this thing was, or the kind of people that might eat it. It makes it a lot more indelible in your mind, even though that food itself was really boring, you know, but it just sticks in your head. Of like there's a reason why they ate this, there's a reason why this was their food.

Mexican food, Italian food, Japanese food, like all this stuff that comes from specific circumstances, and specific geography. I think that shit's so fucking interesting.

And I love that I got a taste of that, like I got to know what it's like to have homemade kimchi out of the dedicated kimchi fridge, made by somebody who really knows what they're doing, and it's so fucking good. It's very spicy, like really harsh, but in a way that I haven't had any particular problems, like sometimes you need spicy stuff, and then it hurts your stomach, and then you're sitting on the toilet, and you're like, I hate all of this. That hasn't been so much the thing, you know? I've definitely noticed my poops have been a little less solid while I'm here, but to be fair, I've been going to a lot of Burger King. So I honestly can't say what the culprit is there.

But yeah, rather than it just being kind of a one-off experience, just that every day, I don't eat the kimchi every day. But every, you know, two out of three days probably, and it just really lets it sink in, like that's really going to stick with me. When I'm in other places, I'm going to wish, like, man, I wish I had that fucking Tupperware container of kimchi. Fuck me. It's so good, you know? I'm sure I'll be at grocery stores, go open out the jars of kimchi, and we'll see. I guess we'll see how it stacks up, but it's not going to be as good, right? Obviously.

Stuff like that is just awesome. Stuff like that makes it so awesome to be in a different country. And just to experience things like that lady who ran the in and jet-chon was saying, like, the best way to travel is to act as the locals act. And I don't know how much I did that in jet-chon, really, but I guess I did just by accident. Just because I did just spend three weeks in jet-chon in an ancient style, very old style in. I just did. So maybe I just picked up some stuff inadvertently, I guess you just do, right?

And here, I didn't know this was going to come fully kimchi-equipped.