South Korea isn’t just history in textbooks or artifacts in glass cases—it’s alive. It’s the scent of sizzling bulgogi drifting through neon-lit alleyways, the quiet weight of centuries-old temples pressed against a skyline of steel and glass, the rhythmic thud of a taekwondo master’s foot hitting the mat. For a few weeks, I got to step into that world—not as a tourist snapping pretty pictures, but as a scholar, an observer, and sometimes just a person getting wonderfully, hopelessly lost. This blog is less of a travelogue and more of a field notebook—scribbled impressions of a country where the past and present collide in the most unexpected ways.