THE VERSION GUIDEBOOKS SKIP
Not another travel guide.
This isn’t a travel blog, and it’s not a history textbook either. You won’t find “10 must-see palaces in Seoul” here — there are already a thousand of those. What you’ll find is the version of Korea that doesn’t make it into guidebooks: the shrine tucked behind an apartment building, the word your Korean coworker uses but never explains, the history that gets simplified into one sentence when it’s actually a lot messier and more human than that.
If any of this sounds interesting, here’s where to dig in.
Empress Myeongseong: The Assassination That Shook Korea
Most Americans have heard of Empress Sisi of Austria — the beautiful, unhappy empress who was assassinated, the one Netflix keeps making shows about. But did you know Korea had an empress with an eerily similar fate? Her name was Empress Myeongseong. And in October 1895, Imperial Japan gave the plan to kill her an…
Gongmin Shrine: A Hidden Spot Minutes from Hongdae
Most people who come to this part of Seoul are headed to Hongdae — the clubs, the cafes, the street performers. Almost none of them know that a short walk away, tucked behind an apartment building on an ordinary residential street, sits the Gongmin shrine — a 600-year-old royal shrine most guidebooks never mention. And…
Admiral Yi Sun-sin: The Hero Betrayed by His Own Country
Western naval historians have called him the equal of Nelson — some have said he was greater. What almost none of them mention is this: the war that nearly broke Admiral Yi Sun-sin wasn’t fought only against Japan. It was fought against his own government. Every Korean kid learns the same version of this story…
