Hi, I’m MingKY. I’m a Korean office worker in my 30s, and I live in Korea.
I started KOREA, BUT WHY? because the questions people ask about Korea are often more interesting than the standard answers. A visitor notices that soup arrives almost boiling, that a café feels like a destination, or that everyone seems to use a different map app. The detail is obvious. The reason behind it usually is not.
This is where I look into those details.
What I can tell you
I can explain what daily life here looks like from the inside. I can also trace a habit back through public data, history, reporting, and the way Koreans talk about it among themselves.
What I cannot do is speak for every Korean. Age, region, family, work, and personal experience change the way people see the country. When a story contains my interpretation, I try to leave room for that difference instead of turning it into a tidy national stereotype.
How I work
Each article begins with a real question about Korea. I check names, dates, numbers, and changing policies against source material, and I link to useful references so readers can follow the trail themselves.
I also try to separate three things that are easily mixed together: what the evidence shows, what people commonly experience, and what I think it means. If you spot an error or a missing point of view, I want to hear about it.
KOREA, BUT WHY? is an independent personal project. It is made after work, one question at a time.
What you’ll find here
Food
Dishes, shared tables, restaurant habits, and the small rules around eating together.
Life in Korea
Work, education, housing, technology, social expectations, and other parts of an ordinary week.
Travel
Places that make more sense when you know the story behind them, along with practical context for visiting.
Language
Words and expressions that lose something in direct translation.
Why the name?
The name is the question behind every story: “Korea, but why?” Not because the country is a puzzle to be solved, but because ordinary things become more interesting when someone takes the time to explain how they got there.