One Year Living in South Korea: What I Ate, Bought, and Would Do Again

I spent a year studying at KAIST — the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology — in Daejeon, South Korea. Before that, I had lived in Hong Kong for a year and a half. Between the two, I spent roughly two and a half years living in Asia. This is what I ate, what I used every day, and what I still order online now that I am back in Europe.

Arriving in Korea: The First Week

Daejeon is not Seoul. This is important to say because most content about living in South Korea is written by people in Seoul, for people moving to Seoul. Daejeon is South Korea’s fifth-largest city and sits roughly in the geographic centre of the country. It is cleaner, quieter, cheaper, and in many ways more representative of how most Koreans actually live than the capital.

KAIST is a research university. The campus is self-contained, extremely well-equipped, and operates largely in English at the graduate level. What is unusual is the pace — KAIST has a reputation for intensity that is entirely deserved. Students work late. The campus convenience stores are busy at midnight. Shin Ramyun is everywhere.

Shin Ramyun: The Unofficial Food of KAIST

Shin Ramyun is made by Nongshim and has been South Korea’s best-selling instant noodle for over thirty years. It is not the same as the instant noodles you buy at a Western supermarket. The broth is genuinely spicy, deeply savoury, and has a complexity from dried mushrooms, beef extract, and Korean chilli that most instant noodles never approach. The noodles are thick, wheat-based, and hold texture if you do not overcook them.

Korean students eat it in specific ways. A raw egg cracked into the boiling broth, lid closed for one minute, produces a soft-set egg that enriches the whole thing. A slice of processed cheese melted on top sounds wrong and tastes completely right. Cold rice pressed into the leftover broth after the noodles are gone — this is standard. Zero waste.

Cooking in a University Dormitory

KAIST dormitory rooms have a desk, a bed, a wardrobe, and not much else. Cooking facilities are shared and minimal. There is no space for a full rice cooker. There is always a microwave.

Jeju Island and OSULLOC Matcha

During a break from KAIST I took a trip to Jeju Island — the volcanic island off the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula. Jeju is famous for its black lava coastline, its tangerine orchards, its hiking, and, for anyone who pays attention to tea, the OSULLOC tea plantation.

OSULLOC was founded in 1979 by Amorepacific Corporation, Korea’s largest beauty and lifestyle company. They established South Korea’s first modern green tea plantation on Jeju’s volcanic basalt terrain. The soil is mineral-rich, the climate is temperate and misty, and the result is a matcha with a flavour profile distinct from Japanese ceremonial matcha — smoother, less bitter, with a faint mineral quality that comes directly from the volcanic earth.

Everyday Life in Korea: What Surprised Me

Hong Kong vs South Korea: What I Noticed After Living in Both

I lived in Hong Kong for a year and a half before South Korea. They are different in almost every way despite both being dense, prosperous, East Asian cities.

Hong Kong is faster, louder, more international, and more expensive. Cantonese culture is distinct and Hong Kong identity is strong. The food — particularly dim sum and char siu — is world-class. The public transport is probably the best I have encountered anywhere. The hiking is spectacular and underappreciated.

South Korea is more cohesive culturally and considerably cheaper. Seoul is enormous but navigable. The food culture is different but equally serious. The seasons are more pronounced — genuinely cold winters, genuinely hot and humid summers.

Both were worth the time. I would go back to either without hesitation.

What I Still Buy From That Year

Looking at what I have ordered online since returning to Europe, the pattern is clear. The things I actually miss from daily life in Korea are inexpensive and repeatable:

• Nongshim Shin Ramyun in bulk — the 20-pack on Amazon is the same product at roughly the same price I was paying in Korean supermarkets.
• OSULLOC Jeju Matcha — for matcha lattes at home. Nothing else I have tried in Europe tastes the same.
• The Joseph Joseph rice cooker — I use it at least four times a week. Perfect rice in twelve minutes.
• Kimbap (how to make it at home) — you cannot buy the fresh version outside Korea but you can make it. It became one of the foods I missed most after leaving.

That is the honest list. Not everything I encountered in Korea is available or worth importing. But these three things slot into daily life in a way that makes sense regardless of where you live.

On the practical side, two things I wish I’d brought on day one instead of buying confused at Incheon: a decent power bank (Korea is a phone-dependent country — subway, payments, everything), and a universal travel adapter that actually fits Korean outlets without wobbling.