Nathan Stone­ham takes us explor­ing. Ven­tur­ing into the cre­at­ive pock­ets of Seoul in his Show Us Your City entry, A Walk in Seoul.

A Walk in Seoul paints a pic­ture of a big city filled with pock­ets of cre­ativ­ity, com­munity and quiet. What is it about this city that inspires you?

Seoul is abso­lutely gigantic…  If you were to go on a walk through Seoul I can’t guar­an­tee you’d find the cre­ativ­ity, com­munity and quiet that I’ve fea­tured in the video. I never recom­mend Korea as a hol­i­day des­tin­a­tion – but I always recom­mend it as a place to live… Take your time in this city and with the help of real Korean friends, you’ll dis­cover the pock­ets of beauty and accept­ing com­munit­ies that call Seoul home.

Seoulites are com­mit­ted to mak­ing the city more beau­ti­ful, more green and more clean. While this move­ment is pro­du­cing some innov­at­ive, con­tem­por­ary and “envir­on­ment­ally friendly” social spaces, I do miss the char­ac­ter of places that weren’t master-planned.

The easi­est way to say it is: the unique parts of Seoul inspire me.

The Great East Gate to Seoul, now amidst a busy shop­ping dis­trict | Photo by Nathan Stoneham

How does Seoul com­pare to your first home, Bris­bane? How does the markedly dif­fer­ent size of the cit­ies impact your experiences?

Seoul and Bris­bane are so dif­fer­ent in so many ways.  My life does vary depend­ing on which city I’m liv­ing in.

In Bris­bane I spend more free time at home, cook­ing myself meals and relax­ing with friends.  In Seoul I prac­tic­ally always eat out, and spend most spare time explor­ing. In Seoul I meet a lot of new people (des­pite the lan­guage bar­rier), and since apart­ments are gen­er­ally small, we spend time together in pub­lic spaces – res­taur­ants and bars usu­ally along with theatres, gal­ler­ies, cinemas and parks.

One of the many inter­est­ing sights that greet Nathan when he steps out his front door each morn­ing | Photo by Nathan Stoneham

Due to the mass amount of people in Seoul, I can feel anonym­ous – dis­con­nec­ted, and free.  In Bris­bane, it feels like every­one knows every­one – we’re all con­nec­ted some­how – which is lovely, but there is free­dom in escap­ing this.

For some reason I always feel like I have more energy in Seoul.  Maybe it’s all the barbe­qued pork?  I’m always keen to party, spend entire nights out with loc­als and catch the first train home in the morning…

At the same time, Seoul has a sad­ness – an intriguing heav­i­ness that Koreans say is con­nec­ted to a his­tory of hard­ship.  Bris­bane, on the other hand, seems bright and rel­at­ively carefree.

Inter­ested in find­ing out more about Nathan’s Seoul? Read the full inter­view.