About

The Korea Wave is a first-person project about ordinary Korean life — the places and systems that feel cinematic to visitors and completely normal to people who live here.

Online, these spaces often get labeled as liminal spaces, dead malls, or vanishing third places. In Korea, many of them are still open, still used, and still part of someone's Tuesday evening. That gap — between internet aesthetics and lived routine — is the heart of this site.

The writing stays close to personal experience: photos taken on the ground, notes from neighborhoods, and cultural context that helps overseas readers understand what they're looking at without turning Korea into a theme park.

Lauren — Lauren lives in Korea and documents the ordinary places that feel strangely cinematic to visitors — and completely normal to the people who use them every day.