Most people who travel to Seoul see the daytime city — Gyeongbokgung, Myeongdong, Hongdae, the Han River. But the hour that feels most like Seoul is the one when nobody lifts a camera.
6:25 a.m., a back alley in Myeongdong. The shutters of the cosmetics shops are still down and there is not a single tourist. The only people on the street are the ones heading for the first subway, the ones going home after working all night, and someone smoking outside the convenience store.
At this hour the convenience store is the only bright thing.
The convenience store is the most honest place in Korea
What people in a country actually eat and use is sitting right there on the shelves. A souvenir shop is a collection of things a foreigner might buy; a convenience store is simply what the people around here buy. That makes it more accurate.
At dawn people reach for much the same things: a carton of soy milk, a triangle kimbap, a hangover drink. And on the small rack beside the till, the same items always hang there — hair ties, face masks, nail clippers, and hair rollers.
A country where people commute with rollers in their fringe
There is one sight that surprises almost everyone visiting Korea for the first time: people on the subway, in cafés, on the street, simply going about their day with rollers in their fringe.
If it looks strange, try reading it this way: it is simply not hiding an unfinished state. I'm getting ready, I'll be finished shortly, and it's fine if you see me in between. Seoul at 6:25 a.m. wears exactly that face.
The memory of a trip usually attaches itself not to grand places but to small scenes like this one.
Years from now, someone remembering Seoul will surely picture a carton of soy milk under a convenience-store light before they picture the roofline of Gyeongbokgung. That is how memory works.
So we made this
kory's Seoul hair roller takes its colors from that dawn — the navy of a sky not yet light, and the yellow of Line 2 passing across it.
We did not print the name of a landmark across it. This isn't an object for announcing that you went to Korea; a color that only someone who has woken up once in Seoul would recognize felt like enough.
If, on some morning back home, rolling it into your hair brings back the air of that dawn for a moment — then as a souvenir it has done its whole job.