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Every November the internet produces another few hundred lists of desserts that supposedly break from tradition. Open one. It is pumpkin, in a bar. Open the next. It is pecan, in a cookie. The pan changes. The pantry never does.

In March, a song from a Netflix cartoon won an Oscar. "Golden," from KPop Demon Hunters, had picked up a Grammy a few weeks earlier, making it the first K-pop song to win either. For a lot of American listeners, that was the moment K-pop stopped being a genre they had heard about and became one they had actually heard.

Seoul has four famous night views, and nearly every English-language guide lists all four as though you could pick by coin flip. You cannot. One needs a ticket that went on sale two weeks before you arrive. Two of them close on Mondays. One costs a thousand won and one costs about twenty dollars.

Green tea, centella and mugwort. The botanicals that anchor most Korean vegan formulas were never animal-derived to begin with.

Samgyetang arrives still bubbling in a black earthenware pot, with kkakdugi and a dish of salt on the side.

A Korean body scrub is not a massage. Nobody floats lavender past your nose while a harp plays. You soak for fifteen minutes, someone comes in with a green mitt, and then a visible quantity of you leaves your body and sits on the mat next to you.