We preferred Abu Dhabi. Dubai glowed with the lives of white-collar Emiratis in spotless robes, but erased the existence of the Indian and Pakistani blue-collar workers who supported the city. These workers commuted by bus from Dubai to Abu Dhabi. Perhaps that’s why the food we ate on the streets of Abu Dhabi was richer than Dubai’s. In Abu Dhabi, we bought apple mangoes from a man whose shirt was unbuttoned just far enough to make a statement. We ate them at the hotel. Best apple mangoes of my life—better, certainly, than the $34 frozen shrimp risotto I’d had at a high-ceilinged café in Dubai’s art district. Juicy chicken, cola, coleslaw—American-style deli food with an interior that, in hindsight, resembled a New York-style deli. Discovering that such food existed was a small thrill.

By chance, my first experience at a Chinese hot pot restaurant also took place in Abu Dhabi. The owner, caught mid-decoration with paper ornaments on the ceiling, glanced at us and muttered something in Chinese, probably realizing we weren’t Chinese when we struggled to make a proper dipping sauce. Unlike the Koreanized hot pot I was used to, this tomato broth hit sour, sweet, and salty all at once—each flavor pulling in a different direction, none of them polite about it. As we stepped out, people were playing badminton on the street. Unlike Dubai, voices and laughter filled the air. Still, Abu Dhabi wasn’t all that different. The Louvre Abu Dhabi is built to look like it floats on water. What I remember is watching divers scrape barnacles off its white walls. The black barnacles stood out against the white. It was strange to think that there are jobs dedicated to removing them. Whether it was Abu Dhabi, Dubai, or even Oman on a side trip, the UAE as a whole felt like a place fundamentally built against nature. The endless rock and mountain formations, with no sign of water—either you drove for hours, sailed like Sinbad, or stayed in the city.

If you asked whether I’m a city person, I’d say yes. If I list the cities I’ve visited and loved recently, it becomes obvious. Sometimes I daydream about settling down in a suburban city with someone I love, walking a dog, and living quietly—but those are fleeting, sugary thoughts. Seoul over Pangyo, obviously—though I’ve spent more of my life in Pangyo than I’d like to admit. And I love chaotic big cities: Chongqing, Mexico City, New York City. Chaotic. Confused. I think most cities are chaos. That’s partly why I enjoyed my trip to Chongqing. I fell in love with Chongqing because of Hongyadong. When falling in love with a city, just as with a person, I often get trapped in the image I’ve created. Watching the film “Sichuan Departure,” set at the Chongqing Academy of Fine Arts, I became curious. I searched Chongqing at home and discovered images of Hongyadong lit up at night—like something out of Spirited Away. I learned it was a megacity, a basin like Daegu, where the summer heat gets trapped and steams, a city carved out of mountains, full of stairs, where trains pass through buildings. The largest directly governed municipality in China. Slowly, I became enchanted. Recently, even Westerners started posting cyberpunk footage of Chongqing at night, and the fantasy only grew. Eventually, I went. 

But fantasies are just that—fantasies. There’s always something I didn’t anticipate. On the first day in Chongqing, I was stunned by how cheap everything was. Yet the constant spitting, honking, aggressive drivers, lack of traffic signals, and suffocating cigarette smoke made it feel like a lover I couldn’t quite handle. Asking the manager at the VOCO hotel whether all bars in town were this loud, he gave an awkward smile and pointed to his favorite one. The Mountain City cocktail was excellent, but even there, people screamed in street fights. That day had already been exhausting—we were shoved by line-cutting aunties and uncles on a river cruise. The dazzling buildings across the river couldn’t quite comfort us. My journal entry that night read: “The cyberpunk Chongqing I had dreamed of didn’t exist. What was there instead was just—life. Loud, spitting, elbowing, completely indifferent to my expectations.” 

Another reason we had gone to Chongqing was the absurdly cheap five-star hotels. I slept well at the Westin Chongqing. I woke to the ambient music the hotel TV had been playing since we checked in—still going, underneath the muffled honking and the white fog sitting on the river outside. That layering of sounds, that particular quality of light. I thought: maybe this is why I love this city. Is my love for this city real?

At the top of the Westin was a gorgeous cocktail bar. The first page of the menu read: “Chongqing is a city of mountains, of fog, of heat, of ancient vitality. What are your impressions of Chongqing? What are your memories?” From up there, the city wasn’t loud. The noise had rhythm—it made sense, the way Itaewon on a Saturday night makes sense. You stop fighting it and start listening. We returned to that bar twice during our stay. Hongyadong, the place I most wanted to see, was more chaotic than expected. It felt like standing in the middle of the Yeouido fireworks festival, packed with people. Behind the glowing lights were dusty goods, greasy snacks, and windows that looked like they hadn’t been cleaned in a year. It was underwhelming. We needed to return to the high-rise hotel to recharge—to look down on the city again. Or we watched the city flash past from taxis, appreciating the reckless driving as a kind of street theater. Unfairly—that’s the only honest word for how I came to love Chongqing. From above, through glass, at a safe distance. “Illusions always break. That’s nobody’s fault. Cities are always bigger than your illusions.” I wrote like that at my journal.

Even so, unexpected joys unfolded constantly before my eyes: Taoist patterns, dragons, haechi at temples, chewy sweet potato noodles in hot-and-sour soup for a few yuan, fragrant Indonesian beans at stylish coffee shops, laziji piled with chilies bigger than the chicken bones, the waiter who looked like Tony Leung, the craft beer pub near the hospital with its flickering lights. We adapted quickly to Chongqing’s chaos. Eventually, we came to love even that chaos. We left with plans to return.
tyThen, why do I love New York? What illusions do I carry? Can I even call it illusion? A Guggenheim staff member I met in The Poet Room once told me, “Some days there are so many people I want to cry. But it’s still okay.” Perhaps only Mexico City and Chongqing could rival New York’s chaos. But I probably have more to say about New York than Mexico City. Mexico City, I mostly othered. I stayed in rich neighborhoods, ate Korean food, and typed on my laptop in apartments that belonged to wealthy people I found on Airbnb. I was there, but I was never really in it. I did have moments—the girl named Mika who loved Korea, the hours of walking—but I can’t quite write a full paragraph about the city. New York, I spent more time with.

Not a long time, but enough. Manhattan is a tall rectangle; it only takes a couple hours to walk from midtown to downtown. Getting into a city is never easy. I once said, “New York is a city full of doors that open onto movie scenes. I mostly stood outside them, pretending I wasn’t waiting to be let in.” During my five-month exchange, I made a few good friends and tasted the surface of America. I walked a lot, saw a lot, met people. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that I don’t love New York because it’s special or polished. When it comes to style, Korea rivals New York—perhaps even surpasses it. Korea is terrifyingly sophisticated. The women walking down the street, the cafés you step into…

And I don’t really like that. New York exists without editing itself. People, buildings—the unfinished things are allowed to stay, until they aren’t. What looks like diversity is also the residue of a city that has already pushed out everyone it couldn’t afford to keep. That’s where New York’s contradiction lies. It is both the pinnacle of capitalism and its cruelest enforcer, pushing people out. Only a few remain. The ambitious are drawn in, the rest go home, and those who stay tend to have cold hearts and extraordinary luck. Everyone who spends time there ends up with something to say about it—including people who hated it. That’s the thing about New York.

This is why falling for cities in the middle of reinventing themselves is a bad habit. New York, Seoul, Mexico City—they’re always being reborn. Usually by pushing people out. Places rise from the lives they trample. The hot spots become predictable, but new contenders always emerge. You watch neighborhoods grow—cheap land, creative people, unique shops—and it’s hard not to feel complicit. Unless you watch from afar, your heart will ache. This cycle, like life, seems inevitable. But the pieces that fall away aren’t just dead skin—they’re lives. I, too, was pushed out. Not from New York—into New Jersey. There’s a difference, and I’m still deciding how much it matters.

I moved to Hackensack for a better life, more opportunities. I decided to spend another year interning in the U.S. I interviewed for jobs in NYC—mostly law firms unrelated to my major. I wondered if it was worth it just to stay in New York. The offer was $40,000. When I asked around, people said you can’t live on that alone. When I pushed for more, an agent replied: “Most people live in Queens, not NYC proper. And the average hourly wage is $18–20.”

But I kept going. I had a number in mind. Other NJ firms offered $45,000. The one I chose gave me $47,500. I did the math. It was enough. I already had learned painfully that pleasant living without even minimal financial stability made me miserable. Coffee shops, local boutiques, window shopping, a warm bowl of soup—these define a city. Their prices vary. If you’ve ever traveled to Southeast Asia, you know how price shapes experience. In New York, I’m poorer than I am in Seoul. Ten dollars feels like nothing here. But I nodded. This is fine. Now I just need to earn enough. I stand on that contradiction.

So I’m looking for a place to live in New Jersey.  It’s like living in Pangyo instead of Seoul. Sure, both NJ and Pangyo are considered affluent. But NJ isn’t New York, and Pangyo isn’t Seoul. This essay must end with Somewhere Near Seoul—that is, Pangyo. Though it’s just where I live and write, it always appears (or doesn’t) as a counterpoint to chaotic cities. Pangyo won’t show up much in Somewhere Near New York, either. Maybe readers of this piece haven’t been to Pangyo—a tech-forward land of Kakao and Naver, the techno-valley, now expensive, filled with malls and cafés. A place I hate, but have lived in for 13 years. Pangyo is not chaotic. Neither is Bundang. These cities are planned and tidy. Here, nothing unexpected ever happens. That’s the point of a place like this—and exactly what I couldn’t stand about it. The same goes for the people. They all moved here for similar reasons: good schools, good prospects. I always felt lonely going to school in such a uniform place.

Maybe readers of this piece haven’t been to Pangyo—a tech-forward land of Kakao and Naver, the techno-valley, now expensive, filled with malls and cafés. A place I hate, but have lived in for 13 years. Pangyo is not chaotic. Neither is Bundang. These cities are planned, tidy. Here, nothing is born or dies. Sure, housing prices rise, drawing developers to Bundang, making me think of Somewhere Near Pangyo. But it’s not a place for quirky new shops. Restaurants and cafés here are safe and bland—designed to please everyone. Nothing unexpected ever happens here. That's the point of a place like this — and exactly what I couldn't stand about it. The same goes for the people. They all moved here for similar reasons: good schools, good prospects. I always felt lonely going to school in such a uniform place.

Jersey City wasn’t chaotic either. Except for a bit of sketchiness near Journal Square, it was stable. Bedroom communities tend to be that way. If cities are for adventure and wandering, bedroom towns are for daily life. Looking back, maybe my love for chaos comes from all that stability. Somewhere Near Seoul have been my real stage for this year. Adventures teach me, but daily life shapes me. I want to polish my everyday in Somewhere Near New York. I want to learn to live alone. To find the jewels of New York.