Seoul on Assignment: Caffeine, Chaos, and a Shot at Something Real

The alarm hit just after 4 a.m., like a punch in the head from a night I never got to sleep through. I don’t remember getting up. I just remember moving — muscle memory, fueled by purpose and stale coffee. My gear was already packed. There wasn’t room for excuses. This trip wasn’t about fun or freedom — it was about getting the job done.

This whole thing kicked off the way a lot of stories do in my life — a random message from the past. Some ghost from an old project calls you out of the blue, like a forgotten track suddenly getting airplay. This time, it was the city of Seoul. They needed an article. Fast. Someone threw my name into the ring after a magazine piece I did years ago, and just like that, I was on a train north, with a vague outline and a paycheck on the line.

Let me be clear: the original plan they pitched? Amazing. However, what they wanted kept changing, but whatever — I’ve danced this dance before. You roll with it. You get the job, you shoot the story, you shut up and deliver. But I wasn’t going in blind. I made sure to get up early, stake out a few side missions of my own. Always good to have more material than you need — especially when clients get fickle with their vision.

First stop? Tim Hortons. Yeah, that Tim Hortons — a little taste of home on Korean soil. I’m Canadian. It’s in the blood. Coffee and a maple cruller. Not gourmet, but soul food nonetheless. From there, I hit Insadong. By pure luck or cosmic favor, I landed on the last day of the Lotus Lantern Festival. Lanterns floated like prayers in the wind, and the streets buzzed with parades and energy. I had missed the Seoul parade the night before, but I had spent that time in Ulsan with my photography class — and an MBC news crew, no less. No regrets.

Insadong was a jackpot — pure, chaotic visual gold. And then it happened — the shot I’d chased for over two decades: Jogyesa Temple draped in lanterns. I first saw it in a dog-eared Lonely Planet guidebook back when I first touched down in Korea. To finally frame it with my own lens — not just as a tourist but as someone who knows this country — it hit different.

Then came the tourist trap — Gyeongbokgung Palace. You can’t not shoot it. It’s a visual feast, a cliché that earns its place. While weaving through the crowds, I stopped cold at Hyangwonjeong Pavilion. There was this tree. I’d stood here before — with my dad. I remembered him leaning against that very tree, back when he and Mom made their first trip to Korea. The first time they really saw my life here. It all came rushing in — like time decided to stomp on my chest.

But the job wasn’t over. I headed to Yeouido — Seoul’s island of ambition and glass towers. Only, it was the weekend. Dead quiet. That buzzing hive of business they wanted me to document? Now just an echo. And the sky? Bleached and flat. No drama. No contrast. Just white nothingness.

But I’ve been around. I know where the salarymen drink, where the interns cry into soju, and where the managers pretend to be kings for a night. I walked those streets, looking for stories in the pavement and glass. Found what I could. Shot what mattered. Then, as the light died over the Han River, I took my last frames and merged into the current of commuters.

Back to Seoul Station. Back to the KTX. Back to the questions gnawing at my skull.

Did I get it? Did I nail the story? Did I blow it? Did I make art — or just content?

That’s the part they don’t show on Instagram — the mental autopsy of every assignment. I sat there on that train, eyes dead, heart racing. I wanted to sleep. Instead, I obsessed. Welcome to the mind of a working photographer.

I stumbled through my door just after 11 p.m. My wife was there, blurry in the low light, asking how it went. I think I muttered something about lanterns and buildings. My body crashed. Brain still spinning.

I crashed hard. Not the poetic, “fell into a gentle sleep” kind. I mean crashed. Full shutdown. I was out before my head even hit the pillow. And then, just like that, the alarm went off again.

5:30 a.m. Monday. No rest for the wicked.

I stumbled to the kitchen, made coffee like it was a survival ritual, splashed some cold water on my face, and hit the road to Gyeongju. Because the hustle doesn’t care that you just poured your soul into Seoul — there’s still a makeshift cubicle and full schedule of students waiting to answer my question of the day and learn a new idiom.

The day dragged like a broken ankle. Back-to-back classes. A never-ending cavalcade of business people and canned expressions until my phone chirped, mercifully, that it was time to go. Like Fred Flintstone at the end of a shift, I mustered enough energy to yabba-dabba-do my way back home and collapse — again.

I wanted to create something. I really did. But my brain was oatmeal and my fingers weren’t listening. Lightroom looked like an alien program from a planet I visited once in a fever dream. Editing was impossible. Even thinking was a stretch.

Tuesday morning came too fast and too loud.

Up at 5. Again. Typing furiously. Madly hammering out the article, editing photos with one eye open, and trying to stitch it all together into something that didn’t reek of exhaustion and compromise. Did I pull it off? I think so. Maybe. I don’t know.

Sent off my masterpiece — or at least a caffeine-fueled collage of sweat and pixels.

But I got it done by the end of the day. Wednesday morning, I hit send.

Mission complete. Again. Now, back to work.