Seoul

"As “Paris is France,” so Seoul may be said to be Korea, for it is the centre from which nearly every thing for the country either originates or is disseminated. Officers ruling over country districts usually have their “house in town,” and expect to spend a portion, at least, of their time within the walls of the capital. While some of the provincial capitals are said to contain more people and to be more celebrated for certain reasons, Seoul is the home of the King and the Mecca of his faithful subjects."

"Far from being settled, this bright part of Korea screams defiance. And that blast of light, just a short drive from the demilitarized zone, is its defiant capital."

"As Paris was for France, Seoul was not simply Korea's largest town. It was Korea. Government was a great vortex summoning men rapidly into it, placing them briefly near the summitry of ambition and then sweeping them out, often ruthless into execution or exile."

"What Seoul represents to [South] Koreans is above and beyond all our hopes, aspirations, and collective imagination. It is the flagship of our nation."

"Lying between chill sheets that night in my icy room, I tried to organize my first impressions of Seoul. In the back of my mind I felt that the place reminded me of somewhere I had been before. The impression of gloom and darkness and wildness could not be dispelled ... and everywhere there was the curiously clanging, grumbling tone of Korean speech. From time to time I was reminded of northern Japanese towns in wintertime–Akita, Aomori, Niigata, or Sapporo. But then it flashed into my mind that what Seoul really reminded me of was the Arctic: the bare, freezing desolations on the outskirts of Kiruna and Narvik."

"It has already become easier to imagine Seoul with a Kim Il Sung statue than to imagine Pyongyang without one."

"The twin obsessions of the foreign press corps in Seoul are a) North Korea and b) K-Pop, K-Film, K-Anything-But-Politics."