Hello!
I am a writer, working on my novel right now. My main character is half-Korean, half-white, and they're living in Seoul alongside with my other characters who are all Korean. I'm not even Asian myself and I have never been into any Asian country. Sure, I have done some Asian studies at university and now I'm on a mission to read as many novels written by Korean authors as possible (love Han Kang!) and dive in into the Korean culture. I have been doing this for months now, for example I am following some newspapers written in English about Korea so I know what's going on.
Obviously fiction is fiction and it's enough if I manage to write enough detail to make the reader believe that I actually know what I'm talking about. I can use Google Maps to look around but I am missing all the other senses there: smell, sound, touch. There's also so much silent knowledge that I do not know. For example in my own city I know why most of the buildings are red. That's something you wouldn't know unless you dug deeper.
Here's some questions I have:
1) What are some things that are really typical in Korea? Could be in Seoul, could be in another cities. Right now my novel is happening in Seoul but some of my characters are from other cities, too, so I don't want to rule out anything. This can be related to anything: maybe there's something typical with the people, the way they dress, act, maybe it's something about the environment, maybe it's weather related, maybe something related to traffic signs, street art, streets itself, animals, food, anything. Like in my city there's mysterious holes appearing on roads every summer. I don't know what they're there for but I keep running into them and if I were to tell someone about these, they'd know what I'm talking about and know which city I am living in. I'm looking for small (or bigger) things like this.
What can you smell and hear in Seoul? Traffic and street food, I assume, but what else? I read somewhere from Reddit that there's trash all around the streets that appear and disappear just like that. I assume it would smell, too. I guess this depends on the area, too, like the city center would probably be more prone to this if there's not enough trash cans.
What are some misconceptions that aren't really true in Korea/Seoul? Like something you run into constantly and only locals know that it isn't the case.
Some local knowledge? Some things that give out that you aren't a local?
How is it to live as half-white, half-Korean in Korea? I have talked to some mixed people about this. I feel like you probably have an easier time if you are half-white than what you'd have if you were half darker skin, whether that's black or Asian, since white skin is viewed as the ideal.
Any other things you'd like to share about living in Korea or being a Korean?
I appreciate every single reply that I can get. Feel free to message me privately, too! I will do my best to keep doing research on my own as well. At the end, the life is the same everywhere. The people are the same, the things we do are the same. So as long as I know how to write about humans (which hopefully I do), then I'll know how to handle this. But I'll take any help that I can take to really sell my story.
Also please don't judge my writing skill based on this post haha, English is not my native language, I'm not American, and it's not the language I'll be using when writing my novel. :)