About The Haru Box

A Korean-British perspective on everyday life in Korea — written from the inside.

Who Writes This Blog

My name is David. I was born in Korea, moved to the UK with my family when I was in primary school, studied there through university, and then came back to Korea as an adult — voluntarily enlisting in the Korean military before settling back into daily life here.

That path gives me something I think is genuinely useful for this blog: I grew up understanding both cultures from the inside. I know what daily life in Korea looks like to someone who grew up here, and I know exactly what surprises — or confuses — people coming from a Western background, because I was one of them.

I now live in Korea with my family. I work here, shop at the local market, deal with the recycling rules in my apartment building, and navigate all the small, specific rituals of Korean daily life that rarely make it into travel guides or K-drama reviews.

The Haru Box exists because I kept noticing things that felt completely ordinary to the Koreans around me — and completely foreign to anyone I'd grown up with in the UK. Things worth explaining. Things worth writing down.

What This Blog Is About

The Haru Box focuses on the small, specific details of everyday Korean life that most international media skips over — not the highlights, not the drama, but the actual texture of living here.

The kinds of things I write about:

• Why Korean office workers brush their teeth in the bathroom after lunch — and what it says about workplace culture here
• The "빨리빨리" (ppalli-ppalli) mindset: why Koreans move fast, and why it's more complicated than just impatience
• How apartment recycling works in Korea — and why getting it wrong is a social event
• The food that only appears for three weeks in spring, and why Korean households track it like a calendar event
• Why Koreans greet each other by asking if you've eaten — and what the question actually means

These aren't things you can easily find explained by someone who has actually lived them. That's the gap this blog tries to fill.

Who This Blog Is For

If you're curious about Korea beyond the K-pop and K-drama surface — if you want to understand why Koreans do the things they do, what daily life here actually feels like, and what the country is like when the cameras aren't rolling — this blog is for you.

I write in English for a global audience, but I write from inside Korea, with the kind of detail that only comes from living here.

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Get in Touch

If you have a question, a topic you'd like me to cover, or just want to say hello — use the Contact page to send a message.

The Haru Box is an independent blog. It is not sponsored, and all opinions and observations are my own.