The bookstores of Seoul are enough to make a visit worthwhile
South Korea takes eduction incredibly seriously.
Bookstores and libraries in Seoul come straight out of an 8-year old's dream of the ultimate book fantasy.
The most famous and wildly crazy is the enormous Starfield Library at the COEX Mall in Gangnum.
Perhaps more tourist attraction than library, this cavernous expanse of literature consists of towering mountains of titles all perfectly light and searchable via escalator. Holding more than 50 thousands books the public space is never not jam-packed with browsers - mostly trying to take a shot for Instagram.
Terarosa Coffee is a chain of coffee / book stores that sell 'a well-deserved mental pause' amidst the busyness of the city.
This one was located in the foyer of a large office building and the coffee shop itself had a number of levels (going up) where customers sat drinking slow-drip coffee and browsing the latest issue of Monocle.
South Korea takes eduction incredibly seriously.
It's regarded as the primary strategic resource that their whole economy is reliant on. Getting into a top university is so serious, in fact, that the country literally shuts down on the day (in November) that students write their university entrance exams. Success in these pretty much determines the trajectory of your entire adult life, so the pressure to do well is immense.
Knowledge, innovation and creativity are prized, which means that it's little wonder that the bookstores in the city are so impressive and popular.
You can tell what a society values by the quality of the attention paid to it. Quiet, pleasurable connections surrounded by new ideas is clearly a thing here.