ITAEWON🪅 - SEOUL

It's been one year since I've beenback to Korea. Time flies faster than ever before. It's weird. Everyone has 24 hours in their day, but somehow mine feels like it's running faster. So fast that sometimes I feel like time is actually running away from me. It was the end of Korea Blockchain Week 2026. For those who don't know blockchain, it's kind of a Bitcoin conference thing, just more complicated, with regulators, new technology and indeed some scams. But it's also a great opportunity for business connections and networking as well as free food and drinks. Yeah, also rooftop parties, helicopter rides and even renting a whole amusement park for the entire night. Crypto is different. You either hate it or you love it. And if you love it like I do, you can't get out of that beautiful love-and-hate bubble. But you need enough patience. Otherwise, forget it. This time, I ended up at an event in Itaewon. It was Thursday. You could feel the end of summer, with that early-autumn feeling already in the air. And somehow every autumn feels like a sudden slap in the face, a reminder that another year is slowly coming to an end. I was in a kind of comfortable, slightly drunk mood at a rooftop event in Itaewon. I don't even remember the name of the rooftop. I had never heard of it before, even though I thought I knew all my hidden places. And then I had the idea: Why don't I just walk through Itaewon if I'm already here? I felt the tiredness and the weight of being overworked on my shoulders. But maybe it's destiny? This was the place where I shared so many nights and memories. Why should I say no to another night when Itaewon had always been there for me? Itaewon was always my base. Not only because of drinking, but because of a special feeling I could never really describe. Walking through the streets, I started to have all those memories come back again. The clubs have changed. The bars have changed. Restaurants have changed. Some of them have completely different names. And it's been only one year since I came back. It's weird. It felt like I had been away for decades. But I was always obsessed with Itaewon. How could you not miss it if you were as obsessed with Itaewon as I was? It's the place to be an adult in Seoul. Great wine. Rooftop bars. Unique clubs. Korean people. Foreigners. Everyone somehow meeting in the same place for a long weekend. Itaewon was always there for me — for the great memories and the bad memories we shared. Maybe that's why walking through it again hit differently this time. ..... Itaewon — explaining how it started and where it came from. ..... After all the bad markets, COVID, the Itaewon Halloween tragedy, and an entire generation of Millennials slowly getting married and moving into different stages of life, it feels like the place is on a different path now. This is the moment I realize we didn't realize we were living through our twenties. We were making memories. I wish I could have it back so badly. But how difficult must it be for my uncle or my grandpa to remember being young and strong and handsome again? Full of energy. Innocent. Without responsibilities. It's hard to accept reality. And even though my sister is already in her forties, she still calls me like I'm a baby. I'm a baby who is already 33 years old. Which means I've already experienced 33 summers as a summer boy in my life. And maybe so am I. That's difficult to accept. Because suddenly you realize something: We didn't realize we were living through our twenties. We thought we were just living. But actually, we were making memories. I wish I could go back so badly sometimes. But what would my father, my party-boy uncle and my grandfather say to me if they had the chance? I'm a crying baby? And that's probably one of the hardest things about getting older. Even though my older sister, who is already in her forties, still calls me like I'm a baby. A baby boy who has already experienced 33 summers. Itaewon always gave me this feeling of connection and somehow being forever young. And today I miss it even more. Maybe because the older I get, the more I realize that people are running after the next investment, the next career step, the next apartment, the next stage of life. And I also realized something else. The older I get, the fewer friends I have to go out with compared to when I was younger. It's weird. But maybe that's just life. The brutal side of getting older. Regrets are swimming around in my head. Things I should have done differently. Things that didn't have to happen. Things I wish I could change. But I can't. And that's probably the hardest part to accept. But all the Millennials who are parents probably sleep already, focus on their careers, or are getting married. Itaewon wasn't only about partying with the music of the twenties. It was the all-inclusive package. The crowds. The vibe. The alcohol. And the restaurants, from European to American to delicious 24-hour Korean hangover food. Thursday was the warm-up for the weekend, but today it was kind of empty. Maybe because so many of the Millennials who used to fill these streets are already somewhere else on their path. Parents. Career-focused. Married. Death? With every step closer to the end of the street, I could feel the vibe of all the years I had spent here. Older people. Young people. Wine bars. My favorite club, Foundation. Sasha. Rooftop bars. Memories everywhere. And then I found out that one of my favorite cheap starting points, Thursday Party, was gone. Standing in front of an entire new office building with a "for rent" sign, it was kind of sad to see. After all these years. All those memories. The love. The good vibes. The bad conversations. And now I couldn't celebrate it one more time. It's just gone. Am I too weak to think like this? I'm not crying. But I'm feeling emotional. Because at the end, what counts is our time and our memories in life. And my clock is ticking differently compared to a twenty-year-old student. Isn't it? One of my favorite cheap starting points when I was young and simple was the sojubong. Literally an ice cup with ice cubes, Red Bull and original-flavored soju from that company called Good Day. What an irony. Fill the cup halfway. Mix it together. And suddenly a cheap, positive vibe became the beginning of another legendary night. I walked through the streets as if I was watching a theater play. And only at the end did I realize: The play was already over. My Uber driver was waiting. On the way back to the hotel, I noticed that the southern side of Itaewon had changed completely. Those beautiful red-brick buildings from the 70s were completely gone. It felt like someone had raised a hammer and simply erased them. How could they just destroy all of this? The surface of a small village — just gone. Probably new apartments will come. It makes sense. It's profitable. It's more useful for today's Seoul. It's what the system does and what the system wants. And who cares about the people who are gone? Who cares about the history? Who cares about the special feeling that existed there? And that's the thing. I'm not talking about drinking in Itaewon. I'm not talking about the clubs. I'm talking about the feeling of a place that existed because of all the people, memories, stories and years that happened there. You can replace the buildings. You can build something newer. You can make it more profitable. But you can't rebuild the feeling. I learned quite early to appreciate that nothing is forever. But these days, I hate that answer even more. Because now, at 33, seeing the world feels different. You start to understand that you can't stop time. There is no clock you can turn back. There are so many regrets. So many mistakes that didn't have to happen in my life. Sometimes I wonder if I'm a realist these days. Or if I simply started to understand what life actually is. Maybe 33 is the age when you finally realize that time was never really yours. You were only borrowing it to live the moment once. What are 33 years compared to the creation of the world? Nothing. Goodnight.