I take photographs for a living, and I travel so I have something to photograph.
I’m HM. I was born in Seoul and I still live here — which means this site has two halves: the places I go, and the city I keep coming back to.
How this started
In May 2025, Hr and I flew to Rome with no plan for the first evening. Thirteen hours in the air, an airport coach at sunset, and a pizza eaten standing up at ten at night. Two weeks later we came home with more than three thousand photographs and the strange feeling that I’d been writing the trip in my head the whole time. This site is me finally writing it down.
What I actually do
I’m a photographer first, a writer second. I shoot on foot, usually at the wrong time of day, and I’m more interested in a pharmacy cross glowing on a wet street than in the monument two blocks away. Every photograph on this site is mine — taken on the trip I’m writing about, never bought from a stock library. If I tell you a bus costs €7, it’s because I paid it.
What you’ll find here
- Italy — two weeks from Rome to the south, day by day, mostly on foot.
- South Korea — Seoul from the inside. The markets, the alleys, and the neighbourhood places that guidebooks never reach.
- Travel photography — how I actually shoot: light, windows, reflections, and waiting.
Why “Long Way from Seoul”
Because that’s the honest distance. Everything here is measured from one apartment in Seoul — how far I went, how long the flight was, and how different the light looked when I got there.
How I work
Travel writing has a credibility problem right now. A lot of what ranks on Google was written by someone who has never been to the place, illustrated with photographs someone else took. So here is exactly how this site is made.
- Every photograph is mine. Taken by me, on the day I am writing about. No stock, no borrowed images, no AI-generated scenery. The captions carry the real time of day because the files do.
- I only write about places I have stood in. If I did not go, it is not on this site.
- Every trip so far has been paid for by me. No hotel has hosted me, no tourism board has briefed me. When that changes, the article will say so at the top — not in the footer, not in grey text.
- Prices and rules are checked against the operator’s own site before publishing, and dated. Rome changed its Trevi Fountain access rules in February 2026; the page you are reading says so because I checked, not because I remembered.
- If I am not sure, I say I am not sure. There are restaurants in these articles whose names I never wrote down. I would rather tell you that than invent one.
- Corrections are welcome and get made. If a fare has changed or I have got something wrong, tell me and I will fix the page and note the date.
Where the facts come from
Fares, opening hours and entry rules on this site are taken from primary sources and re-checked when an article is updated. For Rome that means Aeroporti di Roma for airport transport and the official taxi tariff, Trenitalia for rail, CoopCulture for the Colosseum, and the Comune di Roma for monument access rules.
I link to those sources directly rather than screenshotting them, so you can check the current number yourself — which is the point.
Work with me
I partner with hotels, tourism boards, and travel brands that care about honest storytelling and real photographs. Details are on the Work With Me page, or you can reach me through Contact.
New here? Start with the first night in Rome.
This page was last reviewed in September 2026. HM writes and photographs Long Way from Seoul from Seoul, South Korea.