🔥Seoul just beat Tokyo as the world's best big city, and the safety bit is why
Condé Nast Traveler's readers put Seoul at number one for big cities this year, up from fifth, with Tokyo dropping from first to second. Jongno 3-ga, the area around the Ikseon-dong hanok alleys, also got called the coolest neighbourhood in the world. On the news, one tourist said she loved seeing young Koreans out on the streets, and one jogger said he left his stuff behind for an hour while running and it was all still there when he got back. That last one is the thing I tell every friend who visits me. The first week I lived in Korea I watched a girl leave her laptop and phone on a café table and go to the toilet for ten minutes. In Sydney I'd have been watching that table for her the whole time. Here nobody even looked. I've since done it myself, which my mum back home does not need to know. Korean comments were mostly happy but a bit surprised. One person living in the US said even New York doesn't compare, because in American cities the busy parts are just pockets, while all of Seoul feels like a big city. Another listed river, mountains, skyscrapers, hanok and palaces in one place, plus no pickpockets. A few just went "huh? really?". It's funny, Koreans love to complain about Seoul being crowded and expensive, and fair enough, it is. But when I go back to Sydney the thing I miss isn't the food first. It's being able to forget my bag for a minute and not have my heart drop.
🔎 Ref
- 💬Community postPannchoa (theqoo) — Seoul ranks #1 as the world's best big cityhttps://www.pannchoa.com/2026/10/theqoo-seoul-ranks-1-as-worlds-best-big.html
- 🔗Wikimedia Commons — Ikseon-dong, CC BY-SA 4.0https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ikseon-dong_%EC%9D%B5%EC%84%A0%EB%8F%99_October_1_2020_3.jpg
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