In 2022, my girlfriend went to Korea several times. back then it looked like she was falling in love with Korea. Everytime she comes back to Thailand, the country we were both born and raise, she always has enjoyment and exciting stories in her luggage. Mostly it turned out as a toy or souvenir that was related to her favorite K-Pop band, NCT 127. It took me a year to memorize all the members' names.

At the end of that year, she came up with an idea: we should spend our New Year in Korea.

To be honest, I hesitated.

Korea had never been a country I was looking to travel to. I have many favorite Korean directors — Bong Joon-ho, Park Chan-wook, Lee Chang-dong — but Korea still had never appeared on my destination list. I had no idea where to go or what to do there.

However, we had been together for four years. We still loved each other and neither of us had any better ideas. So I said yes.

As someone who prefers spontaneity, being asked to plan felt unnatural. But she pushed me — what did I want to do, where did I want to go, which activities actually interested me? So I bought a book, The Korean Mind by De Mente, to understand something about the culture, and began researching Seoul. Slowly, a few names surfaced.

Dongdaemun Design Plaza, to witness the work of Zaha Hadid — the Queen of Curves.

The War and Women's Human Rights Museum, to confront Korea's traumatic history of sex slavery under Japanese Imperial rule during World War II.

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, because for someone who loves art, there was no question.

On the day we visited the MMCA, I realized I had lost my phone somewhere inside. No clue where. So we ran — back through the museum, out into the street, all the way to Gyeongbokgung Palace where we had spent the morning. By the time we arrived, it had already closed.

We turned around and ran to the National Folk Museum of Korea, the place where earlier I had learned about Korean tradition and bought a book — Folk Tales From Korea, collected and translated by In-seop Jeong. I asked a staff member for help. She was kind and thorough. But the phone wasn't there.

With nowhere else to search, we walked back to the MMCA. Somewhere along the way, the conversation turned naturally to something I had been thinking about — a fortune I received earlier from a traditional Korean divination game called Yunnori. The fortune had told me that something tiresome was coming. Gae-Yut-Mo-Geoul. At the time, I had laughed it off.

When we arrived back at the MMCA, I took one last chance and asked a male staff member if any lost phones had been reported. There had been one. A visitor had found it inside a gigantic, human-like head sculpted from soil — a work called The Sound of Dirt by Lim Ok-sang. The phone had been waiting, buried inside a figure made of earth, as if the sculpture had swallowed it whole.

Time flies. My girlfriend and I have since broken up. But I still feel like Korea is calling to me. Even though my phone was returned to me that day, I sense that something else — something in me — was left behind there, still waiting to be found.