When my wife and I first moved from the United States into our apartment in Seoul, a middle-aged bachelor was living with his mother on the ground floor of our building. The mother never ranged far from home, but we never met. I met the bachelor on two occasions. On the first occasion he mentioned that he worked for a packing company. The company, however, was relocating to South Jeolla Province, and he was moving there with it.Now, the southerners in that region have a well-known liking for hongeo, or stingray, he went on to say, a fish eaten fermented and reeking with the smell of ammonia. I had heard of hongeo. The smell is such that when customers enter a restaurant, they are given the option of sealing their overcoat in a plastic bag. Few in Seoul have a taste for it, but those who do swear by it.A couple of months before the move, as a way of feeling out the life awaiting him, my neighbor said he ventured to a hongeo restaurant in a grimy blind alley in the city center. Hongeo restaurants, it should be noted, have a mystique about them, an air of exclusivity owing to the gustatory rite that occurs within. Like braving a wine bar without knowing Muscat from Merlot, it can be rather intimidating to enter a hongeo joint as a neophyte. In fact, connoisseurs assert that it takes at least three goes at hongeo before one can acquire a fondness. At any rate, to my neighbor’s disappointment and to the amusement of his seasoned coworkers, he struggled with the stingray’s odor and failed to finish his portion.“And hongeo’s not cheap,” he told me. “I forced it down with kimchi and makgeolli,” he added, referring to the milky rice wine.In spite of his initial aversion, after a few more visits to some reputable hongeo restaurants, my neighbor claimed that he started to enjoy hongeo and even prefer it to other seafood, which he said tasted bland by comparison. So with only a week to go before the relocation, he boasted that he was beginning to think of himself as a southerner already, and couldn’t wait to move.That was the second and final time I met my neighbor. Today, whenever I walk by a hongeo restaurant, I cannot help but think of him down south and wonder how he’s fitting in.It’s 10 pm and a recurring shout is heard outside in the late-autumnal streets. Knowing it must be a hawker, I turn to my wife and ask what he’s selling. Ddeok, she says from the sofa, referring to rice cakes. I feel a frisson of excitement. Street hawkers are rare these days, and nearly obsolete. And yet every so often one makes their rounds through the neighborhood in a part-nostalgic, part-vestigial manner more common thirty or forty years ago.My appetite is up, so I decide to find this rice cake hawker. I throw on a scarf and dash outside. Running first one way, then another, I listen and track his brontosaurial voice, which abides a twelve-second cadence.I finally catch up with him a few blocks from home. He’s younger than I expect, and dressed in a uniform and hat. Though there’s a touch of gimmick about him, as if he’s been paid to play the part, he still seems to bear the genuine watermark of the past. I comment on his hat, stitched with a Chinese character, and look over the rice cakes. With a smile, I hand him five thousand won, receive my bounty, and wish him good night.Walking back, smelling the steamed rice flour and red bean paste, I feel a sudden swell of appreciation for this country, and for the culture forged within its borders over the centuries. The Korean people have accomplished much, I think to myself, and for the moment the strains of being a foreigner fall away.Back at home, in bed at midnight, I think I hear the hawker’s call again. I lie there listening, but remain uncertain. Since we met, his presence has grown more phantom-like in my imagination, and I begin to doubt that our meeting ever took place. And if it did take place, my recollection is that it took place in some heavy fog or mist…Inherited Korean folk wisdom states that rain and scallion pancakes, or pajeon, go well together. Pajeon restaurants are thus unfailingly crowded on rainy days. Unless it’s the polarity of oil and water, there’s nothing intrinsically linking pajeon and rain. People simply like to eat pajeon on rainy days because they heard stories from their parents of eating pajeon on rainy days.On such a rainy day with a foreign friend in town, I passed a pajeon restaurant of good repute while returning home from work. Since I was about to meet my friend, I thought I would buy some for him to try.Before entering the restaurant, I put my nose to the window and looked inward. The place was brimming. A man finding his seat bumped his head on a low-hanging lamp. It was still swinging as he sat with folded legs on the floor. I knew from having been here before that the pajeon was topnotch. When I came I always took a table under the landscape painting and ordered wine distilled from ginseng.I was all set to enter and place an order when I had a sudden misgiving. My friend, you see, is selective and rather self-sufficient when it comes to food. He had probably already eaten, I reasoned, and would decline the dish politely. So, passing on the purchase, I went directly home.When I arrived, my friend was in the living room chatting with my wife. Both were in good spirits but confessed to being hungry. I sighed, then told them I had debated bringing pajeon. On hearing my wife’s description of the dish, my friend, with a hint of rue, said that pajeon would have been nice. So much for my reasoning. After promising myself never again to hold back on a spontaneous show of friendship, I also had to admit, pajeon would have been nice.Once a year, on a warm day in June when red pines show new green growth, he makes the journey to Seoul to sell off his garlic. Stocking up on gas, chilled bottles of fermented plum tea, the phone numbers of near relations, and the expectations of a big payoff, he settles into his blue pickup with the year’s freshly exhumed harvest in the cargo bed.On arriving in Seoul he drives directly to his accustomed spot on a pedestrian-friendly cross-street, parking between a piano dealer and a bus stop. Here he sets up for the afternoon and subsequent seven days, bellowing out for business when he feels like bellowing, keeping quiet when he feels like keeping quiet.I pass him on my walks at sundown. When he’s not tending to customers, he’s sitting cross-legged on a large ground-cushion composed of the dry, yellowed stems hacked off the garlic bulbs. Invariably he’s covered in dust, whittling away at some small figurine for his son or daughter. Whether he takes notice of the city’s latest trends in fashion and electronics, the buildings that have gone up over the buildings that have gone down, the activity of the stock market, or the politicians in power, I cannot begin to say.When I entered, my barber had his back turned and was programming a rice cooker. Because he hates closing for lunch he eats his meals in the shop, which is also equipped with a mini fridge, a camping stove, and an electric tea kettle. My barber is a quiet man with a gold tooth and hair dyed a bottomless black. He speaks with a southern accent so I know he’s not a Seoul native. Trying to make conversation from the chair, I politely asked him if—as I suspected—he had migrated to Seoul from the countryside.“That’s right. My five brothers and I,” he said. “I worked at a mill when I moved here in my twenties and was getting licensed to cut.”The mill he referred to was not a steel, flax, or paper mill. It was a family-run food processing mill, many of which still dot the city. I knew them from the rich aromas they hit you with as you walk by: fresh ground chili powder, sesame oil, rice flour—whatever order they happen to be filling. In the morning a man may come lugging a bag of garden-grown peppers, sundried and crimson. In the afternoon a woman may show with a sack of perilla seeds or adzuki beans.“There were a lot of us,” my barber went on. “Bumpkins. New to the city, finding our way. Looking for work, a room, a husband or wife…We were rustics, no doubt. But we helped build this city. Whatever it gave us, we gave back in return.”Thinking it over, I realized the truth in what he said. Decades of urbanization in Korea did not spell the complete dissolution of rural ways of life. Rather, these ways of life gave shape to the cities, and their imprint is everywhere.Take the jangdokdae, a distinctive outdoor space reserved for storing spices, condiments, grains, and fermented foods in earthenware jars. Historically every home had such a space, considered essential to food preservation. Now they’re largely anachronistic, yet even the capital still harbors them. Some folks turn to the roof to establish this space. Others employ a porch or the front steps leading up. Apartment dwellers may resort to the balcony.If you’ve seen crockery sitting ten stories high, you’ve probably seen bracken drying on wicker mats in spring heat, or persimmons hanging from winter twine. You may have seen mushrooms desiccating on tarps, seaweed on sidewalks, or herrings strung out on laundry lines. Another debt to its agrarian past, Korean food preparation isn’t confined to the kitchen.Seoul’s rural inheritance is further revealed by foraging, which has its place in the city as well. Urban foragers range from the deliberate, who head to wood groves in search of nuts and herbs, to the opportune, who can’t ignore ginkgo seeds accruing on public pavement, or a tuft of mugwort sprung up under a park bench. Even spring water, sourced from age-old hills where it’s bottled from taps, is habitually sought by some.So went my thoughts as I sat in the chair, glancing at the mirror and my barber in it. And though I had been quiet for the past five minutes, it was as if he had heard these thoughts, for the last thing he said as he untied my gown and brushed back my hair was, “Nope, you can’t take the countryside out of me, and you sure can’t take it out of Seoul.”