Dodori Korea TripAbout
What this site is
Dodori Korea Trip collects a handful of public Korean data feeds every morning in Seoul, and explains what they mean to somebody who does not live here.
Most English-language writing about Korea is either a news site or a personal blog. News tells you what happened yesterday. Blogs tell you what one person experienced once, often years ago. Neither answers the question people actually arrive with: what is true in Korea right now, today, and what does it cost.
That is the gap this site sits in. Every figure on the front page carries the date it was collected and the source it came from.
Where the numbers come from
These are collected automatically, once a day, at 10:00 Korean time:
- Box office — Korean Film Council (KOFIC), previous day confirmed admissions
- Music charts — Apple Music Korea
- Video and music videos — YouTube trending, Korean region, all categories and music
- Air quality — AirKorea, via the Korean Ministry of Environment's open data service
- Weather — Open-Meteo forecast for central Seoul
- Festivals and public holidays — Korea Tourism Organization and the national holiday register
- Exchange rates — public rate feeds
- Search interest — English Wikipedia pageview statistics, via the Wikimedia API
These are written and checked by hand, and carry the date they were last verified:
- Everyday prices — subway fares, coffee, taxi base fare
- The one-line context on festivals, holidays and looked-up topics
- Everything in the guides section
Photographs
Every photograph on this site is either supplied by the Korea Tourism Organization through its open data service, or published on Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons licence. Each one names its photographer and licence directly underneath it, and links to the original. Nothing here is a stock image bought to fill space, and nothing is used without the licence terms being met.
When a feed fails, the card disappears. It is not replaced with yesterday's figure. Showing a stale number as if it were today's is the worst thing a site like this can do, so the page would rather show you less.
Any data older than 48 hours is hidden the same way, and the front page tells you how many feeds did not respond.
Who runs it
This site is made by Dodori Lab, an independent one-person studio — a Korean editor living in Seoul, working in the same city the numbers come from. The collection runs itself every morning; the words, the checking and the judgement calls are done here, by hand, in Korean first. 서울에서 매일 확인하고 씁니다. The studio also runs a Korean-language site about AI developer tooling, which is where this one's publishing setup came from.
The site is independent. It is not affiliated with the Korean government, the Korea Tourism Organization, or any brand mentioned on it. Nobody pays to appear on the front page, and no entry position is for sale.
How it pays for itself
Right now, it doesn't. There is no advertising on the site, and there are no affiliate links or paid placements — see the advertising disclosure for what that means. If any of that changes, that page changes first.
Corrections
If a number here is wrong, please say so. Prices change, fares go up, and a hand-checked figure eventually goes stale. Corrections are the fastest way to make this site better: get in touch.
LAST UPDATED 13 SEPTEMBER 2026