Standing before Bongeunsa's Maitreya Buddha, you notice the grey granite calm of the statue against the glass towers of COEX just behind the temple wall — twelve centuries of Korean devotion and the twenty-first century sharing the same patch of sky. On K-Star Road, the GangnamDol figurines of your favourite K-pop groups are scattered along the pavement like cheerful sentinels; even travellers who came for history find themselves lingering, matching faces to album covers. Inside Starfield Library, you tilt your head back to follow the bookshelves all the way up — three open floors of spines, every title reachable by rolling ladder — and the noise of the mall below dissolves completely.