I Tried Korea’s Approach to Stress for Seven Days—Could It Help My Permanently Switched-On Brain?

There's something rather ironic about being a health and wellness writer who is, for want of a better phrase, permanently stressed out.

I exercise regularly, make time for friends, prioritise sleep and am fortunate enough to have a career that I genuinely love. On paper, I've struck a relatively healthy balance between work, socialising and self-care. A habit stacker, if you will. And yet, I cannot remember the last time I went an entire day without checking my emails.

Having lived in London for over a decade, I've become so accustomed to the relentless pace of city life that I've stopped questioning whether it's actually good for me. Even my downtime comes with a mental checklist of things I could, or should, be doing. It's a peculiar contradiction: I know an enormous amount about how to manage stress, but very little about how to stop feeling it.

So, when I travelled to South Korea for seven days, I was curious to discover whether a different cultural approach to wellbeing might offer some perspective. South Korea has one of the highest life expectancies in the developed world, at 83.5 years, yet its demanding work culture and considerable mental health challenges paint a more complicated picture.

I wanted to look beyond the global obsession with K-beauty and explore how Koreans approach everything from food and movement to rest and traditional healing. What I hadn't anticipated was finding a remarkable sense of calm in Seoul, a sprawling metropolis of more than nine million people, or that some of my most valuable discoveries would have surprisingly little to do with wellness treatments at all.

For my findings, keep reading. While you're here, check out our guides to low-effort wellness habits, the warning signs your wellness habits are making you financially sick and everything you need to know about the soft hermitting trend. Plus, read how I got on when I tried 'sunlight snacking' every morning for my mental health.

I Spent A Week In Seoul Investigating South Korea’s Approach To Wellbeing—This Is What I Found

What Does Stress Look Like In South Korea?

To better understand South Korea's relationship with stress, I spoke to Dr Christine Hall, a GP and aesthetic doctor at London's Taktouk Clinic, whose Korean heritage has given her an appreciation of both Eastern and Western approaches to health.

“South Koreans are often considered to be the ‘work hard, play hard’ nation,” she explains, describing a society where ambition, academic achievement and appearance carry enormous social significance. “Stress at work is almost the norm and can become so normalised that people don’t necessarily recognise it as a problem.”

It's an observation that sits alongside a sobering statistic: according to the OECD's 2025 health report, South Korea recorded 23 deaths by suicide per 100,000 people, compared with an OECD average of 11. Although suicide has complex causes, these figures challenge the assumption that a nation's longevity necessarily reflects its psychological wellbeing.

I was lucky enough to speak with Dr Hall's mother, Younga Hall, about her equally fascinating generational perspective of growing up in Korea. “Stress was a concept that wasn’t recognised when I was growing up,” she recalls. “Any admission of feeling overwhelmed was frowned upon and to reveal you were finding things difficult was seen as a sign of weakness.”

Hall describes how Korea's history of occupation, war and extraordinary economic transformation helped shape a culture of resilience and personal sacrifice, with family networks providing an important source of support.

Her reflections made me question something about my own relationship with stress: when does being resilient stop being admirable and start becoming an excuse to ignore how exhausted you are?

What I Noticed During My Week In Seoul

If I'd expected South Korea to offer a slower alternative to London, I'd spectacularly misunderstood the assignment. Seoul is an exhilarating collision of neon signs, densely packed neighbourhoods, towering skyscrapers and an underground transport system that makes London's Tube feel positively prehistoric. Yet, somehow, I found the city surprisingly calming.

Perhaps it was the accessibility of the surrounding mountains, the parks and riverside spaces, or the cafés where people appeared perfectly content to spend hours over a single cup. There was also the undeniable advantage of an eight-hour time difference: having an entire morning before the UK woke up, and my inbox inevitably started fizzing, felt like reclaiming a part of my day I hadn't realised I'd lost.

Of course, spending a week somewhere as a visitor is vastly different from navigating its everyday pressures as a resident. But I became fascinated by the small, seemingly ordinary habits that created opportunities for connection, movement and moments of respite, even within such a fast-paced environment.

What Does Wellbeing Actually Mean In Korean Culture?

One of the most interesting things I learned was that Korea's relationship with wellbeing extends far beyond the physical. Dr Hall's mother introduced me to kibun, a traditional Korean concept loosely associated with inner feelings, dignity and self-worth.

“Recognition as a person deserving of respect and status directly impacts their mental state,” she explains, describing how protecting another person's kibun has traditionally been an important part of Korean social etiquette.

I found this particularly interesting because Western wellness often feels like an individual pursuit. We invest in supplements, track our sleep and optimise our exercise routines, yet there's something compelling about considering how our interactions with other people influence our wellbeing.

Her observations made me wonder whether my approach to stress had become too focused on what I could do to fix it, rather than the relationships and everyday experiences that might help me feel better.

My Key Findings From Seven Days Exploring Korean Wellness

1. Food Was As Much About Connection As Nutrition

Some of my fondest memories of Seoul involve steaming bowls of broth, rice, kimchi and an impressive assortment of banchan, the small side dishes accompanying traditional Korean meals. What interested me wasn't simply their nutritional value, but their cultural significance.

“Food is entangled with Korean culture,” explains Dr Hall. “It's not just something that has to be done in order to stay alive or purely for taste–it is a Korean person’s way of showing love.” Her mother recalls traditional dishes such as samgyetang, a ginseng chicken soup, and miyeokguk, seaweed soup, which have long been associated with restoring vitality and supporting health.

There's promising science behind some elements of the traditional diet, particularly fermented foods. A 2021 study found that increasing fermented food consumption over ten weeks improved gut microbiome diversity and reduced inflammatory markers. While eating kimchi won't magically eliminate stress, emerging research into the gut-brain axis suggests a potentially important relationship between digestive health and mental wellbeing.

Personally, though, I found the emphasis on sharing meals the most special. There was something comforting about food being an occasion to enjoy, rather than another task squeezed between meetings.

2. Hiking Was A Habit, Not An Occasion

One of my most memorable mornings began before sunrise, climbing Seoul's Ingwangsan trail. As the fog gradually lifted over the skyline, I was struck by the number of locals already navigating the mountain. Older couples in hiking gear, friends chatting animatedly, solo walkers and families spanning generations were all tackling the steep paths on an otherwise ordinary weekday. Their familiarity with the terrain suggested this wasn't an extraordinary fitness undertaking, but a familiar part of life.

At one point, I passed an elderly woman rapidly making her way uphill, rhythmically clapping her hands together as she walked. I later learned about gi, the traditional Korean concept of vital energy, and how practices such as hand-clapping and acupressure are believed to stimulate its circulation and restore balance within the body.

“Hiking is a huge part of Korean leisure culture, particularly among older generations,” explains Dr Hall. Research supports the restorative effect of nature, too: scientific research has found that a 60-minute walk in nature reduced activity in the amygdala, a brain region involved in processing stress.

As a runner, I've always valued exercise, but standing above Seoul reminded me that movement doesn't have to involve a pace, distance or personal best. Sometimes, the pleasure of being outside is enough.

3. Coffee Culture Made Me Question My Obsession With Productivity

Seoul takes its coffee culture seriously. I'm talking beautifully designed cafés, drink menus that read more like dessert menus (black sesame lattes, anyone?) and coffee shops that stay open well into the evening. But what struck me most was how people seemed to use them. In London, it's almost impossible to find a café that isn't doubling as a makeshift office, with laptops occupying every available table and flat whites fuelling the working day. Yet in the cafés I visited in Seoul, I noticed remarkably few laptops during the day. Instead, there were friends catching up, older couples nursing the same coffees for hours, and people seemingly happy to sit and enjoy their surroundings without doing much else.

It made me think about how obsessed we've become with optimising our time. We listen to podcasts on our commutes, squeeze workouts into lunch breaks and turn our hobbies into side hustles, all in the name of making the most of our days. I'm certainly guilty of it. Even when I meet a friend for coffee, there's usually an errand to run afterwards or an email I'm mentally composing on the way home.

Dr Hall recommends prioritising shared meals and social connection as part of a healthy lifestyle, but perhaps what I really needed to learn was that not every spare hour has to serve a purpose. Sometimes, a coffee can just be a coffee.

4. Traditional Korean Healing Made Me Rethink Rest

South Korea's beauty industry is impossible to ignore. In Seoul, aesthetic clinics, elaborate skincare treatments and promises of eternal youth seem to occupy practically every other building. Yet beyond the pursuit of youthful skin, I was interested in traditional approaches to restoring balance between the body and mind.

During my trip, I visited Spa Gogyeol, a Korean wellness spa in Seocho, which I found on Tripadvisor. Its approach reinterprets traditional Korean manual therapy, with massage techniques inspired by yin-yang and five-elements philosophy. Rather than focusing exclusively on appearance, the spa's philosophy emphasises harmony between physical and mental wellbeing, with personalised treatments designed around the body.

As someone who spends an enormous amount of time researching evidence-based health advice, I'm naturally sceptical of treatments promising to rebalance energy. While energy-healing claims lack robust scientific evidence, massage itself can support relaxation. Yet I found the experience unexpectedly thought-provoking. Being encouraged to focus on how my body felt, rather than how it looked or what it could achieve, was a welcome departure from my usual approach to wellbeing. I spend so much time trying to make my body stronger, fitter and healthier that I sometimes forget to ask whether it feels rested.

The Verdict: Did Korea's Approach To Stress Actually Work?

I arrived in South Korea hoping to discover something revolutionary about managing stress, perhaps a cultural philosophy or ancient healing ritual that might finally convince my brain to switch off. Instead, I encountered a country whose relationship with stress was arguably just as complicated as my own. Yet amid all that ambition, I found everyday habits that made me reconsider how I approach my wellbeing.

Perhaps my biggest revelation was that I've spent years confusing having a healthy lifestyle with having a healthy relationship with stress. I've become remarkably good at making time for exercise, socialising and self-care, but much less accomplished at enjoying those things without mentally returning to my inbox. In Seoul, the moments that felt most restorative weren't necessarily the ones I'd planned around wellness. They were the conversations over dinner, the sunrise above the city, and the afternoon I realised that simply sitting in a café could be an entirely worthwhile use of my time.

Back in London, my inbox is as relentless as ever, and seven days abroad haven't fundamentally changed my personality. But I have started questioning why so much of my free time still feels as though it belongs to work. South Korea didn't teach me how to eliminate stress. Instead, it reminded me that looking after yourself isn't always about doing more, even when those things are supposedly good for you.

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