My First Year Living Alone in Seoul — One Cockroach Kept Me Up All Night

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My First Year Living Alone in Seoul — One Cockroach Kept Me Up All Night


I'm really scared of bugs.

Last year, I moved to Seoul for school. It was the coldest time of the year, with temperatures dropping below -10°C for days on end. My dad and I spent a week going around Gangnam, Seocho, Songpa, and even Bundang, trying to find a place to live.

Finding the right place was much harder than I expected. Finding somewhere that checked all the boxes — price, location, and personal preference — felt almost impossible. In the end, I found a small multi-family house about 40 minutes from school. A lot of students from other regions were living there too.

It took me a while to adjust. New classmates, professors, and the crowded subway every morning. I had to walk 8 minutes to the station, and once I got on the train, it was so packed I could barely breathe. Being pressed against strangers like that felt unfamiliar and exhausting.

I study webtoon design, and the workload is intense. I spend about half the week pulling all-nighters for assignments. I can't bring myself to do things halfway, so I tend to overwork. That meant less sleep, skipped meals, and sometimes feeling more irritable than I wanted to be.

Still, group projects helped me get closer to my classmates. Just having people I could talk to about my struggles made everything a little easier.

One morning, I was getting ready to leave for school. As I reached the front door, I saw a cockroach lying on its back, legs still moving.

It didn't look like it could escape. It looked like it was about to die.

I froze.

I'm really afraid of bugs. Maybe because I'd never had to deal with them before, they feel even more terrifying to me. I didn't know what to do, so I just covered it with a tissue and left.

But I couldn't stop thinking about it all day.

"What am I going to do when I get back home?"

I kept bringing it up to my friends, almost obsessively. Eventually, three of them decided to come back with me.

When we got there, I just stood there like a guest in my own home. My friends immediately took charge.

One grabbed a broom and dustpan, another looked for a plastic bag, and the third checked around just in case there was anything else lurking nearby.

For some reason, the whole situation struck me as a little funny.

After everything was taken care of, I felt so grateful. We all settled into my room and decided to order dinner — spicy tteokbokki and a few other things.


For that moment, it felt like a small, impromptu new-semester party. It ended up being the first time my friends ever visited my place, even if the original reason was a cockroach.

One friend worked on her iMac, another played The Legend of Zelda, and someone else quietly read a book.

We ended up staying up all night.

Around 5 a.m., when the buses started running again, they all headed home.

And that wasn't the end of it.

A few days later, my friends showed me a drawing. They called it "The Cockroach Incident — A Memorable Day."

It captured me and that moment in a funny, exaggerated way.

At the time, it was something that scared me so much. But now, I can laugh about it.

Strangely, when I look at that drawing, the fear isn't what comes back to me first.

I remember the people who were there.

My first year in Seoul has been full of unfamiliar and difficult moments — but little by little, they're turning into memories I can cherish.



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