Seoul is recalled not through a present-day visit but through a letter’s intimate memory of shared secrecy. Its significance lies in how the need to hide, and the scrutiny that made hiding necessary, brought an otherwise unconsidered difference between the writer and recipient into view.

Seoul as a Shared Memory

The writer recalls how the two of them used to “sneak around in Seoul.” The wording presents the city through a private routine rather than a description of its streets or landmarks: Seoul is the place where their relationship had to be conducted covertly. The memory belongs to a shared past, but the letter gives no further account of when it occurred or what circumstances required the secrecy.

Difference Under Scrutiny

The recollection links that secrecy to other people’s disapproving looks. The writer says that only when they had to sneak, or someone looked at them crossly, did the writer consider their difference. The city thus marks a moment of social pressure: difference becomes perceptible not as an abstract fact, but in response to concealment and judgment. The letter does not specify what the difference was, leaving its exact nature unstated.

Uncertain Return in the Letter

The memory surfaces in an uncertain form: the writer cannot tell whether it was a dream or a thought. That hesitation makes Seoul a brief, inward return rather than a fully narrated scene. The recollection appears amid a letter about family illness and grief, then turns toward an avowal of love; the shared memory gives that closing intimacy a history of secrecy and exposure without explaining more than the writer can name.