getting a tattoo in seoul, korea 🇰🇷

i’ve always dreamt of getting a tattoo in korea & i finally got it done this year so here are some tips if you’re planning on doing the same!

— research

start doing research months in advance (artists/tattoo design/placement) etc. because they might be booked up pretty fast & your artist needs time to come up with your piece + y’all will have to communicate and send the draft back and fourth till the design is finalised which takes time as well.

— design

for my artist, i simply sent the vibe/style of what i’m going for and he came up with a design of his own a day before my appointment. however, there were certain adjustments that has to made which resulted us in pushing the date back because we wanted everything finalised before starting on the actual piece.

— communication

i cannot emphasise this enough!! always feel free to speak your mind instead of holding it back in because it’s going to be on you forever (i had to learn this through the hard way) anyway, my artist was not fluent in english so we relied heavily on google translate throughout the session but everything went quite smoothly.

— placement

don’t be afraid to play around with the placement of your tattoo because it will look different on as compared to how you were visualising it. initially, i was pretty certain that i wanted my next tattoo at the back of my arm but after pasting the stencil on a few times, i found it a bit hard to centralise it which led me to trying my inner arm which turned out a lot better than expected. also, it was a safer choice for me because it was pretty much hidden.