Hi and welcome to women who travel.

I'm Lale Arakoglu, and today I'm excited to explore the beauty industry of South Korea.

During the pandemic, unable to travel, I found myself attempting to escape my teeny tiny apartment through really any medium, foreign language movies, recipes from around the world, just about every type of music, and a lot of it came out of Korea.

I was running to K-pop, watching Bong Joon Ho's parasite like everyone else I knew, and teaching myself how to make Ibid Bap.

I was also doing a ton of internet shopping, which meant spending far too much money on K-Beauty.

Today, my guest is Elise Hugh. Elise is a broadcast journalist, author and host of the podcast TED Talks Daily. She also has a new book out called Flawless, Lessons in Looks and Beauty from the Korean Capital.

It's Elisa's first book, and as a fellow journalist, I was curious to find out what it's like to go from reporting to writing an entire book dedicated to a single subject.

I've been a long-time journalist, of course, and I'm so used to spitting out stories that feel

sort of ephemeral, and this is just a tangible thing, you know.

A little more final, I imagine.

Can't go back and change it now.

Are you going to be doing any book tours or sort of traveling with the book?

Yes, it's a 10 city tour, and so hopefully I'll be in a city near you wherever you are.

I love it. And you are in L.A., right?

I'm in L.A., but I love to travel, so this will be an interesting time.

This will just be an interesting experiment in packing for various climates and trying to keep everything really light.

I know this is something y'all probably talk about all the time,

but just trying to be very light and sparing in my packing,

but also have what I need in the various towns I'm going to be in.

Are you a packing cube person?

I feel like that is when it comes to like multi-city stops and different climates.

I'm always told that that's the thing

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