The smell of Korean nostalgia
In Korean, the word “hyang-su” can mean either perfume or nostalgia. It's a beautiful coincidence. The fact that the word can refer to either smell or memory is easy to understand for certain odors are capable of triggering very strong and profound memories of the past. In Marcel Proust's 1913 novel “In Search of Lost Time,” it was the smell of cake in tea that sent the French author spiraling into the past, memory, and one of the century's more ambitious literary endeavors. And so it was for me recently as a certain series of events had me remembering things of Korean yesterdays.
Source: koreatimes.co.kr
