To be honest, I didn’t originally have the intention to create a site like “OWL Magazine Korea.” Originally, I planned to create and manage WordPress sites for “OWL Dictionary,” which covers English learning content, and “OWL Magazine,” a site that introduces travel-related materials in English.
I already had a lot of travel-related content in Korean on my existing Tistory blog, and since it had been running for a long time, I didn’t feel the need to create a new site.
“Late 2022: Kakao Data Center Fire”
However, in the latter half of 2022, I experienced a sudden and significant setback. All the blogs I had been managing, primarily on Tistory, became inaccessible. The data recovery process took quite some time due to a sudden fire at the Kakao data center, where Tistory services were hosted.
The unexpected incident at the Kakao data center had a major impact on me. During a period when I wasn’t able to upload many blog posts due to the influence of COVID-19, I had been gradually reviving my blog, which had suffered setbacks since 2022. With the search results improving, there was a glimmer of hope for a steady flow of visitors, although not as much as before.
During the time when the blog was inactive, it had about 3,000-4,000 visitors per day. As recovery continued, the number of daily visitors began to reach around 7,000-8,000. However, due to the sudden fire at the Kakao data center, everything reverted back to the way it was before. In an instant, the blog became completely inaccessible, and I worried that all the hard work I had put into writing and uploading content might be lost in a moment.
“Until Early 2023, Tistory Still Not Properly Recovered”
The aftermath of the Kakao data center fire was substantial. While services gradually resumed after the fire, some of the content I had written in the past couldn’t be read.
I stumbled upon the fact that some of the old posts I had written displayed nothing but a blank white screen when accessed. Even if I tried to access it through a browser that didn’t provide Safari’s “Reader Mode,” I couldn’t view the content at all.
By 2023, it had been quite some time since the fire, but when I inquired with Kakao about this, they remained silent. With the recovery of the Kakao data center taking longer than expected, I decided I needed to move the existing content to a personal server.
“December 29, 2022: Opening of OWL Magazine Korea”
This is the reason why I opened “OWL Magazine Korea.” Until the end of the year, I was very busy at work and often had to work overtime. I didn’t have much time to create a new site.
Fortunately, on December 29, 2022, the end of the year, I used the remaining vacation days I hadn’t used all year and started working on the site. The site that was born out of this effort is “OWL Magazine Korea.”
The site is not entirely new, to be honest. I had experimented with a site called “Jeoktomart” in the past. The concept of Jeoktomart was an online product museum, where I posted reviews of products I had purchased or introduced interesting products. However, for some reason, Google didn’t like the content on the site, and I didn’t even get AdSense approval. It was difficult to operate, so it was left unused for a while. I decided to repurpose that site to create “OWL Magazine Korea.”
“OWL Magazine Korea, English, Dictionary”
While the main focus of the OWL Magazine series will be on travel-related content, it won’t be limited to just that. I’ll be posting content that I didn’t include in “OWL Dictionary.” Currently, there is a high demand for travel-related content, so that will be the main focus of updates. However, I also plan to cover other topics like general knowledge, culture, and more.
Of course, my first priority will be to re-edit the travel-related content I had previously uploaded to my Tistory blog, organizing it neatly by category and then uploading it to the new site.
In any case, I’ve jotted down the reasons for the creation of “OWL Magazine Korea,” a site that no one may be curious about. From a certain perspective, this site could be seen as an archive of the writings, photos, and more of a person who has been writing online since 2008.
I’ve only managed to re-edit about 300 articles so far, and there are still over 6,000 more pieces of content to edit. It will take quite some time, but I’m looking forward to enjoying this process. I hope that sharing this material will be helpful to someone…