I've been to South Korea twice. My first visit was in 2002, when I joined a guided tour of Seoul, the DMZ and Odaesan National Park. My second visit was last summer, when I spent a couple days walking around Incheon with my family.
I was very unimpressed with South Korea the first time I visited. In 2002 our super sketchy tour guides took us to some of the least interesting places and worst restaurants Seoul and nearby localities had to offer. The weather, the food and the people were all rubbing me the wrong way, and remember being glad that the multi-day tour ended as briefly as it did. I enjoyed Odaesan National Park, but that was, up until this year at least, my one good memory of South Korea.
2024 was a much better trip. Last August we visited sans tour guides, checked ourselves into a homestay not far from the airport, and walked around the Unseo area, enjoying two meals before boarding our connecting flight to Taipei. It was, aside from getting lost on our way to the homestay, a very good two days, and I left Korea thinking about returning next summer.
Hence my purchasing this book at the Incheon International Airport. It was written by a British writer whose primary contributions to the West's understanding of South Korea consist of articles published in The Economist. According a blurb on the back cover, he lived (or has lived) in Korea "for a number of years," where he also manages a brewing company located in Seoul. His Wikipedia page only details his exploits up to this point, so I can only assume this information remains current.
His account of Korean history, culture, economy and related topics is what you'd expect from a book of this type. It's written for a Western audience, it refrains from saying anything too controversial, and it's been fact-checked thoroughly. There are some typos in the text that really shouldn't be there, but overall it seems, to me at least, a solid guide to a country that I'm not that familiar with.
From my perspective as an American who's been living in Taiwan for over 24 years now, it's unfortunate that the author overlooks Taiwan in many of his discussions of how South Korea compares to other countries and cultures across the globe. As fellow "tigers" South Korea and Taiwan have had very similar histories, and it is often this very similarity that puts them at odds in economic terms.
All of the above said, this book has increased my resolve to revisit South Korea next summer. I think there's more to South Korea than what meets the eye, and the less obvious aspects of this country merit further exploration.
Related Entries:
沒有留言:
張貼留言