[KS] A light contemporary read on Korea

[J.Scott Burgeson]

> Any ideas out there for a relatively light read on Korea
> that I could pair with Hokkaido Highway Blues to assign to
> a group of High School Teachers that I will be leading to
> Korea and Japan this summer.

I have not read Hokkaido Highway Blues but it seems to have been inspired by the classic and indeed founder of that particular subgenre: Alan Booth's The Roads to Sata (1985), in which the former British drama critic and fluent Japanese speaker literally walked from the Northern tip of Japan all the way to the Southern tip in Kyushu, which was once described if memory serves as "one long pub crawl across the entire length of Japan." The Roads to Sata is a classic of literary and cultural observation, extremely funny in a wry, understated way, and the best book about Japan in English that I have ever read. I recommend it in the highest terms.

The equivalents on the Korea front would be either Isabella Bird Bishop's Korea and Her Neighbours (1898), itself a classic and well-recommended, if slightly crotchety at times, and of more recent vintage Simon Winchester's Korea: A Walk Through the Land of Miracles (1988), penned by the famous writer who alas was not very informed about Korea when he wrote it (the pretext is that he follows in the footsteps of Hamel, less rather than more). It does have its fans, however -- myself not among them.

But I see that you want contemporary, which is a harder call. My personal advice would have them read Paul S. Crane's Korea Patterns (1967), just to give them a quick grounding in the basics since it's a short read (and with the caveat that its essentialism should be read critically), and then have them read a few blogs like The Marmot's Hole, Mongdori or Korea Beat for an introductory taste of more current local affairs. I would certainly recommend Bruce Cumings' Korea's Place in the Sun (1997), but while written with brio it is perhaps not as light as your needs.

Enjoy your trip!

--Scott Bug



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