Tag: KOREA

Observations on South Korea

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Tyler Cowen (at Marginal Revolution) linked an interesting and pertinent article on the cultural dimension of development and “success” in South Korea:, which sounds a lot like what I’ve been saying over the years: South Korea’s success has been deep but not wide. Almost half of its population lives, works and competes in Seoul. Its occupational structure is also narrow. The number of professions in South Korea is only two-thirds of the number in Japan and only 38% of that in America. This striking statistic is not lost on the South Korean government (few are). It has appointed a task force …

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Thoughts On Ellen Oh’s Advice re: #DiversityinSFF

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While looking up a little more information for a post to add to my series on SF in South Korea (though the post is about Koreans outside Korea writing speculative fiction) I ran across this post at the website of Ellen Oh, one of the authors I’ll be discussing in that forthcoming post. Oh is the Korean-American author of a series of books titled The Prophecy series, which are a high fantasy trilogy set in what is (according to this interview) a fantastical version of Korea modeled on the Three Kingdoms period. (I’ll have more to say in a forthcoming …

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On Rich Young People Today…

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…for a value of today dating back to Mary Wollstonecraft’s tenure as a governess, and courtesy of Ruth Brandon’s book Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres: Mary found them quite uncultivated, with no topics of conversation other than dress, dogs and marriage. To which Mrs. Jiwaku immediately exclaimed: “It’s Korea!” Meaning South Korea, today. Except that in contemporary South Korea, it’s not just rich young people… not everyone is like this, but the middle class, and even the aspirational types in the lower class, are mostly precisely this way. Well, okay, dress, dogs, Kpop, and marriage. Which reminds …

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Out from the Sinews

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In a book I read long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the Christopher Dewdney wrote in his book of poetry The Radiant Inventory about neurology, using the most brilliantly poetical and beautiful language. He wrote about all kinds of things, of course: books of poetry are like that. But among the things he discussed in the book was the neurobiology of break-ups, and why they are so difficult. I can’t quote the book, or even paraphrase it in any way I’d regard as trustworthy–my copy is somewhere in that other galaxy where I read it, in a box, floating …

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The Suwon Revelation

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After spending seven of the past eleven years in the Yeokgok district of Bucheon City, not living there has been full of surprises. Even though I tried to resist it, I developed a habit of mind wherein I conflated Yeokgok with Korea generally, just as I conflate Seoul Subway Line 1 with the whole system. Well, like riding Line 6 for a while, staying in Suwon for a week has been a revelation. For one thing, people don’t look us up and down, or scowl nastily at us the way the used to in Yeokgok, or on Line 1. They …

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