Reviews for Koreans: Who They Are, What They Want, Where Their Future Lies

The average rating for Koreans: Who They Are, What They Want, Where Their Future Lies based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-01-16 00:00:00 Jay Margolis In strict geographical terms, I've only been in Korea for a few months now, but psychologically, I've been here for years. Back in Canada, I was dealing with Koreans on a daily basis. I worked for Koreans, taught Koreans, befriended Koreans, got drunk with Koreans, slept with Koreans, had screaming matches with Koreans, and was treated with baffling kindness by the very same Koreans. Somehow, these wonderful, exasperating people slowly took over my life. But they're like that. They get under your skin, in both senses of that ambiguous idiom. So, even though I don't always agree with him, I get where Michael Breen is coming from. In The Koreans (clever title, that), he obsesses like a mystified lover about what makes his subjects tick. My only major complaint with the book is that, having been published in 1998, it's already out of date. Like Baudelaire's Paris, this country changes more quickly than the human heart. (Unlike Baudelaire's Paris, it has free wifi). Still, Breen is a sympathetic, well-informed observer, and if he's not exactly a brilliant stylist, he's a good explainer. There were quite a few passages where I found myself going, "Oh, so that's why they're like that." According to Breen, it's a cliché among Asia-watchers that Koreans are the Irish of the East. I'd never heard that before, but it makes sense in a way. If anything, Koreans have even more reason than the Irish to feel pissed-off and hard-done-by, at least as far as 20th-century history goes. First there was the brutal Japanese occupation'which still rankles, mostly because the Japanese remain so clueless about it'and almost as soon as that was over, a bitter, fratricidal war that left millions dead. Horrible as it was, the war decided precisely nothing: the psychotic North was still slavering away just across the DMZ. Then came a decade or two of grinding, third-world poverty (Lee Myung-bak, the current president of South Korea, was so poor growing up that he was sometimes forced to eat the rice pulp left over from distilling soju; he'd go to school half-drunk.) After that, things were pretty ho-hum for a while: just the usual run of dictatorships, assassinations, uprisings... What's so admirable about Koreans, though, is that they collectively said, "Fuck it. Let's get to work." With manic energy, they dragged their country out of the stone age and turned it into a thriving, hypermodern democracy - in a single generation. Out of nothing, really nothing. It's one of the feel-good stories of the 20th-century. Hell, it's one of the feel-good stories of human history. So whenever I'm tempted to sneer at Koreans for their crass materialism or whatnot, I have to tell myself to cut them some slack. I mean, what has my country been doing these last sixty years? Pounding beers and watching the Leafs. Christ.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-07-10 00:00:00 Alex Jones As soon as I saw the title 'The Koreans', I really wanted to read this book. I have been wondering about how the Korean history, culture, and people are reflected on the 'foreign eyes', as I was born in Korea and raised in this country. One thing that I'm really proud of this country is that we have always overcome difficulties then showed 'miracles' to the world. Korean schools have taught me that the Han Bando(Korean Peninsula) is not just a small country, and we are living in the country that gives helps started from the country who were given help. I could learn so many things from this book and some of them were shameful. Shameful history, behaviors, and culture - they were very familiar to me, but somehow they made me embarrassing. It's true that we were not always good. Actually, I've seen so many shameful parts of Korea, such as racists, and my friends who are so ignorant about history. I think I wasn't paying attention to them that much before I read this book, and this book opened my eyes to see them. Reading this book, I kept questioning, "How does this foreign guy know so much about my country? Why did he 'analyze' us? Does the author really understand the hardships from the dark period of Korean history?". To be honest, I didn't feel great for the whole time, because he 'analyzed' us. However, everything was the fact. They made me look back on myself. Many foreigners(or even Koreans) question how Korea developed in 'that' speed, and why we are separated into 2 countries. I recommend this book if you want to find the answer to the questions about Korea, or if you want to understand and love Koreans.