Reviews for Korea

The average rating for Korea based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-11-07 00:00:00 Diane Laporte I'm glad I waited until I had been here a year to read this book. Simon Winchester writes about walking across South Korea over 20 years ago. Sometimes I glimpsed a Korea that no longer exists. South Korea is no longer under an authoritarian regime. There are not fences on all of the beaches. Jindo dogs are no longer confined to an island. A lot of what Simon saw, I see here today, which is a testament to Koreans' determination to hang onto their culture. I have to say I was pretty offended at times. Simon gets uppity about America's imperialism without a hint of irony (Simon, you're British.) He loves all the pretty girls who giggle, rub his arms, and give him lap dances (and am I really supposed to believe you kept your pants on the whole time?) without once mentioning Korea's ass backwards gender politics. On an interesting side note, every foreigner he meets who professes an undying love for Korea is a man, himself included. Just sayin. He admires Kim Il Sung, which is less shocking if you realize that South Korea was also being ruled by a dictator of sorts at the time. He has a simplistic view of the foreigners living in Korea: foreigners who stay forever are sages to be admired. People who are just stopping through are taking advantage and don't appreciate the culture. That being said, this book does paint an accurate portrait of Korea, a country with much to love and much to throw your hands up at.

Review # 2 was written on 2007-08-28 00:00:00 Lori Zennario I liked Outposts and Fracture Zone; Korea, however, was the end of line for me. Winchester makes a repeated point of how popular he is among South Koreans by virtue of his being English; that was snotty enough by the third go-round. He managed to find one old soldier, fawningly pro-British, as though the U K had been the ones who saved South Korea. What did me in was the time he arrived at a U S base, browbeat them into letting him stay there (when they didn't have to), and then proceeded to trash just about every single U S military person he ran across after accepting their hospitality. He also had a penchant for running into anti-American Koreans; you'd think they were rife, along with all of the many prostitutes throwing themselves at him. There's well-researched history here, although it didn't fully redeem the book for me.