Notebook on Cities and Culture
(Formerly The Marketplace of Ideas.) Colin Marshall sits down for in-depth conversations with cultural creators, internationalists, and observers of the urban scene all around Los Angeles and beyond.
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A Year in Seattle Preview: The Young Cynic with Peter Bagge
04/07/2015
A Year in Seattle Preview: The Young Cynic with Peter Bagge
In downtown Seattle, Colin talks with comic artist , creator of the legendary alternative comic series Hate, contributing editor and cartoonist at Reason magazine, and author of such graphic novels as Apocalypse Nerd, Other Lives, Reset, and Woman Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story. They discuss whether Seattle is still the place to be for the Buddy Bradleys of the world; the cheap "place to invent yourself" he first found there; the ever-increasing importance of place in his work, and its necessity in telling longer stories; how Seattle won out as a storytelling location versus the other "cities where hipsters gather"; what Seattle once looked like from his perspective in Manhattan; the feeling of a "pioneer town" then and now; how he found Seattleites who took the time to live elsewhere differed from Seattleites who'd never left, and what it has to do with the Seattle inferiority complex; the relationship between Seattle and the alternative comics scene; how he convinced his publisher Fantagraphics to come join him in Seattle, and how the town came subsequently to crawl with cartoonists; Buddy Bradley as a young cynic, and Seattle's accommodation of the young cynic; what the fictional life of Buddy Bradley and the real life of Margaret Sanger have in common, beginning with their premises of "doing exactly what they want to do"; which of Sanger's many accomplishments and battles (which she never fought on straight gender lines) he usually uses to explain her life; why Sanger's achievements in birth-control legalization became so important to all society; our transition out of ; the probable fate of bookstores, and how they might succeed through the social dimension; why conventions have become more important than ever to comics, and why cities have become more important than ever to life; the impossibility of the Spokane swinger; what taught him, especially about the ways the government itself holds back a potential revitalization; where he thinks Seattle goes too far, politically; why he prefers the monorail Seattle might have built to the light rail system it is building; whether governments just can't build transit right, or whether specifically American governments just can't do it right; what happens when anyone's shovel hits an Indian artifact in Seattle; and how to win mayoral office by campaigning against the inevitable.
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Notebook on Culture's year in Seattle Kickstarts now (for five days only)!
04/06/2015
Notebook on Culture's year in Seattle Kickstarts now (for five days only)!
If we raise its budget, we'll spend an entire year in Seattle: the city of grunge, Microsoft, Amazon, the Space Needle, Buddy Bradley, Archie McPhee, sleeplessness, Starbucks, and much more we'll discover through at least 52 in-depth conversations with its novelists, journalists, comic artists, filmmakers, broadcasters, explorers, academics, architects, planners, cultural creators, internationalists, observers of the urban scene, and more.
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Korea Tour: Opting for Korea with Brother Anthony
03/17/2015
Korea Tour: Opting for Korea with Brother Anthony
In an officetel in Seoul, Colin talks with Brother Anthony of Taizé, one of the most renowned translators of Korean poetry, president of the Royal Asiatic Society Korea Branch, and naturalized citizen of South Korea. They discuss the frequency with which he's heard "Why Korea?" in the 35 years since he first arrived as a member of Taizé; the Korean lack of belief that anybody would actually opt for Korea rather than their own homelands; what fills Korean taxi drivers with strong opinions; Korea's aging rural population versus Japan's even more aging rural population; the Seoul he arrived in in 1980, and how it compared with the Philippine slum in which he'd spent years previous; the "trickery and violence" involved in the city's redevelopment; how a "shame culture" deals with modernization (and especially with thatched roofs); how Japanese society accommodates a kind of "nonconformism" that Korean society doesn't; how he began translate Korean poetry, and why he got into poetry rather than other forms of Korean literature; how Korean fiction came into being after the war, and what it often lacks; how the concept of separation has been expressed as "the great Korean thing," and younger Korean writers' desire to get away from it; why "Koreans can't speak Korean"; the endless pattern drills he endured while studying Korean at Yonsei University; how he began "doing tea," and where in Asia the interest has taken him; how China has used Korea as a developmental model; why he isn't sure he wants to live in a "fascinating country"; how some foreigners love traditional Korean music and architecture while most Koreans themselves don't; whether Korea can gain the confidence it has long lacked; why we should rightfully be able to ride the train from Busan to Paris.
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Korea Tour: The Style of the Time with Matt VanVolkenburg
03/13/2015
Korea Tour: The Style of the Time with Matt VanVolkenburg
In Seoul's Sinchon district, Colin talks with Matt VanVolkenburg, author of , a blog on "Korean society, history, urban space, cyberspace, film, and current events, among other things." They discuss what it feels like to live in Seoul, of all places, without a smartphone; why navigating the city poses so much of a challenge to the newcomer; how he sees the relationship of the Korean media to foreign English teachers, "the new incarnation of the GIs"; what made it possible for the Korean media to talk freely about the acts of foreigners; the history of "Korea as a victim"; why non-English-teaching foreigners surprise Koreans; what makes some Koreans and foreigners alike see entry-level foreign English teachers as third-class citizens; the country's distinctive combination of overregulation and under-enforcement, and what it says about the difference between the legal cultures of Korea and North America; what he does on trips instead of hitting the beach; Isabella Bird Bishop, the 19th-century traveler and write from whom Gusts of Popular Feeling takes its name; why the collapse of the Sampoong Department Store didn't prevent the sinking of the Sewol; the writing of Percival Lowell and others who had more to comment on than dirtiness and superstition did about Korea in the late 19th century; the Chonggyecheon's very short history as a "clean stream"; James Wade, one of the more prolific English-language observers of postwar Korea; what he finds reading old Korean newspapers; his incredulousness at a foreigner's complaint that "you can't get cheese here"; the on the easiness of Korean women; the importance of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) to Korean relations with foreigners in the country; the fallout of "Dog Poop Girl"; the thorough change he's seen in the built environment of Seoul in his 13 years there, and what he notices about the less-developed cityscape revealed in old movies; Korea's relative lack of the geek and the nerd; and what word he really doesn't want to use when describing why he likes living in Korea.
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Korea Tour: Concrete Utopia with Minsuk Cho
03/09/2015
Korea Tour: Concrete Utopia with Minsuk Cho
In Seoul's Itaewon district, Colin talks with architect Minsuk Cho, principal at , designer of the Golden Lion-winning Korean pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2014. They discuss whether he talks about the use of space differently in English than in Korean; how copying, and especially while misinterpreting across cultural boundaries, counts as a way of creating; his earliest memories of Seoul's "building explosion" that grew the city tenfold over fifty years; the difference between current Seoul and the Seoul of his childhood; the "concrete utopia" in which he grew up, and how quickly it went away when the branded "high-density gated community" high-rises that now characterize the city rose; the book that set him on the path to architecture (even as his architect father didn't push him into the profession); the "toilet paper" life expectancy of Korean buildings; how he has reacted to the "bigger, higher, cheaper, faster" building ethos of Seoul; the "blessing" of so much building right up against so much nature; when Korea's dictatorship didn't want people to gather, and what effect that had on the built environment; his experience riding a Yellow Cab from LAX to Palm Springs; how Seoul passed through its "juvenile teenager phase," and what mistakes it made that compare to Los Angeles' onetime avoidance of density; the village fetish that has recently developed; what he felt in New York that made him cartwheel in the streets; why the flatness of Rotterdam bothered him when he worked for Rem Koolhaas; how Korea became, for him, a more appealing place to build things; Mass Studies' Pixel House in the recently developed city of Paju and the island of Jeju; the beginning of a reverse migration out of Seoul; Itaewon's varying role in the city as "a center that is also a void"; the importance of architecturally uniting North and South Korea in Mass Studies' Venice Biennale pavilion; and what he thinks of the prospects of actually reuniting, for architecture or otherwise.
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Korea Tour: It Takes a Lifetime with Michael Elliott
03/04/2015
Korea Tour: It Takes a Lifetime with Michael Elliott
In Seoul's Sinchon district, Colin talks with Michael Elliott, creator of the English-learning site for Koreans and the Korean-learning site for English-speakers . They discuss why Koreans insist on the difficulty of their own language; whether and why he considers Korean difficult; what it means that "there are so many different ways to say the same thing" in Korean; the perennial issue of saying "you" in Korean; the "native speaker's privilege" to go a little but out of grammatical bounds; why the Korean alphabet has displaced Chinese characters more or less entirely; why Koreans rarely acknowledge the language itself as a driver of interest in Korea; the different, more intense ways trends manifest themselves in Korea than in America; whether we can call English education in Korea a "craze," and why Koreans spend so much money on it to so little apparent result; the degree of parental involvement in English education and how "keeping up with the Joneses" drives it; the trouble with studying the languages of "poor countries" in Korea; the dominance of "the right way and the wrong way" in Korean thought; what it takes to make it to the highest level of Korean study, and why that sets off suspicion in Korean people; how tired he's grown of explaining to those "back home" why he went to Korea to study Korean in the first place; how he got an exemption not just from Korean trends but from American hipsterdom, or indeed any kind of "team"; how he came up with his ; what would happen to the Cheonggyecheon Stream if built in America; how he studied multiple levels of Korean at once; the importance of observation when learning languages, and the general resistance to it; the "little bit of a scoff" with which Koreans sometimes correct Korean-learners; and the sleep he loses on the rare occasion he says something incorrectly in Korean.
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Korea Tour: Ruled by the Heart with Andrew Salmon
03/01/2015
Korea Tour: Ruled by the Heart with Andrew Salmon
In Seoul's Susong-dong, Colin talks with Andrew Salmon, author of To the Last Round: The Epic British Stand on the Imjin River, Korea 1951; Scorched Earth, Black Snow: Britain and Australia in the Korean War, 1950; and All That Matters: Modern Korea. They discuss how Korean culture has influenced the names of his cats; the dullness of London by comparison to Seoul, especially in drinking term; the provocative positions he has taken, such as finding the Koreans "a little unfair toward the Japanese"; how he sees the conflict between Korea and Japan over the Dokdo islets; the "drab, miserable-looking" Seoul full of "fierce" people to which martial arts brought him in 1989; the Korean shift from diligence as the sole virtue to diversity of lifestyle; how Korea came to look like a place he could live; why he "wanted answers" from Korea since his time here began; how everything Korean, in this land "ruled by the heart, not the head," opposes everything English; the meaning of the 1988 Olympics and the 2002 World Cup as the "signposts" of modern Korea; the opening up of Korean national markets and Korea itself to international markets, resulting in the improvement of such native products as makgeolli; Korean sensitivity toward the awareness of "the Korean brand"; to what extent outside interest has shifted from North Korea to South; why editors don't tend to ask for the North Korea stories that matter; what happens if reunification day ever comes; what Korean students "simply don't learn" about their country's history; why plaques in Korea give dimensions of bricks rather than tell stories; what the Korea neophyte should know in order to contextualize everything else they learn about the country; the mismatch between Korea's "hardware" and its "software"; whether he hopes for a grand Korean deceleration; and what he's stopped dreaming about quite so much before his trips to Europe.
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Korea Tour: Gangbuk Style with Daniel Tudor
02/25/2015
Korea Tour: Gangbuk Style with Daniel Tudor
In Seoul's Hongdae district, Colin Marshall talks with Daniel Tudor, former Economist correspondent in Korea, co-founder of craft beer pizza pub chain , author of the books Korea: The Impossible Country, A Geek in Korea, and (with James Pearson) North Korea Confidential. They discuss the difference between Gangnam and Gangbuk style; the recently emerging trend toward Korean nostalgia, and what happens when you pull out an two-year-old mobile phone; what he discovered in Korea during the time of the 2002 World Cup; his time among the "studying machines" that constitute Korean youth, and why so few want to break from that hard-driving mode; education, especially abroad, as a means of "jumping the queue" back in Korea; the greater progressivism he's found among Koreans who've never left the country; why it matters when a foreigner voices the same criticism of Korea that Koreans think; whether he felt any fear of legal action when he publicly stated that Korean beer sucks; why Korean beer has continued to suck for so long; what it takes to get decent beer into Korea today; the "emotionalism" of Korean conversational style, and whether it plays in the wider world; to what extent Korea may westernize, given the presence of a certain "spineless love of all things American"; whether Korea's narrative of weakness can accommodate the country's new strength; what it was like writing for The Economist, a magazine newspaper given to short sentences, cynical humor, and an interest in "North Korea, North Korea, and sometimes North Korea"; where he still feels the presence of dictator Park Chung-hee, and the backlash to his "developmentalist" mindset that seems to have begun; the possibility of "de-Seoulification"; what he experiences on train trips that tells him too much has concentrated in Seoul; the parallels between Park Chung-hee and Margaret Thatcher; Korea's nature not as a conservative country, but as a country with a conservative veneer; the "natural socialism" that coexists in Korea with extreme capitalism; why Koreans believe their food too spicy for any foreigner to handle; why he hates even to hear the Korean term for "foreigner"; whether Korea can afford to continue burning so much energy on purely internal competition; the parallels between the chaebol system and North Korea; how soon a Pyongyang branch of The Booth would open after reunification; and what the English could stand to learn from the attitudes of the Koreans.
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Korea Tour: One Long Bike Party with Coby Zeifman
02/22/2015
Korea Tour: One Long Bike Party with Coby Zeifman
In Changwon, "Environmental Capital of South Korea," Colin Marshall talks with Coby Zeifman, former outreach coordinator for , the city's bike share system. They discuss what makes Changwon a cool town; why a feature like Nubija, despite its impressiveness, needed the kind of outreach he has tried his utmost to provide; Changwon's history as a manufacturing town for the conglomerate LG; what makes it a "Young City," including its plan modeled after Canberra; how the city expanded, and how Nubija expanded along with it; how he got to Korea in the first place, on nothing more than the advice of two friends who already lived there; how "livable" he found Changwon even at first; what makes Nubija inconvenient for foreigners; why so many services in Korea require a Korean cellphone; how Changwon's Nubija compares to Daejeon's Tashu; when he started to get the sense that he could not use Nubija, but contribute to it; how he began Changwon Bike Party (by "Tyler Durdening it"); where he's gone with the Bike Party he might not have gone otherwise; the scrutiny he underwent before Nubija let him help out; his experience learning bicycle repair, a subject he didn't know well, in Korean, a language he didn't know well; what Nubija's "smart" information technology architecture does for the system; whether Seattle, where he came from, has got ready to become a 21st century; the glories of the T-Money card; the assumption that certain public conveniences "wouldn't work in America"; 's theory of shining a light and scattering the cockroaches; what we can learn from New York City's solution to graffiti in subway cars; his imminent return to the United States, and the reverse culture shock for which he has prepared himself; his hopes for sustained carless "freedom and happiness" in America, and the multimodalism that still requires; how Korea's cycleability ranks overall; and what it takes to complete the country's Four Rivers Tour and receive the best souvenir of all of his time in Korea.
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Korea Tour: ¿Por Qué Corea? with Sofía Ferrero Cárrega
02/18/2015
Korea Tour: ¿Por Qué Corea? with Sofía Ferrero Cárrega
At a coffee house somewhere in Busan, Colin talks with Sofía Ferrero Cárrega, film critic and enthusiast of Korean cinema. They discuss whether she'd recommend other movie-lovers move to Busan; how the Busan International Film Festival attracted her to the city (and the importance of its parties); why, in Busan, "everybody says yes"; the state of Korean film criticism in Spanish; how she first encountered Korean cinema, and how its auteurs got her to know Korea; the bad first impression Korean culture can sometimes give on film; what happens when you mention kimchi in Argentina; why her move to Korea became inevitable; her experience of understanding nothing in Korea even after having studied the language for years before arriving; what makes the dialogue in Hong Sangsoo movies easier to understand than the dialogue in other movies (and why Korea struck her as a real-life Hong Sangsoo movie when she arrived); whether she feels a kinship with Isabelle Huppert's character in In Another Country; the shock of finding out that, in Korea, she's white; the understanding she gets by standing outside society, and the "healthy jealousy" she feels for those inside; the difference between Korean conception of history and the Argentine conception of history; how Korea's heavily advertised matchmaking services speak to the cultural importance of marriage; why to learn about a culture from its independent films, not his mainstream one; how Korean social life "flows" from one place to the next; the role of the Seoul International Women's Film Festival; what happened in the world of Korean film festivals in the wake of the Sewol disaster, and how all the elements aligned to match the national mood; what it felt like to live in a silent Korea; the strong identification within Korean generations; her critical interest in connecting Korean film to the conditions in Korean society; why she waited on reading about Korea until she'd lived here a while, then picked up 's The Koreans; the difficulty of explaining Korean food and drink to friends and family back in Argentina; the Korean penchant for "crowded" food and "crowded" web sites; how the culture has turned her "no"s into "ne"s; and what hour she (as well as the Argentine ambassador) woke up to watch the World Cup.
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Korea Tour: The Biggest Small Town with Jeff Liebsch
02/15/2015
Korea Tour: The Biggest Small Town with Jeff Liebsch
Near Busan's Kyungsung University, Colin talks with Jeff Liebsch, managing editor and partner at the magazine . They discuss what makes Korean baseball games more fun than baseball games in the West; the Toronto-Detroit sports divide in his hometown of Windsor; why a disproportionate number of the Westerners in Korea seem to have come from Canada; the difficulty of understanding Busan, and of leaving it; the traces of "country people" Busan's population has retained, even as it has supposedly turned international; the funniest Korean-film subtitle he's ever seen; how he learned to speak Korean without studying; how Busan Haps got started, and how he got involved; some of the strategies the magazine has used to attain prominence in the English-language media in Korea and abroad; how he observes people he spots reading the magazine; the importance of "beautiful pictures of food" to their Korean readership; the changing coffee situation in Busan, and what else has evolved since he arrived; the time when bars closed at midnight, and what it illustrated about how Koreans find away to get around everything; the mystery of how Busan once had seven beaches and no outdoor seating anywhere; what happens in Korean when someone gets a good idea for a business; the changes he now observes in the Korean beer scene (in all settings but the baseball stadium); Korean sports teams' ties to corporations, not cities; the reputation of the Lotte fan; his experience in Korea during the 2002 World Cup, when he first saw the Koreans "let loose"; how he felt during the "IMF" economic crisis, and what he thought when he saw Koreans turn in their own personal gold to save the country's economy; the Korean sense of collectivism versus the Western sense of collectivism; why Psyworld couldn't go international, and what its problems represent to him about Korea's "lack of a global vision" in some respects; what happens during the Busan International Film Festival, his favorite time of the year; the push to transform Busan into Korea's film center; the film events that go on in Busan even apart from the BIFF; the way people living in Busan tend to stick to ten percent of the city, and visitors tend not to see the "real" parts of it; how he makes sure to get the feeling of "actually being in a different country"; his experience working in Detroit, and whether it felt like a city with a future or a city without one; how he pronounces "process"; and what he likes about observing North America from a distance.
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Korea Tour: Midnight Riding with Chad Kirton
02/11/2015
Korea Tour: Midnight Riding with Chad Kirton
Colin sits down at Busan's eFM with broadcaster, teacher, rapper, and television star Chad Kirton, also known as Fusion. They discuss whether the setting gets him into Korean or English mode; how he came up with his show segment "Don't Trust the Dictionary"; what a "bunnyhug" is; how the Korean desire for perfection affects their acquisition of foreign languages; the danger of agreeing in Korean when you have no idea what people are saying; what he seeks out in Busan when he goes on television; what powers burnt eel can supposedly give you; why many Koreans seem to forget Busan exists; the perpetually educational nature of Korean media; how he travels for hardworking Koreans live vicariously through television; what constitutes his 16-hour workday; when he first came to Korea, studying tae kwon do in Pohang; how Korea sometimes brings out in the Westerner the desires they might not have let out at home; how bilingual broadcasting became his speciality, beginning with the English-learning show for which he phonetically memorized his Korean lines; his first night as The Midnight Rider; how his version of "Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner" works; the diversity of age he's discovered among his listenership; how he began rapping — in Korea, freestyle, on the air; how he keeps learning Korean when many long-term expatriates plateau; his first home in Korea, with frozen pipes and above a river of raw sewage; the way that Koreans seem able to feel each other's feelings; what it meant to him when he first experienced Busan's T.G.I. Friday's; what counts as Canadian food; how he answers questions about how Canadians do things; what he tells people who want to come to Korea and teach English; how you still have to start at the bottom in Korea, but why the bottom isn't so bad; the need to understand how to "think like a Korean"; his encounter with Koreans who lived in, of all places, Medicine Hat; how much time to spend in a foreign country to really internalize the culture; the similarities and differences between his radio, television, rapping, and teaching personalities; and the difficulty of avoiding all forbidden words (in both the English and Korean "swearing Rolodex") while freestyling on the radio.
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Korea Tour: Sexy Concepts with James Turnbull
02/08/2015
Korea Tour: Sexy Concepts with James Turnbull
In Busan's Daeyeon-dong, Colin talks with James Turnbull, author of , a blog on Korean feminism, sexuality, and popular culture. They discuss what Westerners find so unappealing about Korean plastic surgery; the associations of the "double eyelids" so often surgically created; why he used to believe that Koreans "want to look white"; the meaning of such mystifying terms as "V-line," "S-line," and "small face"; the uncommon seriousness about the Western-invented concept of the "thigh gap"; how corn tea became publicly associated with the shape of the drinker's jaw; Korea's status as the only OECD country with young women getting thinner, not fatter; Korean advertising culture and the extent of its involvement with the "minefield" of Korean irony; the prominence of celebrities in Korean ads, and why the advertisers don't like it; how long it takes to get tired of the pop industry's increasingly provocative "sexy concepts"; the result of Korea's lack of Western-style reality television; how making-of documentaries about 15-second commercials make the viewers feel closer to the celebrities acting in them; why he doesn't want his daughters internalizing the Korean sense of hierarchy; why an expat hates Korea one day and loves it the next; how much homework his daughters do versus how much homework he did; the true role of private academies in Korea, and what he learned when he taught at one himself; the issues with English education in Korea and the oft-heard calls for its reform; the parallels between English test scores and cosmetic surgery procedures; the incomprehension that greets students of the Korean language introduced to the concept of "pretending to be pretty"; and how to describe the way Korean superficiality differs from the Western variety.
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Korea Tour: Outsider Status with B.R. Myers
02/05/2015
Korea Tour: Outsider Status with B.R. Myers
At Busan's Dongseo University, Colin talks with North Korea analyst Brian Reynolds Myers, author of such books as A Reader's Manifesto and The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters. They discuss why South Koreans don't care about the Sword of Damocles that is North Korea; how Korea's capital-centricity looks from relatively far-flung Busan; why Koreans from outside Seoul seem to lack "local patriotism"; why Busan feels, to him, more like an "aggregation of apartment buildings than a community," but nevertheless like home; the benefits he enjoys of his outsider status in Korean society; the intellectual questions he can ask about Korea that a Korean couldn't; what makes the Koreans as an "ahistoric people," like the Greeks and unlike the Egyptians (and more Confucian societies); why he thinks Koreans should learn Indonesian, and why they refuse to; the difference between what Koreans tell themselves and what they tell the world; why so many fewer expatriates in Korea learn the language than in Japan or China, and what makes it so hard; how he got his Soviet Studies degree just before the Berlin Wall came down; what the reunification of Germany has to teach us about the reunification of Korea; how he became well-known among arch-conservatives for a piece on Korea's lack of "state spirit"; why he got his higher degrees in Germany, where they didn't make him go to classes; his arrival in Korea in the time of 9/11, and what took the most mental readjustment from then on; his trial by fire of lecturing at length about North Korea, in Korean; what South Koreans seem to think America is, and why it still attracts them; what it means to "behave like an American" in Korea; the "expiration period" on a foreigner's respectability; what he has come to value about Korean "flexibility"; the free-floating aggression he dislikes about America but doesn't sense in Korea; how he sees the literary pretension situation as having changed in the years since A Reader's Manifesto (and since e-books have taken off); why he hasn't fully engaged with Korean literature and cinema; and one of the highlights of his time in Busan, meeting Isabelle Huppert on the street; and whether he sees more differences or similarities emerging between North and South Korea in recent years.
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Korea Tour: Taking the Stage with Bruce Fulton
02/03/2015
Korea Tour: Taking the Stage with Bruce Fulton
Near the University of Seoul, Colin talks with Bruce Fulton, Young-Bin Min Chair in Korean Literature and Literary Translation in the Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia and, with his wife Ju-chan Fulton, half of an acclaimed Korean literary translation team. They discuss when Korean writers get too good at reflecting their own society; his first experience with Korea in the Peace Corps in 1978; his window past the military culture onto the rest of the culture; what he gained by his host family's running a restaurant; how the divide between city and countryside has changed since first he observed it from North Jeolla; when Korea's literature entered his life; how quickly world-class Korean stories started appearing in publication in the 20th century; why authors have had to "check in" with traditional subjects; the extent to which the Peace Corps expected him to learn Korean; why Koreans study english, and why that reason doesn't help them learn English; where you can still spot neo-Confucian tradition in Korean literature; what it means for a writer to "take the stage," and the contests they have to win to do it; what makes a writer like Kim Young-ha an anomaly; how much of a Korean connection Seattle and Vancouver have; the increasing number of non-Koreans he sees in his classes at UBC; whether and how Korean food has come up alongside Korean literature, and how their richness may have made them difficult; the iceberg whose tip current K-pop culture represents; the changes he notices between the Seoul he first saw and the one he sees today (and the things he notices haven't changed); whether Korean literature can help one understand Korea today; and which parts of Korean life Korean literature still captures well today.
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Korea Tour: Telling the Grayness with Krys Lee
01/27/2015
Korea Tour: Telling the Grayness with Krys Lee
In Seoul's Seodaemun-gu, Colin talks with Krys Lee, author of the story collection Drifting House. They discuss the impression of Korean life as a living hell; the way she prefers to mix the light and the dark; the "obsession with violence" that led her to write about a woman who longs to be beaten; "Koreanness" as Drifting House's accidental unifier; what brought her to identify with "the outsider"; her suspicions of "socialization in general"; why she thinks about what it would be like if one person simply told another, "I wish I were a raccoon"; whether one can keep a foot in reality and a foot "somewhere else" through solitude; the surprising presence in Korea of "ideas, strangeness," "girls who wear dog collars," and at least one person with a pet squirrel; her problem with genre boundaries; what makes her focus on "individuals both of and not of their culture"; her own pathway from Korea, then around the world and back to Korea again; the importance, in her time in the United Kingdom, of meeting not just other Koreans but artists; how she came to write about Korea's IMF period, one instance of her writing "driven by anger"; education as, at least theoretically, Korea's "grand equalizer"; why some Korean families who go to America pretend they aren't in America, and what Korean disasters observed from afar might make them feel; how she thinks about "getting it right" with North Korean characters; what surprises Koreans who leave and come back; the condition of the stranger in Korean culture; why some readers thought Drifting House must have had a "really good translator"; and whether a writer can use the western fascination with North Korea to pull them deeper into a real story, one that tells the "grayness."
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Korea Tour: Cool Koreania with Barry Welsh
01/23/2015
Korea Tour: Cool Koreania with Barry Welsh
In Seoul's Yangjae station, Colin talks with Barry Welsh, host of the and as well as professor at Sookmyung Women’s University. They discuss what Koreans know about the Isle of Man, the last place he lived; how he founded his now well-known book club; his literary encounters with the concept of han; how Kim Young-ha's I Have the Right to Destroy Myself introduced him to the real Seoul; how little time people have to waste in Korea versus how much they have on the Isle of Man; how his life in various parts of the British Isles prepared him for the kind of regional differences important in Korea; whether he endorses the view of Koreans as "the Irish of Asia"; what got him out of his homeland in the first place; the rich mundanity he experienced when he first came to Seoul; who turns up when the Book Club talks about North Korea; how Korean movies, especially older ones by auteurs of previous generations, have helped him get a grip on things in the country; howe he learned to interview writers; the first things he noticed about Seoul, such as the number of shops still open at 10:00 at night (and how that differs from his hometown of Auchterarder); with what authority he can speak on the matter of where "Scottish people eat spicy food"; how Koreans talk about "our country," but Scots don't; the stylistic difference in questions about books asked by Korean readers versus foreign readers; the feeling of safety of Seoul versus the ambient threat of Glasglow; the commonalities between "Cool Britannia" and the "Korean Wave"; his non-fandom of haggis; his perspective on the issue of Scottish independence from all the way over in Korea; the advantages of book club operation as a foreigner; and his impressions of the Korean generation represented by his students.
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Korea Tour: Eating It All Together with Daniel Gray
01/20/2015
Korea Tour: Eating It All Together with Daniel Gray
Right across the street from Seoul's Insadong district, Colin talks with Daniel Gray, creator of the site , proprietor of craft beer restaurants and Brew 3.15π, and for four years a partner at . They discuss his weariness of the term "Seoul food"; what part of Korean culture happens around the table; what goes into "Daniel Gray's Ultimate Food Tour"; the pre-existing perceptions food tourists bring about Korean cuisine; the two senses in which Koreans "eat everything together"; why Koreans ask not if foreigners want to eat Korean food, but if they can; how he grew up adopted in Delaware and decided to explore Korea only after college; his first encounter with Korea in adulthood, attempting to find breakfast in Gyeongju; whether any remnants of the Korean language remained in his mind from the first five years of his life; how he got started writing not about food, but about his experience seeking out his biological mother; the meals that made him realize he loved Korean food; the dishes that took him the most getting used to, especially Korea's "nostalgic foods" from the 1960s and 70s; the way Koreans use American cheese; the sugar on Korean garlic bread; the importance of balancing all the flavors; whether the average Korean has a higher awareness of food than the average Westerner; what happened to a pizzeria in Korea when it didn't serve pickles; what makes Brew 3.14π's pizza different; what a Korean gets when they want American food; why you can't badly criticize a restaurant in the Korean media, and how that made Seoul Eats a refreshing read; the difference in attitude toward (and ease of) opening one's own restaurant in Korea and America; how restaurants show their generosity with their side dishes; the foreigner's search for "real Korean flavor" and "authenticity" in general; where to go first to get a handle on eating in Seoul; why Korean food hasn't taken off in the wider world to the extent that, for example, Japanese food has, and what that might have to do with its lack of a unifying idea; the international barriers to entry of 떡볶이; the food experiences without which you cannot understand Korean food; what he learns about international Korean food from the stream of food tourists he's met; and how he introduced his American parents to Korean food.
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Korea Tour: Korean Dreams with Alex Jensen
01/17/2015
Korea Tour: Korean Dreams with Alex Jensen
In Seoul's Itaewon district, Colin talks with Alex Jensen, host of weekday news show This Morning on TBS eFM. They discuss whether he envisions who he's talking to when he's talking on-air; what first strikes him about the Tube whenever he goes back to London; when he very first took to the airwaves; how much he knew about the existence of English broadcasting in Korean when he headed there in pursuit of the probable love of his life; how he developed his professional broadcasting life in Korea through "friends of friends"; what put him off music radio, and "the full breadth of life" offered by current-events radio; his grasp of the "raw emotions" of Korean, and how they came into play when he reported the sinking of the Sewol (and how it compared to his newsroom experience during the London bombings of 2005); his preference of fairness over neutrality; how the movies introduced him to the depth of Korean sentiment; why Seoul doesn't confront you with packs of drunken fifteen-year-olds on the way home; what Korean freedom consists of today; whether he, too, has a "Korean dream"; his very first impressions of Seoul, and how he sought out similarities to London while receiving them; the utmost importance of simply getting to know people; how much an English-speaking job impedes the learning of Korean; why Korea has so much English radio in the first place; the culture that develops in major media not in a country's dominant language; the questions he can ask that a Korean might hesitate to; the sensationalism over North Korea in foreign media versus the shrugging in South Korea; how different Itaewon, where he lives, feels from the rest of Korea; where he sees the emergence of a more international Korea; where to find the best British food in Seoul; and how having a long, large-scale media conversation with Korean society has helped him integrate into it.
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Korea Tour: Cowboys and Yangban with Charles Montgomery
01/14/2015
Korea Tour: Cowboys and Yangban with Charles Montgomery
In Seoul's Haebangchon district, Colin Marshall talks with Charles Montgomery, professor in the English Interpretation and Translation Division of Dongguk University, editor of the site , and global ambassador of Korean literature in translation. They discuss the first Korean books that excited him; the mistakes he made in choosing his first works of Korean literature to read; the significance of bestseller authors Kim Young-ha and Shin Kyoung-sook; the impossibility of getting around the literary prize system, and how that suppresses genre; how the substantial literature of the Korean War compares to what literature America has of its own Civil War; how his Korean best friend influenced the course of his professional life; why he burnt out as a marketing director and how it led him to Korea; the intense nature of Korean emotional bonds (and the intensity of their absence); why you have to treat everyone in the United States as a "potential shooter"; what happens when you read Korean literature with an understanding of the culture; whether Americans can ever internalize the Korean sense of obligation to society; how much Korean literature makes it into English; the idea that, to write for foreigners, a Korean writer somehow becomes less Korean; the popularity of Haruki Murakami in Korean translation; how he got "inside the elbow"; America and Korea as cultural antidotes to one another; why cities back in the U.S. seem to lag so far behind those of Korea; how one translated bestseller "drags" the rest of its country's literature behind it; how Dalkey Archive handled Korean literature; the Korean preference for short stories and novellas over full-length novels; the insights into Korean society that literature still gives him; why Korean characters seem to lack agency; what Western literature he likes; which Korean writers have a tantalizing amount of work still untranslated; why Koreans have considered so many elements of their culture unknowable to foreigners; the exalted status of the 작가님; the signs that will let us know Korean literature has made it; and what stands a chance of becoming Korea's geisha, chrysanthemum, sword, sushi, and Shinjuku.
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Korea Tour: Dive Right In with Steve Miller
01/11/2015
Korea Tour: Dive Right In with Steve Miller
In Anyang, Colin talks with , creator of the podcast, and the vlogger formerly known as QiRanger. They discuss whether he notices what goes on on around him has he records himself on video on the streets of various countries; the suburbs of Seoul versus the suburbs of Phoenix; the possible pronunciations of "QiRanger"; why he lives in Asia, and in this moment Korea; whether he researched Korea beforehand or just plunged in; when and why he made his first video ever; how his travel videos came as a natural extension of old family slideshows; the origin of his "walk-and-talk" videos, in which he does exactly that; the usefulness of neighborhood maps in Korean subway stations, especially when they got calorie counts added to them; why he enjoys Korean food in the Philippines so much; his experience as a tall white guy with a shaved head in a homogenous Asian country, and how his youth at a black school prepared him for it; how he got into news podcasting; , where he lives, and how business models become brief crazes in Korea; the planning for failure Koreans don't tend to do; his Korean foods of choice; the difference between 신천 and 신촌; his success rate with Mexican cuisine in Korea; how to think about the Philippines; the inevitable video-making that happens on his vacations; what a GoPro actually is; they myth about foreigners in Korea he'd most like to explode; the motivation his Star Trek-watching childhood instilled in him; why he wants to stop teaching basic English in Korea, and why students of English there rarely learn to communicate well; why he thinks Asia is so important, and how he thinks it enriches those who come to it.
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Korea Tour: Humans of Seoul with Keith Kim
01/06/2015
Korea Tour: Humans of Seoul with Keith Kim
In Seoul's Hongdae district, Colin talks with , creator of the travel and culture site . They discuss how Birkenstocks became the dominant Korean trend in the summer of 2014; what a gyopo is, and what it means to live in Korea as one; his ability to present himself as both a Korean and a foreigner; the Korean expectations to which he can least adhere; how little the old and the young understand one another in Korea; how the tattoo and smoking situation has changed in society since he first arrived; what he found when he first visited Korea during the celebratory time of the 2002 World Cup; the difficulty of finding a coffee shop in Apgujeong not attached to a plastic surgery clinic; why Koreans assume certain personality traits correlate with certain facial features; why you can do "Humans of New York", but you couldn't do "Humans of Seoul"; the advantages of "not counting" in Korean society; the power of "Korean stink eye"; why he chose to live in Japan as well; the old people who freely touch foreigners on the train; what most clashes with his American side, especially in the realm of dating; what makes more sense in Korean society than in American; the varying attitudes toward parental wisdom in Korea and America; how a foreigner can know Seoul better than a Korean; what foreigners tend to do wrong in Korea; the difference between American and Korean suburbs; why he wants a back yard; the death of "the American dream," and why his Korean-born Americanized dad wants to return to Korea from his own; his desire to live in Thailand; the single idea of beauty that has taken hold in Korea, and why the population may, ultimately, just want to look the same; his coterie of "international people" in Seoul, and how much they usually like the city; the Korean demand for opinions; how to avoid becoming a bitter expat in Seoul; why he folds his clothes like a Japanese housewife; and whether he'd base himself in New York, Seoul or Tokyo if he had to choose right now.
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Korea Tour: Doing Korea with Chance Dorland
01/03/2015
Korea Tour: Doing Korea with Chance Dorland
In Seoul's Hongdae district, Colin talks with , radio- and podcast-hosting expat in countries like Germany, Colombia, and now South Korea, currently of Groove magazine's , TBS eFM's "Chance Encounters" segment, and . They discuss the one thing that unites Americans; the origins of his Korean podcasting career; whether people knew what the Peace Corps was after he got out of the Peace Corps; why he rejected both Los Angeles and New York; how he made peace with growing up in a small Iowa town, despite what he never got to learn there; mudding; what it felt like, growing up, to meet someone who had been to a major city; how he acquired a "fake family"; what, in adolescence, he somehow "knew" America had more of than any other country; the affliction that made class attendance difficult; when he realized Boston, where he went for college, doesn't count as a big city; the enthusiasm for World War II that got him applying to go to Germany; the comparative lack of user-friendliness in major American cities; what he doesn't have to deal with in Seoul; the simultaneous fall of traditional media and rise of new media; how Korea opened the opportunity to form band after band; the general low quality of so many people working in the American media; how he got out of English teaching and into radio; where his desire to work with poor people led him; why the Peace Corps lies, and how he wound up getting the wrong medication in their time with them; where to find Korean food in Des Moines; why he wants to do radio "in a booth," and why that may prove more attainable in Korea than elsewhere; how he started reporting for TBS eFM; the obstacles to getting a job as a foreigner with no Korean wife or Korean heritage; and how foreigner occupational diversity might benefit Korea.
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Korea Tour: Why Is This Here? with Nikola Medimorec
12/31/2014
Korea Tour: Why Is This Here? with Nikola Medimorec
On the Seoul Floating Islands, Colin talks with Nikola Medimorec, co-author of , an English-language blog on transport, urban planning, and development projects around Korea. They discuss the first Korean city he ever experienced, and what introduction it gave him to both the country's festival culture and its development culture; what makes the transit different in Asia than in elsewhere; the installation he witnessed of glass panels on the subway platforms, and how that not just prevents suicides but improves the riding experience; the question that got him studying geography in the first place; the success of his posts on KTX stations he wrote in his first, German-language blog, and how that led to Kojects; why he most enjoys writing about Korean bicycle infrastructure, now that it has become possible to bike there; the difference between cycling in Korea and cycling in Germany, where he grew up; how old Korean men all listen to the radio on their bicycles; how he plunged right into his studies at Seoul National University, including a statistics class in Korean; how the took over his life; the cities that most fascinate him outside of Seoul; his impressions of the new-built "city from scratch" of and the , "an alien spaceship landed in the middle of Seoul"; the current Seoul mayor's aversion to all big projects, especially the "ugly" DDP; the ongoing controversy of the ; whether a project like the can allow for commerce on the street (and especially street food); his initial surprise at all the people on the streets in Seoul, and the changing reasons they've come out to the streets; where to look for a pojangmacha, and why having to search for them is a problem in itself; the domestic culture of Germany versus the urban culture of Korea; what impresses German friends when the come visit Korea; what Korean cities could learn from European ones; whether Korea has any more large-scale projects remaining in the future; how older European buildings have become favored, while even 25-year-old buildings in Korea have badly deteriorated and await redevelopment; what the new "phallus symbol" of the Lotte World Tower (in which he once saw a fire) demonstrates, and why he doesn't care about that kind of skyscraper; whether Korean 빠리 빠리 culture results in a shoddy built environment; why he couldn't do a Kojects-style blog in Germany; Kojects' reliance on Korean sources, and how that separates it from other English-language sites observing Korean cities; how much of his mastery of Korean comes directly from reading about transport and urban development; his preferred methods for first exploring a city; what you notice when you walk in Seoul; and the story behind the Seoul Floating Islands on which they sit.
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Korea Tour: Forbidden Places with Jon Dunbar
12/28/2014
Korea Tour: Forbidden Places with Jon Dunbar
At a bar by the train tracks near Yongsan, Colin talks with Jon Dunbar, urban explorer, editor of long-running Korean punk zine Broke in Korea, and author of . They discuss the difference between a Korean abandoned place and a Canadian abandoned place; how Seoul got re-inhabited after the war; the development of poor "moon villages" on the hillsides; how he defines "urban exploring," and why he dislikes that name; the urban renewal process that causes the abandonment of neighborhoods; the hired goons who harass people to leave areas slated for demolition; how big a city all the abandoned buildings he's visited would constitute by themselves; his experience in the tunnel from The Host; what it means to explore Korea's abandoned/disputed/places as a foreigner, and the difficulty of getting Koreans interested in urban exploration; the time he ran into a man collecting scrap metal, and why that man felt embarrassment for his country; the difference between the Korea he came to, which had both grass huts and high-rises, and Korea today; why so many buildings in Seoul have reached such an advanced state of decrepitude so quickly; what he prefers about North Korean architecture to South; what most high-rises in Seoul stand on the ruins of; his discovery of the Korean punk scene, and why he needed to confirm its existence before he came to live; the lower level of violence and higher level of musicianship in Korean punk; how he got to work for an organization like the Korean government; the ominousness of a presidential promise to promote "the happiness of the people"; the meaning of han, why the government now wants to eradicate the concept, and how pansori reggae expresses it; the change in Seoul mayors that brought about a change in major Seoul building projects; the significance of the new Dongdaemun Design Plaza and the politics involved in building it; how, rather than declining, Korea has "improved in every way" since he turned up; his life in Bukcheon hanok village, and how its old-style houses have become more coveted in recent years; whether Korea can shake the idea of "old = bad"; where in Korea he witnessed a funk brawl; and the way to "use your unfamiliarity as a tool" in a place like Korea.
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Korea Tour: Shapeshifter with Stephane Mot
12/24/2014
Korea Tour: Shapeshifter with Stephane Mot
In Seoul's Sinchon district, Colin talks with , "conceptor," writer of fiction, nonfiction, "nonsense," and author of the blog as well as the collection . They discuss Paris as a "recurring hero" of literature and Seoul as a "shapeshifter" glimpsed from different angles in different stories; how he got involved in the early days of internet gaming, surviving three startups in three years; the French embassy job that brought him to Seoul in 1991; why he prefers winter in Seoul to winter in Paris; the difficulty of walking in Seoul when first he got there; the first of the city's "villages" that convinced him to explore more; what kind of relationship with Paris he has as a ninth-generation Parisian, and what it has gained by his becoming a partial outsider; when he first began writing about Korea; why of the two important subjects of love and death, he sticks to death; his "Borgesian experience" of discovering the internet; the subjects to which he finds himself returning in Seoul over and over again; why he writes in both French and English; his definition of a city as a scar; what he sees happening to the Korean social fabric, and how it works differently in France; the difference between the new-built urban places of Songdo and La Défense; what happens when a city has "no place for storytelling"; why he searches maps for crooked streets; what got the cars out of Sinchon; his "biggest shame," his relationship with the Korean language, which keeps its learners thinking they've never learned enough; his skill with "Korean silence"; the Seoulite's constant grieving for what has disappeared, or what will soon disappear; why he writes about the "gaps" on the maps; how having one's own fictional Seoul prevents insanity; how more people now really come from Seoul, resulting in new senses of belonging and identity; the emerging schizophrenia between the "Korean wave" and Korean tradition; what remains unformed in Seoul to keep him awake; the reasons to hope offered by the increasing consciousness of and affection for Seoul; and the possible end of the "lemming race" to the capital.
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Korea Tour: The Jokes Come Last with Darcy Paquet
12/21/2014
Korea Tour: The Jokes Come Last with Darcy Paquet
In Seoul's Garosu-gil, Colin talks with Darcy Paquet, critic of Korean film, founder of and the , author of New Korean Cinema: Breaking the Waves, teacher, and occasional actor. They discuss why movies have a hard time capturing Seoul; the unusual way the Park brothers' captures the city; how Cold Eyes relocated a Hong Kong story into Seoul; how, after arriving in Korea in 1997, he got to know the city in step with getting to know the cinema; how he knew Seoul would grow dramatically as soon as he got there, but how nobody expected the Korean film industry would grow so much; why, right when Korean culture started going worldwide; Korean filmmakers were ready; which Korean movies Koreans tried to steer foreigners away from, and which they themselves have returned to more recently; what strengths older Korean films whose makers had to "fight the system" have that modern ones don't; how effectively one can ready oneself for Korean life with Korean film; the size of Korea's cinematic iceberg beneath the tip of Oldboy, Shiri, Snowpiercer, and the like; the less-defined border between Korea's mainstream theaters and its "art houses"; what happens when Korean directors go Hollywood to make movies like The Last Stand and Stoker; what part movies (and associated pursuits) have played in helping him master the Korean language; the kind of diversity Korea has as revealed in cinema; the meaning of modernized hanok; why the last twenty minutes of Korean movies are so often just crying; the importance of Chilsu and Mansu, the first film that stepped in after the relaxation of censorship to make a political point; the sort of political criticism expressed in more recent movies like The President's Last Bang and The Attorney; whether he feels more critical freedom than would a Korean; how Korean producers have done less to "protect directors from the money" these days; the "difference of opinion on objectivity and subjectivity" between Korea and the west as expressed in documentaries and their switch from "we" to "I"; what filmmaking techniques work on him now that wouldn't have when he first came to Korea (and which still don't); whether films have yet begun to take him back to his previous years in Seoul; what he sees when he revisits Christmas in August, one of the first Korean films he ever saw; how much of the Korea ahead, the country his sons and their generation of Koreans unlike those the world has known before will grow up in, he can see in the movies.
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Korea Tour: Stickers, Starcraft, Success with Danny Crichton
12/18/2014
Korea Tour: Stickers, Starcraft, Success with Danny Crichton
In Seoul's Sinchon district, Colin talks with , researcher and writer on regional innovation hubs and a . They discuss the hardest thing about being a Korean entrepreneur; what the concentration of Seoul has facilitated about Korean innovation; how he got from an interest in China "because it's China" to a more fully developed interest in Korea; what happened to Sony, and thus Japan; how he responds to the current Korean of question, "Is this really a developed country?"; how people have stopped putting up with the country's corruption, perhaps one of the drivers of its astonishing growth; how the ideas of the "heterodox" economist Ha-joon Chang apply to all this; why the concept of the subway-station "virtual grocery store" caught his eye; why Silicon Valley is so much more boring than Seoul; the significance of Kakaotalk and its abundance of purchasable "culturally ambiguous stickers"; why so many things, like playing Starcraft in stadiums, seem only to work in Korea; how Korea got a highway torn down in eight weeks; what thinking led to the new city of Songdo 43 train stops outside Seoul, and what it proves, negatively, about how "people want to live near other people"; why you can't just "build innovation"; how he found both ; organic agglomeration versus the deliberate agglomeration the Korean government has tried to incentivize; the country's distinctive capitalist-socialist "hybrid model"; whether the government can really pick winners; how much advantage hugeness gives a country these days; what he learned from Singaporean entrepreneurs, who have to go straight to the global market, and why the United States hasn't had to think globally; his early exposure to Silicon Valley culture, and how he got interested in the connections between universities, industries, and government; how the strength of America's universities, even today, remains the country's strength; how the idea of "what Korea needs" still has more traction than the equivalent in the U.S., though less than it did in the past; whether Americans have begun to realize that they can find opportunities in other countries; why Americans cling so tightly to the decade or two after the Second World War as if it were the rightful state of things; what comparisons he can make between the challenges facing San Francisco and those facing Seoul; the "pragmatic urban development philosophy" in Seoul versus the "almost religious zealot" one in San Francisco; the difference between cities that think of the future as good, and those that don't; why he thinks "a little bit about Thailand"; why strategically wrong choices don't persist in Korea quite as long as in America; whether Korea can cure it's "education fever" and resultant title culture; and the greater effect Korea's laws have on its entrepreneurs than its culture does.
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Korea Tour: Wormholing with Charlie Usher
12/15/2014
Korea Tour: Wormholing with Charlie Usher
Not far from Seoul's Anam station, Colin talks to Charlie Usher, author of the blog and the book 찰리와 리즈의 서울 지하철 여행기 (Charlie and Liz's Seoul Subway Travelogue). They discuss the first subway stations his life in Korea revolved around; the identity of Liz, the photographer in Charlie and Liz; what makes the Seoul subway system the best framework in which to get to know the city; the impressive integration of the subway with the city itself, meaning that city life doesn't stop at the station entrance; whether he began with any methods and systems for documenting his subway travel; how the whole project came about through "a sense of guilt"; which stations, in and of themselves, make for cool Seoul places; why the concept of shopping in a stations surprises Americans; where, and whether, urban Seoul ends and suburban Seoul begins; how he came to understand Seoul's role as the focal point of Korea; when he realized Seoul Sub→urban had taken him where he wouldn't have gone before, and not into the Seoul repetitive blandness of stereotype; when he realized his work interested Koreans as well; how Korea has made him appreciate the diversity of the United States, even in his home state of Wisconsin, and how he has come to appreciate the "deep sense of community" in Korea; why public transit never took hold in the same way in America as it did in Asia; how much of a longing he can develop for whatever lies beyond the train lines; the different Seoul you see depending on the mode of transportation you use; the lack of any good reason for which he first came to Korea after graduation, except for the teacher-exchange program at his university; how his aunt and uncle preceded him to Korea by coming to the more "brutish" Seoul for the 1988 Olympics; what he's noticed about which languages subway announcements come in at which stops; the change in ridership demographics and advertisements from line to line; why you see white guys on Line 6; whether he uses subways as the framework for understanding other cities as well; his short but extremely deep experience on the Pyongyang metro; what about Seoul still surprises him after seven years there; how many of greater Seoul's 500-ish subway stations he's explored; the newly built lines whose openings he even now anticipates; the distinctive bouquets that appear whenever anything has its ribbon cut; when not exploring Korea through its transit, how he explores it through its food; the recent explosion in Seoul coffee shops, which more than freed him from the need to board a train to get to one; and what it felt like to see the fruit of his labors become a Korean-language book.
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Korea Tour: Literary Aejeong with Gregory Limpens
12/12/2014
Korea Tour: Literary Aejeong with Gregory Limpens
Above Seoul's Itaewon district, Colin talks with acquiring editor Gregory Limpens. They discuss what kind of foreign literature Koreans like to read, and their loyalty to authors they've already enjoyed; how the mission of Open Books fits into shaping that taste; how he got from growing up in Belgium to bringing foreign literature in Korea (and practicing trademark law somewhere in the middle); what about his first, traveling impressions of Seoul stoked his desire to live there; his impression of the future-orientation of Korea versus the historical orientation of Belgium; the nature of "Brusselization"; how he discovered the traditional Korean sensibility of not showing off (and how he sees that changing); whether the multilingualism of his homeland helped him get in the frame of mind to learn Korean; the widening vase as a metaphor for language acquisition; whether Koreans have any particular expectations of Belgians, and where they fit into the apparent hierarchy of foreigners in Korea; what happens at the Seoul International Book Fair, and why Belgium may never get an invitation as its guest nation of honor; what happens when he tries to recommend a browser something at the Open Books booth, and why that can be a discouraging practice in Korean culture; what he knows about translation that makes him always want to read books in the original language; how "l'exception française" has produced a great deal of literature; how often he meets Korean French-speakers; how a Korean Belgian waffle differs from a Belgian Belgian waffle; his sole moment of homesickness in a decade of life in Korea; the changes in his responses to his own periodic assessment, "Why do I like it here?"; what has made him lose confidence in his grasp of Korean literary taste; why Hitler remains a big thematic name in Europe, but probably wouldn't play in Korea; the success of Korean "fables for adults"; his pride in Open Books bringing out titles like Michel Houellebecq's Atomized, and the literary aejeong he feels for ones like his countryman Dimitri Verhulst's The Misfortunates; how writers react to seeing their novels in Korean translation; how much Korean readers care about book design; how Korean bookstores feel different.
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