Part memoir, part miscellany, My Korea is based on the author’s forty-five years of cross-cultural experience in Korea which he witnessed emerging from its primitive culture of the 1960s to its position as a modern, dynamic state and one of the major players in world economics today. For new arrivals and old hands alike, it provides a humorous, anecdotal introduction to the “Land of the Morning Calm”—everything, in fact, a foreigner needs to know to survive and even thrive in an alien culture.
Essays, poems, and stories illustrate life in old Korea, from the classical Yangban’s Tale, which shows class distinctions in traditional society, to the hilarious Hogyun’s Tale, which shows how a business man should approach the problem of making money in Korea. There are essays on Confucianism and Buddhism and on Korean language and Korean literature.