{"id":2348,"date":"2014-07-30T06:40:15","date_gmt":"2014-07-30T13:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=2348"},"modified":"2014-07-30T06:40:15","modified_gmt":"2014-07-30T13:40:15","slug":"koream-magazine-profiles-me-and-my-relationship-to-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=2348","title":{"rendered":"KoreAm magazine profiles me and my relationship to Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n

A white guy living in L.A. like it\u2019s Seoul. That\u2019s Colin Marshall. Living in the Koreatown district of Los Angeles, a city where people drive to the park to take a walk, his main form of transportation is his two feet.<\/p>\n

Marshall recently traveled across South Korea, from Seoul to Changwon to Busan, for six weeks and\u00a0wrote a five-part series for\u00a0The Guardian<\/em><\/a>\u00a0about his observations of the country. It\u00a0was the Seattle native\u2019s first time visiting\u00a0Korea,\u00a0though his depth of knowledge on its culture and current events makes him seem like a frequent visitor there, if not a native.<\/p>\n

Marshall, 29, speaks conversational Korean. He has been studying the language ever since he got\u00a0hooked on Korean films during his youth.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0met with Marshall, who had just returned from Korea, at a Koreatown cafe, and he shared his thoughts on Korea\u2019s forward-thinking disposition, disregard for red lights and why the East Asian nation is\u00a0\u201cso close\u201d to being the perfect country.<\/p>\n

How was Korea?
\n<\/strong>That was actually my first time, but it wasn\u2019t really surprising to me. I\u2019ve been living in Koreatown here and studying Korean and all that, so it wasn\u2019t like a shock. I was already familiar with the surroundings. People say that Koreatown here is like Seoul of 20 years ago. I saw a lot of similarities. In a way, some Koreans here are actually more conservative than the ones in Korea. They come to America and keep the level of conservatism they had back home, whereas the country itself has gotten more progressive.<\/p>\n

You were born and raised in Seattle. What made you want to move to Koreatown in L.A.?
\n<\/strong>Language practice and Korean food. It\u2019s also the densest neighborhood in L.A. That affords you a lot of advantages. I can walk everywhere. It\u2019s usually walking, train or biking.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve traveled in and written about London, Copenhagen, Osaka and Mexico City. What\u2019s special about Korea?
\n<\/strong>Seoul is always forward-thinking and changing. That\u2019s really nice. To an extent, it\u2019s almost bothersome because the past isn\u2019t always bad [laughs]. But to better understand that, you have to realize that to Korea, the past is poverty. It\u2019s unpleasant. So it\u2019s always looking forward. Europe is all about protecting what\u2019s already there. And what\u2019s there is often pretty nice, too. I mean, in London, a couple of those subway lines are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole thing at KoreAm<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A white guy living in L.A. like it\u2019s Seoul. That\u2019s Colin Marshall. Living in the Koreatown district of Los Angeles, a city where people drive to the park to take a walk, his main form of transportation is his two feet. Marshall recently traveled across South Korea, from Seoul to Changwon to Busan, for six […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9,20,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-korea","category-los-angeles","category-press","category-seoul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2348"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2350,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2348\/revisions\/2350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}