{"id":4983,"date":"2020-04-14T17:29:44","date_gmt":"2020-04-15T00:29:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=4983"},"modified":"2020-04-14T17:29:44","modified_gmt":"2020-04-15T00:29:44","slug":"korea-blog-british-denmark-expat-michael-booth-takes-the-measure-of-korea-in-three-tigers-one-mountain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=4983","title":{"rendered":"Korea Blog: British Denmark Expat Michael Booth Takes the Measure of Korea in “Three Tigers, One Mountain”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Michael Booth\u2019s\u00a0Three Tigers, One Mountain\u00a0<\/em>isn\u2019t a book about Korea, but in a sense it contains a book about Korea. Subtitled\u00a0A Journey through the Bitter History and Current Conflicts of China, Korea, and Japan<\/em>, it takes on an entire region in the form of a travelogue driven by one question: \u201cWhy can\u2019t the nations of east Asia get on?\u201d Commissioned last year to review the book for another publication, I had enough space to deal with its largest emergent theme, the origin and persistence of anti-Japanese sentiment in Asia, but not to get into depth on Booth\u2019s treatment of any one tiger in particular. Japan has drawn on-again-off-again interest in Western publishing since the days of Lafcadio Hearn, and in recent years almost too much has been said about the rise of \u201cthe Dragon.\u201d But the rarity of books on Korea, even these days when the place makes political, economic, and cultural news, compels me to consideration even when Korea shares a book with other countries.<\/p>

Though the English-language press now gives space to Korea, much of that space is occupied by the same subjects as if they\u2019re set on repeat: the increasing global popularity of\u00a0K-pop<\/a>, K-dramas, and the rest of the \u201cKorean Wave\u201d; the dominance of hulking corporate\u00a0chaebol\u00a0<\/em>like Samsung, Hyundai, and LG; the discomfiting enthusiasm for\u00a0plastic surgery<\/a>\u00a0among Koreans; the periodic resurfacing of\u00a0South Koreans\u2019 animus toward the Japanese<\/a>; the surprising indifference of South Koreans toward North Korea; the\u00a0constant pressure faced by Korean students<\/a>; the thoroughgoing unhappiness of the Korean population. I may joke with reporter friends about how clapped-out such topics have become, but \u2014 as the foregoing links suggest \u2014 I\u2019ve also gone to those wells once or twice myself, despite not being a journalist. I do my\u00a0 best to approach the clich\u00e9s of 21st-century Korea from unusual angles, but the fact remains that much of what\u2019s interesting about Korea still gets ignored in favor of what may once have been interesting.<\/p>

Booth also hits all these points, as well as others that might be expected from a broad introduction to modern Korea. What elevates this above standard reportage is his use of the first person: Booth has built his reputation in part as a travel writer, and the most illuminating parts of his book convey Korea as seen through his eyes as he motors around the country. (It feels at times like an automotive version of Korean journeys previously undertaken by his fellow Englishmen: Simon Winchester in\u00a0Korea: A Walk through the Land of Miracles<\/em><\/a>, Clive Leatherdale in\u00a0To Dream of Pigs<\/em>, Graham Holliday in\u00a0Eating Korea<\/em><\/a>.) As the travel-narrative genre dictates, Booth doesn\u2019t just observe, he experiences. In the obligatory cosmetic-surgery chapter he goes to Gangnam to get his nose worked on. (He doesn\u2019t just seek an intellectual understanding of the industry but, to take a common Korean saying literally, \u201cfeels it on his skin.\u201d)\u00a0Discussing tae kwon do, he doesn\u2019t just frame it as \u201cthe country\u2019s first post-war attempt at cultural branding\u201d \u2014 something well worth noting \u2014 he puts on a set of \u201cwhite pajamas\u201d and takes a lesson himself, much as\u00a0Anthony Bourdain did<\/a>\u00a0when he showed up here.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Read the whole thing at the Los Angeles Review of Books<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Booth\u2019s\u00a0Three Tigers, One Mountain\u00a0isn\u2019t a book about Korea, but in a sense it contains a book about Korea. Subtitled\u00a0A Journey through the Bitter History and Current Conflicts of China, Korea, and Japan, it takes on an entire region in the form of a travelogue driven by one question: \u201cWhy can\u2019t the nations of east […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-korea-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4983","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=4983"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4985,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4983\/revisions\/4985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}