Korean Job Discussion Forums

[I'm With You]

Seattle is not the same as it was in the 1990s, either.

[Zulethe]

Took wushu in cheju in '93 and had to stop because I was expected to fight the rival club in a street fight at top dong.

Girls randomly approached me on the streets to have sex with them.

Korean couple living downstairs would only speak Japanese to me because they still thought that Japan controlled the world.

Almost drowned at top dong while my students sat there laughing at me.

Second night was kicked by an elderly man for asking for him for a cig.

had students follow me home and then break into my house when I didn't answer my door.

kids would randomly walk up to me on the streets and call me names and then proceed to kick me.

Was held "hostage" by my recruiter for three days in seoul.

Wish I would have never gone to Korea...cause as much as I've accomplished since then, I still think about it everyday and always want to go back.

[Clinton]

Nostalgia's always fun.

Even in America....

Remember when Washington DC was crackhead infested and had a lot of crime? It was also a place called Chocolate City due to how many African Americans live there. Now African Americans are the minority and everything is expensive as hell.

Remember when Los Angeles had to deal with acid rain? Remember when the high-rises started first going up?

Remember when in New York City, cars had the right of way and would honk the hell out of pedestrians and pretty much run them over if they didn't get out of the way? New York was known for being full of a-holes. Now due to so many transplants, everyone is just way too apathetic to care about you or say anything to you. Times Square used to be one of the seediest places in the US full of hookers and whatnot. Now it's just... Way too clean (relatively) and a tourist trap.

[silkhighway]

Yeah, of the thousands of ESL teachers who passed through Korea in the 90's, there's only a small minority still posting on this forum. It would be interesting to get a variety of perspectives.

There's been a couple of books written by JET guys who were in Japan in the 80's, with mixed opinions about their experience. The funniest I've read, and definitely not the most sympathetic to the ESL teaching expat, is Smile When You're Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer.

[PatrickGHBusan]

A few books were written by expats in Korea. most are of the light and disposable variety (Bob does Korea, drunken rantings). Still, off the top of my head I can remember these two:

Dispatches from the Peninsula written by an expat in Busan in 2011 (?)

Fantasy Island, written by a now dead expat who resided in Goje do.

[BroodingSea]

[quote="It also amazes me that with all those useless liberal arts degrees in the country, no one ever came up with a good novel/screenplay of the expat experience in the 90s. I still have mine, half-finished, somewhere at home.[/quote]

You should post it mate - be an interesting read

[The King of Kwangju]

The books mentioned are self-published. They might be good, but probably need a good edit.

I was referring to a real book from a proper publisher. Something that could be optioned to make a movie and took some time to write.

Or, a wacky screenplay. When I saw The Hangover II I got a good laugh - pretty much everything in that movie had happened to me and my chums in our Korea years of the late 90s. They basically made a movie about our lives and then sold it to the masses.

I recently came across this photogrpaher:
http://www.highstreetlowstreet.com/

I thought he really captured the grit, wonder, mystery, and nuttiness of Korea. Maybe photos are better than words for this. His ebook is $3, I recommend it if you're into this kind of thing.

[slothrop]

[The King of Kwangju]

Believe me, I know all about the ins and outs of the self-publishing model, I've been doing it for years.

So out of the handful of self-published books on Korea in Amazon, none have been picked up by even a minor publisher. And many of the reviews on Amazon complain about how the books are shallow and badly edited.

Both of these facts lead me to believe that the books are not very good, or no one cares enough about these stories to pay for them.

When you selfpublish you essentially upload a Word doc to a server and when someone buys the book, they print it out, or send an epub and you make a few dollars. There is no editing, what you upload is what the reader gets.

When you go through a proper publisher they will assign you an editor, and also pay you upfront against future royalties. There's bigger money involved, the publisher is going to edit the book for you, and the company is taking a chance on you, so it's almost always going to be better.

[slothrop]

man! i'm glad walt whitman didn't have your reservations about self publishing 'leaves of grass' or else we may have been deprived of america's greastest writer!

totally understandable though, if you feel you've put alot of blood sweat and tears into a novel and want some traditional style recognition. you say you've been involved in self publishing before? if you've got anything out on amazon PM me the links. i promise to download the samples and check them out and might even buy them.

btw,i thought 'the dog farm' was great. never boring. highly reccomended.

[The King of Kwangju]

Well, Walt Whitman was a bit different. He was a typesetter, for one, and put up his own money to print his book. He typeset it himself. So there was a real commitment and investment on his part, even beyond the writing.

The books on Amazon are technically Publish on Demand with absolutely no risk at all. If no one buys the book, no investment is lost. The bar is just a little lower.

Maybe I was a bit harsh, I guess my point is that I don't have the time to read 3 or 4 badly written books to find a few good parts. I'll check out The Dog Farm though.

I've done a lot of work in all kinds of publishing, you probably already bought something I worked on.

I'm actually going to go read Leaves of Grass again, so thanks for that.

[PatrickGHBusan]

King has a very good point about many of the self published books out there, namely those on the "expat experience in Korea". Most of the ones I read or flipped through were of the "bob did Korea, got drunk..." variety. A lot had serious problems and had clearly not been proofread by a professional editor.

Such books can make for light reading but once you finish them, you forget them and have no lasting memories or impressions.

Self publishing also does produce some great books, it is in fact a pretty wide offering.