I read this because my daughter has recently gone to live and work in South Korea for a year. Accessible material about the country is hard to come by. This book was published in 1988, but I gather it's still regarded as a useful introduction. Winchester decides to walk the length of the country, following the trail of 17th century Dutch adventurers who were held captive here. Hiking is not a Korean hobby, and his unusual idea excites the interest of people who he meets on the way. So he shares the insights he gains from Irish missionaries, Korean hoteliers, travellers, women divers, ginseng growers, an American recluse .... and so on. He relishes the contrast between a fast disappearing traditional and largely country way of life, and the super-fast and rapidly developing towns. Winchester writes engagingly and with sympathy and respect for his Korean hosts. It's made me want to visit ... and not just to see my daughter ( )

This was an impulse purchase at a used bookstore, early in my first attempt at learning Korean. #koreanmarch seemed like an ideal time to finally pick it up and read it.

Listen. I had a LOT of feelings reading this book. Part of it was just what I wanted — an outsider's view of Korea. The landscape, the people, the different regions, a little history. BUT. The whole thing was shot through with SO MUCH colonialism and sexism and occasional exoticism that sometimes I wanted to strangle the author. Definitely not written for today's reader. I kept having to remind myself to READ THIS AS A HISTORICAL DOCUMENT, and even then I had to go rant to my husband every now and then to let off a little steam. I am glad that I read it, because I definitely learned some cultural aspects that had previously mystified me, but I am also still mad about it. ( )

Korea documents the author's walk across South Korea that retraced the route of seventeenth-century explorer Hendrick Hamel. Hamel wrote a book of his travels in the land of "Corea" that brought this mysterious land to the attention of Europe.

The trick of detachment while remaining involved in the story is something that eluded the author at this point, but the stories in this book are of a more personal nature than the historical narratives in later volumes. Despite the fact that he doesn't flat-out say it, Mr. Winchester obviously loves Korea and found most of the Koreans he met fascinating.

Comparisons to other places Winchester has been are inevitable in a travel book. I was fascinated to see, however, that as the book Continues, the author is more likely to compare Korea with another facet of the country, rather than, say, Shanghai or Tokyo or Dublin.

Before writing the masterful volumes Krakatoa, A Crack in the Edge of the World, and The Professor and the Madman, geologist-writer Simon Winchester generated a series of travel books. I read this book out of a curiosity to see where one of my favorite authors started out, and was pleasantly surprised to find it quite well-written and educational. ( )

Finished the book yesterday. Not as gripping as some of his other books I have read. Gives a nuanced history of parts of the Korean Conflict / War. Presages Korea's advance in global manufacturing.

Damn he is a good writer. Very sad history though - but he is so good ( )