When you travel a lot, as we do, to different parts of the world, encountering people from widely divergent cultures, one might think that you would also come across personalities widely different from those you find in your own culture. However, experience has taught me that this is not the case, and that the divergences […]
Korea
Posted inGeneral
The pleasure of mountains
We walk past the iconic bear at the entrance to the Seoroksan National Park near Sokcho, South Korea, towards the diverging forested paths beckoning lovers of mountains. Each one of these takes one to a specific trail where one can indulge your love of mountains in various ways. Some meander along the side of a […]
Posted inGeneral, Tech
What can we expect beyond the human?
The 7th Beyond Humanism Conference, which has just come to an end in Seoul, Korea, where delegates met at the Ewha Women’s University, was … well, more than interesting. It was fascinating in many ways, sometimes in a rather abject, almost horrifying manner. How would you respond to someone world famous, if not notorious, called […]
Posted inEnvironment, Tech
Human extinction? It’s not just science fiction
At a recent science fiction conference (thematically called “East/West SF”), arranged under the auspices of the “Brain Korea” project by Professor Ilgu Kim of Hannam University, Daejeon, Korea (about an hour by high-speed train from Seoul), a number of excellent papers were presented, none more so than the one by American Peter Paik, titled: “Science […]
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle
Finding nirvana in the bosom of the mountain spirit
It is our second visit to Korea, less than two years after the first, and my initial (favourable) impressions of the country have been confirmed on more than one occasion already. I have been invited here by a colleague to present a paper at a conference on science fiction, but because we wanted to investigate […]
Posted inGeneral
Korea – an amazing country
During our recent visit to Korea — “South” Korea, that is, although Koreans simply refer to their country as “Korea” — we were astonished by many things, probably too many to discuss here, but I shall try to give a reasonably representative account of the things about the country and its people that we found […]
Posted inGeneral
Walking in the city of Seoul
Walking the streets of Seoul – the “Soul of Asia” – whenever we have had the time, after giving a seminar at a Korean university at the invitation of a friend, has reminded me of Michel de Certeau’s now classic study, The Practice of Everyday Life (1984), part of which is entitled “Walking in the […]
Posted inGeneral
Musing on music
“Korean flamenco” might appear to be an oxymoron, and in a sense it is. After all, flamenco is as Spanish as one can get in the realm of music … and indigenous Korean music is nothing like it. But last night we – the delegates to a conference on English literature organised by the English […]