Title: Contains very little about the country
Review: Simon Winchester's Korea bills itself as a "treasury of fascinating and informed insight on the culture, people, language, history and politics of this little-known country." Given the author's wide-ranging journalistic experience and track record of producing bestsellers (The Map that Changed the World, Krakatoa), I had high hopes the book would deliver on this promise.Instead, what you get is the author hanging out with ex-pat Irish priests and American servicemen. His only contact with the Koreans themselves seems to come through the sex industry, as he visits in turn a hostess bar, a strip club, and a barber shop/massage parlor. One cannot help but detect a note of wishful thinking in the author's descriptions of Korean women eager to service him. The book is, in short, disappointingly purile in its taste and utterly lacking any kind of insight into the country whose name is emblazoned on the cover.
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