South Korea....with a population of over 42 million and one of the world's biggest economies, it is still not all that well known...an odd titbit in the news here and there. In North East Asia, it is one of the Business Tigers. When one mentions Korea, images of Hotlips and Hawkeye strutting their stuff in the smash hit series MASH comes to one's mind. Set in Korea during the 1950-1953 war when the North ( the last heirs to Stalinist communism), invaded the south, the 1969 movie success led to a long running series about the mad cap antics of the medical staff doing the rounds in a war camp somewhere north of Seoul. Armed with quotes from MASH and sweet all else, I took a mad notion last year in March and applied for the position as an English Conversation Teacher with the Korean Ministry of Education.

Five months later, I landed in hot and smelly Seoul. RTE news had been full of student demonstrations, tear gas and Molotov cocktails in Yonsei university in Seoul. I was pysched! Hoping to see a bit of action on the front line had me praying to be placed in a Seoul Education District.......two days later..I was dying to get the hell out of the stinking dive. Seoul is like any other capital city in the World.....Apologies to all City Slickers!! I'm a country girl!!!! A week later, thanks to good old Kim Young Sam and his cronies (The Govt), I was installed in a nice roomy apartment overlooking the Cholla-nam-do countryside town of Hwasun. Five hours from Seoul .....I was in the land of the Country Bumpkins.....the craic was only starting!!!!!!!!!!

12 Aug. '97

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