Seoul-Bangkok  12/27/01 1:40 PM (Seoul time)

It came as a bit of a shock to us the rapid changes that have taken place in Seoul since we returned through Inchon—Kimpo this past summer.  While Inchon is the same anodized steel flag ship of modernity that it was designed to be, Kimpo has had a major face-lift.  The days of the dingy, cramped and poorly serviced terminal are over—case in point:  the Lotteria located at the arrival level.  Once a narrow, table crammed closet of a space with more depth than width—the new fast food outlet is long, sleek and spacious.  It sports a complimentary internet café that is the new tag of Korean culture (the most connected country in the world).  Yes, it’s true, Korea is changing.  And just as the ’88 olympics heralded an initial round of political and economic reforms the upcoming 2002 World Cup seems to be inspiring a whole new effort to change the face of Korea.

Now that the old Kimpo is gone and Inchon stands as the country’s foremost port of entry I can’t help but feel a bit of nostalgia for the frontier days when I first arrived in-country.  There was a little bit to fear than, when low-slung electric shuttles hurried passengers from the airfield to the terminal in a Gibsonian display of postmodern cyberpunk on the fringes of the Seoul-Sprawl.  Back in the days when I held fast to the notion that Korea was to Generation-X as the West Bank of Paris was to the Lost Generation.  But seriously, how can you compare the angst of post Great War Europe to the petty whinings of spoiled post Cold-War twenty-somethings? 

We did come though, in the mid-nineties; and we continue to come (along with a host of Y-Generation cool boarder/surfer types).  We do it to teach English ostensibly but regardless of  the arguments of Korea’s cultural vacuum there is a vibrant  expat community that share the Lost Generation’s need to escape our homeland.  Korea is a mountainous country and the argument can be made, in Hemingway-like terms, that we are escaping the flat, vapid wastelands for the moral high-ground of the mountains.  Well, at least the mountaineers amongst us can get our teeth into the notion that good dwells far from the city.