Book Review: Dispatches from the Peninsula by Chris Tharp

Dispatches From the Peninsula: Six Years In South Korea 
Chris Tharp
Signal 8 Press, 2011

I arrived in Seoul, South Korea, in early January, 1976,half a year after graduating from college. To say that I didn't know what I wasgetting myself into would be an enormous understatement. But, to a largedegree, that was the point. I had joined the Peace Corps—taking a leave fromthe graduate school program that was, at best, a feeble attempt to forestallreal life. Like most Peace Corps Volunteers, I had mixed motives in signing up:I wanted to help people, sure; but I also wanted an adventure. I also didn'tknow what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I was buying time.
So we landed on a frigid morning, a group of twenty-five orso volunteers destined to work in "Higher Education English," meaning that wewould be teaching English as a Second Language to college students, most ofwhom were enrolled in English Education programs in their universities andcolleges. Like my fellow volunteers, I knew no Korean, knew little about Korea,and had no teaching experience. Peace Corps remedied that with two months ofintensive training—a full morning of Korean language studies in small groups(not to mention the language learning that occurred in the family homes thathosted us), and afternoons of lessons in both Korean culture and history andthe rudiments of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Bythe end of training, we were ready to head to our duty stations, in my case aprovincial capital a hundred miles or so south of Seoul, into situations wherethere were no other foreigners and where English-speakers were few.
While the experience was not uniformly positive, those twoyears of Peace Corps service were extraordinary, and have shaped just abouteverything I have done since. They taught me about poverty, since Korea in the ´70swas still a very poor country. They taught me to cope with hardship. They alsoinstilled me with an indelible fondness for Korea, and in the 35 years since Icompleted my service I have been back many times for business and pleasure, including a wonderful tripearlier this year with other former Peace Corps Volunteers.
So I was pleased when the opportunity came up recently toreview Dispatches from the Peninsula: SixYears in South Korea by an American English teacher in Korea. I relishedthe chance to share another American's experience in Korea, updated by threedecades. And for the most part I wasn't disappointed. The writing is excellent,and the conversational tone is just right for this sort of memoir/travelogue. Plus,author Chris Tharp, as far as I can tell, gets the important stuff right—hisdigressions into Korean culture and history, his comments on contemporarypolitics and society, even his understanding of the Korean view of theircountry's place in the world today, seem to me to be spot on, and are probablyenlightening to readers who don't know the country. It's a fun read.
If there is disappointment here, it stems from the author'slimited experience in the country. Yes, he's lived there six years, but heseems to have spent it almost entirely in Pusan (hanging out with other expats),with only brief forays into the surrounding countryside. His time spent withKoreans outside of the classroom seems to be confined to drinking sessions (orover-drinking sessions), which he seems to believe is the national pastime, anda succession of girlfriends. And there are omissions that I think might havepresented a more complete picture of life in the Land of Morning Calm. Tharp sayshe doesn't like visiting Buddhist Temples, but Buddhism has had an importantimpact on Korea, as have both animist religions and Christianity, bothmentioned only in passing. Tharp addresses anti-Americanism but doesn't discussthe role that the stationing of 30,000 American troops (42,000 when I livedthere) on the peninsula has played in that sentiment. (In fairness, he doesmention one incident involving an American soldier that inflamed public opinion,but the tensions run much deeper.) And while Tharp does talk about someregional rivalries in Korea, he doesn't mention that these rivalries have theirroots in the warring kingdoms that arose two thousand years ago, which alsohelps to put the separation of North and South Korea in context.
Tharp is part of what we might call the Anti-Peace Corps,the cadre of young native-English speakers drawn from all over the world who havedescended on Korea to fill the demand for English teachers. In the ´70s, thePeace Corps met some of that demand at very little cost to the Koreans. But thePeace Corps left Korea in the ´80s—after the country reached middle-income status—andnow the country can afford to hire people to come teach. Unlike Peace CorpsVolunteers, these teachers generally receive no training—not in teachingtechniques, not in Korean culture, and not in Korean language. With littlepreparation in cultural sensitivity, it is no surprise when these foreignersclash with their hosts, such as the numerous incidents Tharp recounts in Dispatches.
But I don't mean to be overly harsh, and I readily admitthat some of my criticism is the result of my nostalgia for a Korea that isthese days hard to find. In fact, I enjoyed Dispatchesvery much, and appreciated Tharp's growth over the period described in thebook. In the sections covering his early days in the country, Tharp is condescendingtoward Koreans (in the tradition of Paul Theroux—a former Peace Corps Volunteer—whonever met a local he couldn't make fun of). But over time, it's clear thatTharp's affection for Korea and his understanding of the country have grown, sothat in the later sections of the book the self-portrait is of a man who ismuch more in tune with his surroundings. I also was touched by Tharp's accountof the loss of both his mother and father while living abroad (which closelyparalleled the deaths of both of my parents while I lived in Singapore in the´80s and early ´90s), and the challenges of being so distant from family. Ialso could relate to Tharp's experience in other ways, including his love ofKorean food and his struggles with the Korean language.
If you're considering teaching English abroad, of if you'rejust interested in what life is like for a foreigner in Korea, read this book.