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 was
getting myself into would be an enormous understatement. But, to a large
degree, that was the point. I had joined the Peace Corps—taking a leave from
the graduate school program that was, at best, a feeble attempt to forestall
real 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’t
know 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 or
so volunteers destined to work in “Higher Education English,” meaning that we
would be teaching English as a Second Language to college students, most of
whom were enrolled in English Education programs in their universities and
colleges. Like my fellow volunteers, I knew no Korean, knew little about Korea,
and had no teaching experience. Peace Corps remedied that with two months of
intensive training—a full morning of Korean language studies in small groups
(not to mention the language learning that occurred in the family homes that
hosted us), and afternoons of lessons in both Korean culture and history and
the rudiments of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). By
the end of training, we were ready to head to our duty stations, in my case a
provincial capital a hundred miles or so south of Seoul, into situations where
there were no other foreigners and where English-speakers were few.
While the experience was not uniformly positive, those two
years of Peace Corps service were extraordinary, and have shaped just about
everything I have done since. They taught me about poverty, since Korea in the ´70s
was still a very poor country. They taught me to cope with hardship. They also
instilled me with an indelible fondness for Korea, and in the 35 years since I
completed my service I have been back many times for business and pleasure, including a wonderful trip
earlier this year with other former Peace Corps Volunteers.
So I was pleased when the opportunity came up recently to
review Dispatches from the Peninsula: Six
Years in South Korea by an American English teacher in Korea. I relished
the chance to share another American’s experience in Korea, updated by three
decades. 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—his
digressions into Korean culture and history, his comments on contemporary
politics and society, even his understanding of the Korean view of their
country’s place in the world today, seem to me to be spot on, and are probably
enlightening to readers who don’t know the country. It’s a fun read.
If there is disappointment here, it stems from the author’s
limited experience in the country. Yes, he’s lived there six years, but he
seems to have spent it almost entirely in Pusan (hanging out with other expats),
with only brief forays into the surrounding countryside. His time spent with
Koreans outside of the classroom seems to be confined to drinking sessions (or
over-drinking sessions), which he seems to believe is the national pastime, and
a succession of girlfriends. And there are omissions that I think might have
presented a more complete picture of life in the Land of Morning Calm. Tharp says
he doesn’t like visiting Buddhist Temples, but Buddhism has had an important
impact on Korea, as have both animist religions and Christianity, both
mentioned only in passing. Tharp addresses anti-Americanism but doesn’t discuss
the role that the stationing of 30,000 American troops (42,000 when I lived
there) on the peninsula has played in that sentiment. (In fairness, he does
mention one incident involving an American soldier that inflamed public opinion,
but the tensions run much deeper.) And while Tharp does talk about some
regional rivalries in Korea, he doesn’t mention that these rivalries have their
roots in the warring kingdoms that arose two thousand years ago, which also
helps 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 have
descended on Korea to fill the demand for English teachers. In the ´70s, the
Peace Corps met some of that demand at very little cost to the Koreans. But the
Peace Corps left Korea in the ´80s—after the country reached middle-income status—and
now the country can afford to hire people to come teach. Unlike Peace Corps
Volunteers, these teachers generally receive no training—not in teaching
techniques, not in Korean culture, and not in Korean language. With little
preparation in cultural sensitivity, it is no surprise when these foreigners
clash with their hosts, such as the numerous incidents Tharp recounts in Dispatches.
But I don’t mean to be overly harsh, and I readily admit
that some of my criticism is the result of my nostalgia for a Korea that is
these days hard to find. In fact, I enjoyed Dispatches
very much, and appreciated Tharp’s growth over the period described in the
book. In the sections covering his early days in the country, Tharp is condescending
toward Koreans (in the tradition of Paul Theroux—a former Peace Corps Volunteer—who
never met a local he couldn’t make fun of). But over time, it’s clear that
Tharp’s affection for Korea and his understanding of the country have grown, so
that in the later sections of the book the self-portrait is of a man who is
much more in tune with his surroundings. I also was touched by Tharp’s account
of the loss of both his mother and father while living abroad (which closely
paralleled 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. I
also could relate to Tharp’s experience in other ways, including his love of
Korean food and his struggles with the Korean language.
If you’re considering teaching English abroad, of if you’re
just interested in what life is like for a foreigner in Korea, read this book.
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