The Illustrated Peace Corps Man (Part 5)
When I revisited the island in 1980, many of the historic monoliths had by then been moved twice-over. Apparently no one supervised or mapped these movements. To the extent the monoliths were created...
View ArticleThe Illustrated Peace Corps Man (Part 6)
So, while I cannot claim to have been the suljangi that my denim jacket now advertises, I did enjoy my makgeolli . I had the habit of writing poetry while in my cups. Or should I say “bowls”? I...
View ArticleYou Can Return But You Can’t Go Back (Part 1)
Don’t get me wrong. I loved my Dad. He was just old-fashioned. So I should not have been surprised that when I finally made the tough decision to give up the Gypsy Life to join the Peace Corps Dad did...
View ArticleYou Can Return But You Can’t Go Back (Part 2)
I'm a bit jealous. I went to Korea on September 29th but my pants went to Los Angeles... along with my suit jacket, dress shirts and ties. My bags got separated in Toronto somehow. Let me back up a...
View ArticleYou Can Return but You Can’t Go Back (Part 3)
So, to answer the question posed in the titles of my last three essays: Yes. You can return as well as go back. In my own case the journey is to Jeju Island: The Islanders still remain cheerful in the...
View ArticleFred’s Maze and His Secret Compound in the Shape of a Cat
A second piece of evidence not easily dismissed can be observed visually on the ground just a few hundred yards from the secret compound and inside the nearby Maze. This evidence I confirmed just 10...
View ArticleCat Man Do!
When I stepped off the plane at the Seoul Gimpo airport in the fall of 1972 to begin my in-country Peace Corps Trainee phase, I looked like a choirboy. But anarchy still burned within me. That hemp...
View ArticleThe Stink Eye
Speaking of the skilled use of edged weapons by outcaste and/or despised minority peoples, Jeju Island diving women (haenyeo) were also an armed disparaged cultural (perhaps ethnic) minority group...
View ArticleDiving for Coin
It was far better earnings for divers on Catalina than in Honolulu because a lot of the coins were silver dollars. There was a famous casino near the boat dock and the slots took silver dollars at that...
View Article‘Jeju Ireland’
Irish priests and nuns assigned to Jeju Island during the many decades following the Korean War have often remarked in print on the similarities between rural Ireland and Jeju Island. In both the West...
View ArticleCamaraderie
One weekend morning in December or January I was bundled up and sitting in that bakery looking out that same window and saw a dirty, old Jeju pony hauling an overloaded cart filled with black yeontan...
View ArticleArtificial Islands
Leicester Hemingway’s dream of an artificial island paradise came a few decades earlier, in 1961, just after he successfully published his biography My Brother, Ernest Hemingway. It earned him...
View ArticleShon, Pitts, Dustin, DeNoon and the ‘Hawaii of Korea’
The rich cultural traditions of the Jeju Islanders have great potential to inform successful marketing strategies aimed at increasing tourism. Dr. Pitts suggests the construction of culture centers and...
View ArticleLand’s End
Fate and vision took my father-in-law, his wife and his mother onward to Jeju Island in 1965. They resettled there to pioneer several new economic ventures at land’s end, in Seogwipo, along Korea’s...
View Article‘Skidoo,’ a final essay
Two mighty forces then combined to shape the trajectory of my life as I parted ways with Peace Corps Korea and returned to America in December of 1974. To say that marriage gave my life story a...
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