My Korea

40 Years Without a Horsehair Hat

Kevin O'Rourke

9781898823094

340 pages

Amsterdam University Press

Hardback $66.95

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Overview

My Korea: Forty Years Without a Horsehair Hat is a cultural introduction to Korea, part memoir and part miscellany, which introduces traditional and contemporary culture through a series of essays, stories, anecdotes and poems. The book seeks to tell the reader all that he or she needs to know for a full and rewarding life in Korea or as a visitor passing through. Confucianism, Buddhism, relationships, everyday living, language and literature are comprehensively covered. Newcomers to Korea are provided with insights into daily life. They are told how to deal with people and the intricacies of honorific language, how to handle business dealings, how to be comfortable with social ranking, and how to react when they bump into the cultural wall.

Author Bio

Kevin O’Rourke, professor emeritus (Kyunghee University), is an Irish priest (Columban Fathers), who has lived in Korea since 1964. He has published many translations of classical and contemporary fiction and poetry including Tilting the Jar, Spilling the Moon (Dedalus 1993), Poems of a Wanderer: Selected Poems of So Chongju (Dedalus 1995), Looking for the Cow (Dedalus 1999), the Yi Munyol novella Our Twisted Hero (Hyperion 2001); The Book of Korean Shijo (Harvard 2002); A Hundred Love Poems from Old Korea (Global Oriental 2005), and The Book of Korean Poetry: Songs of Shilla and Koryo (Iowa University Press 2006).