Dominiek.com

At the moment I’m back in Japan after a few days South-Korea. Korea is an interesting country that I will definitely visit again. I recommend all Japan-fans to visit there, since there are some convenient similarities apart from good backpacking conditions.

It takes up to three hours to learn the character-bet ‘Hangul’, after this you can read Korea’s version of the hiragana/katakana. Moreover Korea’s flavour of Chinese characters is rarely used and the grammar is similar.

Korea is a relatively developed country when seen with a consumer’s eye. Like Japan, the infrastructure is great and there are lot’s of 24-7 facilities. The prices of all these are far cheaper then Japan, for example, you will pay 4.50 euro for one litre of beer. Futhermore, because Korean is very influenced by their unspoken-occupier, they speak American very well. That is ‘Toefl’-american, so they know the grammar rules (to get into Samsung), but can’t make a conversation. In general it’s still more easy to find an English-speaker compared to Japan.

Korea has a long history (approx 5000 years), but great parts of these are wiped out by the Japanese during their invasions. Fortunatly and thanks to my CouchSurfing tourguides I was ably to see some of the real culture. The American influence can be seen everywhere. From 100 TV-channels to the right-driving big black shiny cars. An interesting difference is the family ruled companies called Chaebol (Samsung, Hyundae, LG etc). A sad similarity is how these companies continue to influence politics and stimulate the division between the poor and the rich.

Of course I’ve seen only the tip of another huge iceberg. I can summerize my experience in Busan with the following video (I’ve made up my mind, I will search for this flute and get it!):

download video: Chicks with drums at the beach