Busan expat’s personal narrative on Korea

By Chung Ah-young

Is home a place that we’re from, or is it something we take with us wherever we go? That is the question haunting Chris Tharp, a travel writer and English teacher in Busan, the southern port city of Korea, who lives in the city far from his hometown Seattle in the United States.

He was sometimes embarrassed at the language barrier, cultural differences and periodic outbursts of hyper-nationalism that is deeply rooted in Korean society. Tharp also experienced the personal tragedy of the deaths of his parents during his six-year journey in Korea. Nevertheless, he says “Korea can be both hard to like and hard to leave.”

His new book “Dispatches from the Peninsula:Six Years in South Korea” is his personal narrative about experiences in Busan and other areas he has traveled in for six years as an English lecturer and expat in Korea. The author explores exotic Korean society through his pictures of alleys and neon streets of Korea’s cities mixed with