BOOK REVIEW Canadian's road trip book takes readers across Korea
The cover of "On the Road in South Korea" by Mark Dake / Courtesy of Hollym
“We’re journalists touring Korea.” Non-journalist Mark Dake would deliver this line to people as he roamed the southern half of the Korean Peninsula looking for stories. The “journalist” claim was aspirational: he was planning to write and publish a travelogue about Korea. His book, "On the Road in South Korea" published by Hollym in 2022, is that travelogue.
Dake’s claimed status as a journalist was to get more people to talk to him during his three-month journey. "On the Road in South Korea" recreates many of these encounters in an up-close fashion, through extensive direct quotation. The results ring true; a realism is often achieved.
Toward the middle of his account, Dake reveals his method: He carried an audio-recording device, allowing exact recreations of key parts of conversations. Keeping the recording device running during his encounters, Dake could transcribe the conversations later. (Only one man, Dake reports, called attention to the recording device. That was a government employee trained to root out spies. He had some harsh words. Following that encounter, Dake judiciously dropped his hopes to interview a North Korean defector.)
Dake’s three-month road trip across Korea was done in low-end style. Dotting the narrative are comments on the jimjilbang and motels where he stayed. Dake, a Canadian, felt when he was in his mid-30s that he hadn't truly experienced Korea. This was after years of work teaching English in or near Seoul. He hatched his travel plan, evidently, because he felt he’d missed a lot.
Dake’s envisioned journey had a problem from the start: He could not speak Korean. His line “we are journalists” was in the plural because there was always a volunteer Korean interpreter at his side. The purpose of the journey was said to be to “leave no stones unturned.” Too much stone-turning led to frustration and friction with the interpreters. Each one, in turn, eventually abandoned Dake, on less-than-friendly terms.
Dake himself, in his own narrative, resembles a character in a comedy movie. Or maybe better termed, an anti-hero. One particularly dramatic scene typical of the book occurs somewhere far from Seoul: Dake notices a few men roughly handling a dog. Believing that they were trying to hang the dog (to sell it for meat — the method of hanging being use, to protect the meat quality), Dake rushes in. He confronts the men, demands they stop. They give him puzzled looks. Dake calls the police. The police arrive, laws are consulted, much standing around is done. One thing leads to another, and Dake makes a snap decision to abduct the dog. He speeds off.
This dog-napping triggers panic in Dake’s then-interpreter, a 37-year-old man who had introduced himself as a screenwriter. The man then reveals that he has a criminal record; to be an accessory to dog-napping was something he did not want. (The screenwriter-interpreter abandoned Dake soon after. The dog soon ran away, to an unknown fate. After several politely worded inquiries text-messaged from the police, Dake wired the dog’s owner a sum in compensation.)
Wherever he goes in Korea, Dake pokes around for stories. Often it starts with someone mentioning something interesting. He often fails, gets stonewalled, dismissed or laughed at. The most common response in the book from Koreans is some variant of: “I don’t know about that; maybe check the internet.”
The comedic through-line of the book, in which local interlocutors don’t know much and brush off questions, has one big exception: the police. A recurring scene has Dake and his interpreter companion stopping in at “police boxes,” asking for directions or advice. The police come off well in Dake’s book, as a stabilizing presence, self-confident enough to say they do indeed know information and being friendly about it.
Sometimes good things do happen. At one time, Dake secures an interview with a colorful elderly figure named Yi Seok (now aged 83). Some claim this man to be the direct heir to the throne of Korea. Yi Seok lived an interesting life in obscurity and exile, Dake learns and reports. Dake learned he held a minor teaching role at Jeonju University and secured an interview. The university front-gate guard, though, claimed to have never heard of this Yi Seok. He refused Dake access to campus. Dake protested: How can you not know “the king of Korea”? A few phone calls later, Dake got in.
Royalism may be out of favor, but the long interview with royal descendant Yi Seok was exactly the kind of encounter for which Dake had hoped.
Dake’s travels were between March and June of an unspecified year. Internal evidence within the text points to 2007. Seoul publisher Hollym’s 2022 updated edition (an original version was published in Canada in 2016) brings references and facts up to circa 2020. But as a story, as a travelogue, the core encounters can be positively dated to 2007.
Certain long-gone sights, such as the VHS tapes that pop up at one point, may be deceiving to the reader in the 2020s. Gadgets and celebrities may have changed, but the interpersonal encounters largely hold true. The most significant anachronism may be the directional mishaps, a constant in parts of Dake’s narrative. Dake navigated using paper maps and road signs. So frustrated was the author while attempting to drive through Busan that he labels it an “unnavigable city.”
The experience of getting lost is less likely in the current age of smartphones. Drivers in Korea today simply follow a digital map’s arrows and commands; they can know nothing of where they are and be fine. An interesting meta-lesson may be that the lack of digital aids forces engagement. Dake’s narrative drives onward through interactions with locals, the most interesting parts of his book, many of which wouldn’t happen for a more digitally savvy traveler.
The Korea in this book is still in the “analog” world, basically. The digital world was important — Dake acquired most of his volunteer-interpreters through a website. But the “digital” was a separate sphere, requiring special effort to engage with. When the author reports popping into PC rooms to check email, the implication is that most days he was completely offline. He was following up on verbal tips, aided by a paper guidebook or two.
Koreans form almost the entire range of characters in "On the Road in South Korea." Western travelers pass by with little notice. A Westerner studying to be a Buddhist monk gets brief mention, but far more space is given to the (suspiciously talkative) Korean Buddhist monks. Several unconnected monks suggest he’d be better off retiring from his teaching and studying Buddhism — and maybe he’d lose weight, too, it’s suggested. After the latest such encounter, at a famous temple in Seoul, Dake narrates: “I made a mental note to never again set foot in Jogye Temple.”
Besides the anti-hero Dake himself, two other Westerners get substantial attention: one is longtime Korea enthusiast Peter Bartholomew (1945–2021), and another is long-distance hiking guru Roger Shepherd of New Zealand. Shepherd was, in 2007, evangelizing for a certain long-neglected cross-country trail. Dake became attracted to the ongoing preparation for an English-language guidebook for that trail, and characteristically volunteered his services. Those interested in “making of” the Baekdu-Daegan hiking guidebook (later published by Roger Shepherd, Andrew Douch and David Mason) can get a brief look behind the scenes in Dake’s book.
Westerners may not feature much in "On the Road in South Korea," but the tradition in which Dake is writing is self-consciously Western. The immediate seed-idea, he says, came from reading Bill Bryson’s 2000 hit travelogue about Australia, "In a Sunburned Country." A bestseller in the 2000s, readers still seek it out today. Dake says he began to think he’d better try, because Bryson hadn’t gotten around to South Korea and perhaps never would. (There is still time, Mr. Bryson, if you’re reading this.)
Does "On the Road in South Korea" capture something of South Korean society and its people and culture? This is a question without a yes-no answer: One person’s “Korea” will not necessarily be the same as another’s. In this reader’s view, there is much of value here despite — or, in part, because of — the trip being from 2007. It may be that some readers out there today are inspired by this book, and later make similar contributions of their own. There is, after all, plenty of space on the metaphorical “road” for many travelers.
Peter Juhl is a researcher focused on Korean political and security issues.