BOOK REVIEW Canadian's road trip book takes readers across Korea
“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, Da
Sep 12, 2024By Peter Juhl
