Archive - November 3, 2024

  Posted by Glenn Blumhorst for Peace Corps Worldwide Excerpted from The Korea Times By Jon Dunbar Alan Taylor first arrived in Korea in 1966, as part of K-1 the first dispatch of U.S. Peace Corps volunteers. He and his wife spent two years in Gongju, South Chungcheong Province, which he described as a “pre-industrial countryside.” “Gongju of the mid-1960s had no private automobiles, and one TV. Farming was done with oxen plowing, and there were few mechanical sound, and so… much physical labor for men and women,” he recalled. “We were immediately struck by how vital and animated Koreans were. I saw more smiling and less rushed pleasure in conversation than it seemed in the U.S. The Korean Peninsula had seen so much tragic violence and dislocation, but the energetic spirit of Koreans was striking to us.” He gave these remarks many times last week, while on a week-long . . .