South Korea

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New books by Peace Corps writers | September — October 2023
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I Shall Not Want | by Andrea Elise (South Korea)
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The Volunteer Who Ran the Table on Foreign Service Appointments — Kathleen Stephens (South Korea)
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RPCV Gerry Krzic “We left Korea, but Korea never left us”
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Paul Courtright (South Korea) tells the world about the Gwangju Democratization Moment, 40 Years Later

New books by Peace Corps writers | September — October 2023

To purchase any of these books from Amazon.com — CLICK on the book cover, the bold book title, or the publishing format you would like — and Peace Corps Worldwide, an Amazon Associate, will receive a small remittance from your purchase that will help support the site and the annual Peace Corps Writers awards. We include a brief description for each of the books listed here in hopes of encouraging readers  to order a book and/or  to VOLUNTEER TO REVIEW IT.  See a book you’d like to review for Peace Corps Worldwide? Send a note to Marian at marian@haleybeil.com, and she will send you a free copy along with a few instructions. P.S. In addition to the books listed below, I have on my shelf a number of other books whose authors would love for you to review. Go to Books Available for Review to see what is on that shelf. Please, please join in our Third . . .

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I Shall Not Want | by Andrea Elise (South Korea)

I Shall Not Want Poems Andrea Elise (South Korea ) Create Space Publishing February 2015 46 pages $6.95 (Paperback) This is a collection of poems that express love, friendship, regret, loss, gratitude, vanity. It also includes a number of haikus and an essay about one day in the life of a young woman’s 2-year stint in the Peace Corps in South Korea in the late 1970’s. Andrea Elise was born in Sopron, Hungary and immigrated to the United States with her parents in 1956. She grew up in Amarillo, and attended Amarillo College before transferring to Duke University, where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature. She spent two years in the Peace Corps in South Korea, then obtained a Master’s degree in Counseling from West Texas A&M University. Her interests include writing essays and poetry, partner dancing  (East Coast swing or jitterbug), playing mandolin, hiking, working out and . . .

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The Volunteer Who Ran the Table on Foreign Service Appointments — Kathleen Stephens (South Korea)

A Profile in Citizenship   by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963-65) • Kathleen Stephens holds a B.A. in East Asian studies from Prescott College and a M. A. from Harvard University. She also studied at the University of Hong Kong and Oxford University before becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer in South Korea from 1975-77, where she taught in the Yesan Middle School. Of her Volunteer experience, Kathleen said: “this is where I learned the qualities I needed to be a diplomat; I learned how to endure hardships and convince others.” Thereafter, when joining the U. S. Foreign Service in 1978, through hard work she earned major agency appointments — all the way up to serving as Ambassador to South Korea under two different U. S. presidents, and charge’ d’ affairs to India. She was well equipped to meet these professional challenges, speaking fluent Korean, Serbo-Croation, and Chinese. Early on in her . . .

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RPCV Gerry Krzic “We left Korea, but Korea never left us”

  By Gerry Krzic who teaches at Ohio University and serves as the president of Friends of Korea. He was a PCV in Korea from 1977 to 1980.  Gerry Krzic teaches at Daechang Middle School in Yecheon County, North Gyeongsang Province, in 1977. / Courtesy of Gerry Krzic   Anyone who has spent time in Korea has probably heard of “jeong,” a concept characterized as a collective emotion of caring, love, attachment ― an unspoken bond difficult to define but evident when seen in action. Jeong is usually described in different forms such as jeong between friends (woojeong) and between mother and child (mojeong). I would like to offer another form of jeong ― Peace Corps jeong ― permeating in a subset of American society. That is, Peace Corps Volunteers who served in Korea from 1966 to 1981. I returned in 2013 for a one-week Revisit Korea Program sponsored by . . .

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Paul Courtright (South Korea) tells the world about the Gwangju Democratization Moment, 40 Years Later

Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Steven Boyd Saum (Ukraine 1994-96)   Telling the world about the Gwangju Democratization Movement, 40 years later Paul Courtright (South Korea 1979-81) witnessed the 1980 movement and wants to set the record straight amid current attempts to distort its history for Hankyoreh  by Kim Yong-hee, Gwangju correspondent From his arrival in South Korea in 1979 with the US Peace Corps until 1981, Paul Courtright, 66, took care of patients with Hansen’s disease (formerly known as leprosy) at a shelter called Hohyewon in Naju, South Jeolla Province. On May 19, 1980, Courtright was at the Gwangju intercity bus terminal on a trip to Seoul when he saw armed soldiers from a special forces brigade beating a young man with clubs. Courtright wanted to step in, but he only watched, paralyzed by fear. Stricken with guilt for failing to help the man being clubbed, he made . . .

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