This is the term used to describe Korea's remarkable transformation from being one of the world's poorest countries for a decade after their war to being one of the "Asian Tigers" a G20 nation. These days the country is so opulent that they run air conditioners at school at full blast with the doors and windows wide open. And the kids are getting fat ..
Well, we all like to make fun of the parents and grandparents who enjoy spinning yarns about how tough it was in their day. "I had to walk to school 2 miles in the snow, up hill both ways." "Every night for dinner we had a bowl of cold gravel, and then got whipped with the belt ... if we were lucky!" My own father talks about having to have pumped water from a well. but let me share some stories from my co-teachers who grew up in the 70's in Korea. One was so cronically hungry that her parents gave her booze to fill her stomach and put her to sleep as a 10 year old, and the other remembers an annual tradition from early spring when the winter stores were spent, but the new growth wasn't harvestable. Her parents would send her out to the forest with a sharp stone to peel and eat nutritious bark from the evergreen trees.
Stories like these gave me something to think about.
1 comment:
I'm pretty sure we're on the same page here: a line of booze-infused bark for sale as a luxury nostalgia item in stores! Great for parties! It's time someone starting profiting from these now fat Koreans...
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