Korean Odyssey edition by Brian Heuvel Humor Entertainment eBooks
Download As PDF : Korean Odyssey edition by Brian Heuvel Humor Entertainment eBooks 
It's 1994 and Brian Heuvel is going nowhere. Stuck in a job he hates with few prospects, he stumbles across an ad in a local paper seeking college graduates for teaching positions in South Korea. Within a month, he finds himself on a plane headed for a country he knows little about, en route to a small town he's never even heard of.
Upon arrival, chaos reigns as he finds himself trying to avoid becoming entangled in one roommate’s personal vendetta against the boss while helping the other to prevent himself from having a complete mental breakdown. All this while simultaneously trying to navigate and make sense of a world that includes love hotels, all night singing rooms, and hidden cabarets.
Korean Odyssey edition by Brian Heuvel Humor Entertainment eBooks
Whenever I come across a book about an expat teaching English in South Korea around the same I was doing the same thing (I've been in South Korea since 1990) I am very interested in what the expat has to say about his or her experience. That's what initially attracted me to Brian Heuvel's book, Korean Odyssey. Heueval came to Korea in 1994 to teach (a pivotal moment/critical juncture on the Korean peninsula--something the author never gets around to talking about; more about this later) at a hagwon (institute) in Pohang on the eastern seaboard. This was right around the time South Korea had opened its educational market, and the first wave of teachers started to come here to teach.Heuval spends a lot of time talking about the hellhole he soon found himself in and his co-teachers. Most of the story is about life in Korea and the pitfalls of teaching at this school, something that any expat has fallen victim to will appreciate. I heard such horror stories when I first came here, such as the one about a teacher who was met by the director of the school at Kimpo, taken directly to the school, handed a textbook, and told his students were waiting for him, There's not much plot until he the protagonist/narrator meets this Korean girl in his class and then the rest of the story is about their rocky relationship.
I have to confess, when I started reading this, I expected much more. For starters, 1994 was the year of the first nuclear crisis on the peninsula, and there was no mention of it. Okay, fair enough, this is a story about a young man who decides to take a chance and fly halfway around the world to teach English, to only find out that it was not what he expected. BUT, the real story, or at least one of the story's back stories, could have been this crisis. It definitely would have elevated the story to something more than a memoir about one's life in Korea.
And that's another thing--I wasn't sure if this was a memoir or a work of fiction. If it was a memoir, welcome to the club, Mr. Heuval. We all have our stories about Korea and how it either lived up to our expectations or became a nightmare.
The real story here is what happens when Hueval meets this Korean woman, and the two of them end up living together. There's a lot of drama here that was not fleshed out which could have made for a more interesting story. Instead, it just ends up being just another story the author shares about Korea.
And finally, the book could have done with a bit of editing. Telling the story in the present tense was rather distracting and was one more thing which undermined what could have been a better story.
For what it's worth, the book still gives a reader a glimpse of Korea through the eyes of a westerner in the early 90s. Read it for that, but don't read too much more into it.
Jeffrey Miller,
Bureau 39
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Korean Odyssey edition by Brian Heuvel Humor Entertainment eBooks Reviews
A great snapshot of life in South Korea in the 1990s. If you've ever been to or lived in Korea this is well worth a read! The overall story is very personal (and fascinating), but it is the added local details that really makes this story standout!
Whenever I come across a book about an expat teaching English in South Korea around the same I was doing the same thing (I've been in South Korea since 1990) I am very interested in what the expat has to say about his or her experience. That's what initially attracted me to Brian Heuvel's book, Korean Odyssey. Heueval came to Korea in 1994 to teach (a pivotal moment/critical juncture on the Korean peninsula--something the author never gets around to talking about; more about this later) at a hagwon (institute) in Pohang on the eastern seaboard. This was right around the time South Korea had opened its educational market, and the first wave of teachers started to come here to teach.
Heuval spends a lot of time talking about the hellhole he soon found himself in and his co-teachers. Most of the story is about life in Korea and the pitfalls of teaching at this school, something that any expat has fallen victim to will appreciate. I heard such horror stories when I first came here, such as the one about a teacher who was met by the director of the school at Kimpo, taken directly to the school, handed a textbook, and told his students were waiting for him, There's not much plot until he the protagonist/narrator meets this Korean girl in his class and then the rest of the story is about their rocky relationship.
I have to confess, when I started reading this, I expected much more. For starters, 1994 was the year of the first nuclear crisis on the peninsula, and there was no mention of it. Okay, fair enough, this is a story about a young man who decides to take a chance and fly halfway around the world to teach English, to only find out that it was not what he expected. BUT, the real story, or at least one of the story's back stories, could have been this crisis. It definitely would have elevated the story to something more than a memoir about one's life in Korea.
And that's another thing--I wasn't sure if this was a memoir or a work of fiction. If it was a memoir, welcome to the club, Mr. Heuval. We all have our stories about Korea and how it either lived up to our expectations or became a nightmare.
The real story here is what happens when Hueval meets this Korean woman, and the two of them end up living together. There's a lot of drama here that was not fleshed out which could have made for a more interesting story. Instead, it just ends up being just another story the author shares about Korea.
And finally, the book could have done with a bit of editing. Telling the story in the present tense was rather distracting and was one more thing which undermined what could have been a better story.
For what it's worth, the book still gives a reader a glimpse of Korea through the eyes of a westerner in the early 90s. Read it for that, but don't read too much more into it.
Jeffrey Miller,
Bureau 39
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