OutsideInKorea

Welcome to the site, friends and neighbours!

As usual, it took a lot longer than I’d expected to get things to a point where I was ready to pull back the curtain. I’m almost there, though, and ready, I think, to go public. You may have seen the post at Metafilter Projects, or on my personal weblog, or one of the bookmarking sites. Or if things go well, one of the tens of thousands of weblogs that linked here after the word got out, because the buzz went memetic or bloggorhea set in, or something.

Not everything is 100% finished yet, and I’m gearing up (and laying in supplies of coffee) to write a whole bunch of new content, but most of the flesh is on the bones, and the features I plan to add are coming together.

This site is about Korea. About me in Korea, yes, but the focus, at least in future, I hope, will move closer to Korea than it is to me. That’ll be a challenge, given the size of my ego and the joyful abandon of my self-regard. I hope it will be both entertaining and practically useful for anyone who visits with specific questions about or just vague interest in life in Korea. The title is a minor play on words. First, as waeguk-in (foreign persons) in Korea, we are perpetually outside. This, like so many things, is changing. Korea is no longer the hermitage it once was. I will write much about this in future.

Second is the idea of the world looking in at Korea, and, as near as I can tell, just not getting it at all. And, bless ‘em and all that, but the Koreans just don’t seem to be that good at telling stories about themselves to the rest of the world that don’t make people wince and raise an eyebrow. Or two. There is a groundswell of interest in Korea overseas these days thanks to that so-famous-in-Korea ‘Korean Wave’, of people on the outside looking in. At the same time, interest and knowledge of the rest of the world grows within Korea, as people on the inside look outwards. It’s an exciting time to be here, and I hope I can share a little of that excitement with visitors to this site.

One of the things you’ll notice is that I’m including ads on the site. If you know me through my personal weblogging persona, you’ll know that I’ve railed against advertising far and wide, all around the weblog world and elsewhere. Well, that’s true. But despite the fact that this site uses the superb Movable Type content management application, and does bear some structural resemblance to a weblog (permalinked, regularly updated, chronological posts and so on), and despite the fact that many of the things I’ve written and plan to write are in the first person singular, I’m hoping that the site will grow into a resource for people interested in Korea, and not just another place for me to spout off about my many fascinating opinions. As such, I think ads are a reasonable thing, and I promise not to make them too obtrusive. A lot of good advice was recently given by someone whose opinions on these things I respect, Matt Haughey, and his advertising success with Metafilter and his PVRblog helped me make the decision to monetarize the site. That, and a few dollars coming in will help spur me to adding new content more regularly than I do at my personal site.

And, to be honest, I love to write (and I like to think I’m pretty damn good at it), but I just don’t have the kind of drive it takes to market myself old-school. I have a friend here in Korea who makes money freelancing for publications, and it seem to me that he spends more time on sending out his work and chasing editors than actually writing. I’m just not interested in doing that. I’m going to write whether I make money at it or not — I’ve been doing it for years at my own personal site — but given the choice, and the ability to do it honourably (by the rococco intricacies of my own personal honour checklist), I’ll take the ‘write and make money’ option. The dream, of course, is a full-time travel-writing gig, wandering the planet and telling stories about it. In other words, what I’ve always done, but with a paycheck attached.

One thing that the outsider notices almost immediately when socializing with other waeguk-in here is the relentless negativity amongst much of the foreign community towards Korea. It’s grinding, and depressing. There is much wrong with this country, as there is with any other place you care to name. I’ve shaken my fist at the sky in pretty much every country I’ve lived in, at one time or another. One of my missions with this site is to look unblinkingly at problems, but to take care not to descend into that pit of negativity. I won’t whitewash anything or fall automatically into the platitude-trap of ‘not worse, just different’, but I also will not rag on Korea out of habit. Or, if I do once in a while, it’ll all be in fun. Honest.

Anyway, have a look around, kick the tires, take it for a test drive. There are probably some things that are a bit broken, and the look of the site is evolving. You can help me out and let me know what you think by dropping me a comment on this post. What would you like to see in a site dedicated to information about living in, working in, doing business in, or just visiting Korea?