Not a great deal new to be said, I think the biggest revelation thus far is simply the fact that among all else, Korea is not what it seems. Which is not to say that as a country they won't get there, but it's going to be a long time coming, in light of everything I'm seeing. To the industrialists, it will be one of the places of choice where you can put a cheap factory, have a good, hard-working local work force, and be able to sell your product at a competitive price. And that's about all. It's not going to be much of a banking hotspot, Hong Kong already has a lock on that, it's not going to be a place of a particularly sophisticated culture, you can see that in every advertisement where the English language is used badly, and it certainly doesn't have the natural resources to make it a potential powerhouse. If they discovered a vast oil reserve off the coast of Mokpo tomorrow, it might make a difference long-term, and then people would be saying "thank God some people in the country DO speak English!" Barring that, well, Korea will continue in the foreseeable future to be an almost completely homogenous, nationalistic culture. Which, as I have averred, does not make them colorless as a people, God forbid I should ever say that. But nothing in their rise as a nation will be meteoric, of that I am certain.
Their originality, and true necessity-is-the-mother-of-invention sense still shows itself most nearest the needs of Chun Q. Korean. More later.