Land of the Morning Calm

Abstract

So this is the ‘Land of the Morning Calm’? This thought slipped through my mind as I sat in a large black saloon car which had just burned rubber screeching to a halt in front of a Zebra crossing on the road from Kimpo Airport to the centre of Seoul. It was the evening rush hour and it seemed as if the City’s entire population was hurtling across this one Zebra crossing, urged on by two policemen each wildly blowing football whistles. Amongst the jostling crowd were businessmen clad in three-piece suits, girls smartly dressed in the latest fashions, elderly ladies wearing what looked like some sort of national costume, a man with a wooden frame on his back, countless bicycles and weaving through the middle of it all, a motorbike with a huge refrigerator strapped above its rear wheel. What a mixture, this country was clearly going to be very different!

In the golden age of Asia

Korea was one of its lamp bearers

And that lamp is waiting to be lighted once again

For the illumination in the East

Rabinchranath Tagore