I am now in Thailand and decompressing. It’s great to be back in Asia. So much energy and so different than home. I spent the first night in Seoul, Korea, hanging out with my best friend growing up, whom I haven’t seen in awhile. He now runs one of Korea’s biggest banks (he always won in Monopoly), and has made an amazing transition to being a pillar of Korean society. It was tremendously sweet to catch up with him after so long, to meet his beautiful wife and kids, and be exposed to Korea through him. And it didn’t hurt being swept through the airport by the head of the protocol, and having my own driver taking me to and from Seoul, and being put up in total luxury.

Korea is amazing. And by that I mean the people. They are a mass of contradictions, both very rational and focused, but also super emotional to the point of being kind of crazy and at times almost pointlessly vindictive. In their legislature, if they don’t like the way you voted, they just tear gas you. They have really long memories. “I’m getting you back for that slight from 380 years ago!” is kind of the way they think. But no country in Asia has crawled our further and faster from the muck of WWII than Korea. This is mostly a testament to the elders of Korean society, a group of gentleman that literally mapped the entire recovery out, how the laws and economy and culture would all interact to create the greatest opportunity to develop their country. They were the Babe Ruth “called shot” of emerging economies: they pointed to the fences, swung, and hit it out of the park. That’s why all their last names are Park. And although very old, many of these leaders are still alive, and are kind of living legends. If you are my friend, you can meet them.

No country is cleaner, which is a really amazing thing to experience. They are obsessed with being clean, which I can kind of relate to. This goes from personal hygiene to the entire Inchon Airport. Speaking of the airport, it is the most freakishly advanced, well organized and beautiful airport I have ever been in. Even without my escort, I am told it is the easiest of all to navigate. Seems so. What makes Korea so compelling today is that no country has a better vision of how to make really cool cutting edge tech-centric products (yes, I am saying they have edged everybody else out). The latest Kia car I drove felt as if it were from the future. Samsung now rules, not Sony. Hyundai now makes 2 of the top 10 engines in the entire world.

And unlike the Chinese, who have a certain coldness and harshness, the Koreans are, and this is part of their emotional nature, very warm and into a kind of cute, cuddly comfort. A lot of the pop stars and music and soaps in a lot of Asia come from Korea, and Korea sets the pace. The clothing styles that people in, say, Thailand most follow are Korean. And unlike the Japanese, who enslaved the Koreans and got way into the whole forced prostitution thing, and are obviously from another planet, the Koreans are from Earth. And they don’t have quite as split an Asian thing of cutesy vs. cruel. They are more comfortable showing their animal nature on the outside, and are kind of the mutts of Asia. Whether true or not, they feel they have more to prove, and are not fucking around at the moment to prove it. Their education system makes the Jews look like slackers. And if you were worried whether the USA is totally fucked because we have totally fallen behind in education, no need to worry. Just look at Korea’s education system and accept that we are breeding a nation of morons and give up.

And all the while walking around I think of my Dad who fought for these people and was sent to the front and killed people in Korea so that they could have all this, and now here I am where he fought and grew up and probably went whoring and whooping it up as a young man 60 years ago. And the song Cut Your Hair from Pavement making sense for the first time as it echoes through my head:

advertising looks and chops a must no big hair!! songs mean a lot when songs are bought and so are you- bitch, rant down to the practice room attention and fame so career, career, career….(Korea! Korea! Korea! Korea!)

Somehow I don’t want to leave this place.