When I began writing Seasons in the Kingdom, it was part of a first year English class. It began as a short story. Many of the elements of the story lay before me, and as I worked at surviving the next twenty plus years, I also worked at the problems this story presented to me. One was my very particular and intimate experiences in Korea. The others were the larger story of survival by young Korean women and the relationship they had with the GIs that came and went. In following entries I will provide some of the background information that I studied and had hoped would be part of the Seasons in the Kingdom, but that was not to be, because my gathering of information about Korean history, and specifically the changing role of women within Korean society through the centuries began to take on a life of its own. So, here, I will follow up with background of Korean history, the rise of Buddhism and the challenges of Neo-Confucianism and hope that shaped the closeted world of male-female society in Korea, a world that required blinders against the real human commerce of the Korean street. Comments are always welcome.
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