My experience in Korea began almost 59 years ago — in November. Arriving one month ahead of me in October was my good friend, Bruce Snow. Recently, I met him and we had the chance to reminisce about the Korea of 1965.

In our recollections, one of the first and dominant themes was the poverty. Korea in 1965 was desperately poor. The per capita annual income was about $125, making Korea one of the poorest countries in the world. But the poverty was not inherent — there was a pervasive idea that the poverty was an aberration, that Korea was inherently a wealthy country. The poverty was temporary because of the privations of the Japanese exploitation of the early 20th century, World War II, and then the division of Korea and the tragic Korean War. Koreans, in their DNA, seemed to know that they would recover from these privations and become a country of wealth in the world of nations. In other words, there was hope in the eyes and the spirits of the people Bruce and I met in 1965.

Bruce spoke of the unpleasant topic of "honey buckets" and the cleaning out of the "byeonso" — a word we don't use in Korea anymore. The "byeonso" was an outhouse, a parallel term in Korean is "dwigan" — the "back........

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