My five days in Seoul, the capital of South Korea, left no striking impressions. Probably I was reaching the stage of confusion of an Australian Prime Minister on a quick tour of the Far East, who said, at a banquet in Seoul, how glad he was to be in Taipei. The interpreter corrected the slip and it was left to one of the Prime Minister's fellow-countrymen to put it on record.
In Seoul, everyone with whom I talked business appeared to be named Kim, except the American head of a local distributor company. Apart from the accent, I would have assumed him to be British, though I do not mean to suggest or imply that this was creditable in him. At dinner one evening in his pleasant home, he outraged his wife's sensibilities by stating that the vegetables we were then enjoying were fertilized with human excrement, and hoping I did not object.
It was in Seoul too that an American guest at the same hotel invited me to his room "for a whisky" and then gave me Bourbon in Coca-cola. At such times it is depressingly obvious to me that no permanent British - U.S.A. alliance is possible.
South Korea seemed to have in circulation the dirtiest money I had seen, in a region of dirty money. The Roman who said: Petunia non olet - (money doesn't smell) was of course speaking figuratively.
As in other countries of the region, notes are doing the work of coins, owing to inflation. Among my wad of notes were some of value one Won - less than half a Cent.