Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Something that makes me wish I lived in Seoul

Seoul isn't so bad.  I lived on the slopes of Mount Gwanak for a year and enjoyed hiking the mountain once a week so I could get some kind of nature fix.

On the other hand, the crowds really got to me.  I don't like even Sokcho's E-mart on Saturday afternoons and all Seoul is like that all the time.

I prefer Sokcho and can always visit Seoul once in a while.

One of the few things that could change my mind has appeared in the Herald (the link looks good but that's never certain with the Herald - excerpt below). Turns out, there are several libraries with English books in Seoul.

Excerpts:

Jeongdok Public Library

At the Jeongdok Public Library there are a little more than 4,500 books in foreign languages, nearly 3,800 of which are non-fiction, and all of which may be taken out of the library's facilities.

The library has 25 different magazine titles available for foreign visitors, including Time, Newsweek, Reader's Digest and National Geographic.

...

Namsan Library of Korea

The Namsan Library has a little more than 12,000 books in English, and more than 1,300 of among them have been purchased since 2007.

All registered members of the library can borrow books here. To register, an alien registration card is required for expats.

...

National Assembly Library

The official library of Korea's National Assembly offers about 263,680 non-fiction selections, plus about 2,000 fiction publications in English....To get there, take subway Line 5 to Yeouido Station, leaving through Exit No. 2.

Visit www.nanet.go.kr/english for more information.

There were one or two other libraries listed as well.  I know a continuing education library in Sokcho has children's books in English.  I wonder about other libraries locally. Kwandong University's library has a (relatively) large, and varied, selection of English books, all thirty years old and older.  I'll try to update this as I find out more.

5 comments:

not-so-quiet mom said...

There's supposed to be a library of sorts of the Office of Education (not sure if that's the right title), but I think it's mostly books that TEFLers have dropped off.

Anonymous said...

An English library would be nice. But I haven't even seen the English section in our library. I really should go there some day and see what they have. Our library also has a lot of DVDs, I've been told. I'm not sure if you can take them out or if you have to watch them in the library. I once heard you can only borrow at the weekend or something.

kwandongbrian said...

My understanding is that you can sign out a DVD for the weekend.

The English section of the library is okay. I usually surprise the librarians who might not see anyone all day, as far as I can tell.

Anonymous said...

Do they have novels there?

kwandongbrian said...

They have a few shelves of fiction. I read some science fiction and thrillers there. I am sure they have literature, as well. There seemed to be random parts of series'. book 4 of this series, book 2 of that one...