‘Expats’ in Busan: Rolf Potts in South Korea

Rolf Potts is filing stories from South Korea for Slate this week. His first dispatch came from the port city of Busan, where he attended a film festival. “I am here because I worked in Busan as an English teacher in the late ‘90s, and Korean-born U.S. director Wonsuk Chin has written a screenplay about this experience, titled ‘Expats,’” Potts writes. “Since Chin is at the festival, meeting with possible financiers for his film, I’ve made plans to see him this afternoon at the Grand Hotel.” It turns out Chin was inspired, at least in part, by a story Potts wrote years ago for Salon.

Writes Potts:

Admittedly, Expats is not literally about my life, though I have enough in common with Chin’s protagonist Jeremy Keller to feel like it could be. As was the case for me 10 years ago, Keller isn’t sure what to do with his life in his mid-20s, so he elects to buy some time (and make some cash) by moving to Korea to teach English. Like I did, Keller finds himself charmed, bewildered, and frustrated with the extremes of expatriate life, as well as the challenges of living and teaching in an unfamiliar culture. Like I did, Keller falls in with an eclectic group of acquaintances, including an international roster of fellow expats.

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