Korea Tour: Shapeshifter with Stephane Mot

Published: Dec. 24, 2014, 9:34 p.m.

b'

In Seoul\'s Sinchon district, Colin talks with\\xa0Stephane Mot, "conceptor," writer of fiction, nonfiction, "nonsense," and author of the blog\\xa0Seoul Village\\xa0as well as the collection\\xa0Dragedies. They discuss Paris as a "recurring hero" of literature and Seoul as a "shapeshifter"\\xa0glimpsed from different angles in different stories; how he got involved in the early days of internet gaming, surviving three startups in three years; the French embassy job that brought him to Seoul in 1991; why he prefers winter in Seoul to winter in Paris; the difficulty of walking in Seoul when first he got there; the first of the city\'s "villages" that convinced him to explore more; what kind of relationship with Paris he has as a ninth-generation Parisian, and what it has gained by his becoming a partial outsider; when he first began writing about Korea; why of the two important subjects of love and death, he sticks to death; his\\xa0"Borgesian experience" of discovering the internet; the subjects to which he finds himself returning in Seoul over and over again; why he writes in both French and English; his\\xa0definition of a city as a scar; what he sees happening to the Korean social fabric, and how it works differently in France; the difference between the new-built urban places of Songdo and\\xa0La D\\xe9fense; what happens when a city has "no place for storytelling"; why he searches maps for crooked streets; what got the cars out of Sinchon; his "biggest shame," his relationship with the Korean language, which keeps its learners thinking they\'ve never learned enough; his skill with "Korean silence"; the Seoulite\'s constant grieving for what has disappeared, or what will soon disappear; why he writes about the "gaps" on the maps; how having one\'s own fictional Seoul prevents insanity; how more people now really come from Seoul, resulting in new senses of belonging and identity; the emerging schizophrenia between the "Korean wave" and Korean tradition; what remains unformed in Seoul to keep him awake; the reasons to hope offered by the increasing consciousness of and affection for Seoul; and the possible end of the "lemming race" to the capital.

'