"Lying between chill sheets that night in my icy room, I tried to organize my first impressions of Seoul. In the back of my mind I felt that the place reminded me of somewhere I had been before. The impression of gloom and darkness and wildness could not be dispelled ... and everywhere there was the curiously clanging, grumbling tone of Korean speech. From time to time I was reminded of northern Japanese towns in wintertime–Akita, Aomori, Niigata, or Sapporo. But then it flashed into my mind that what Seoul really reminded me of was the Arctic: the bare, freezing desolations on the outskirts of Kiruna and Narvik."