Unlike her friends, settling into city life or simply settling down, Barclay seems to have chosen the more adventurous approach: she becomes friendly with a guy in a bar, a drummer eight years her junior, and follows him and his band to their three-month slot in a luxury hotel in Seoul.

While much of the early part of her book concerns the rather strange, almost cold and insular world of the hotel - with the band leader forcing everyone into Spandex and Barclay subsisting on western food she buys at a high price from a supermarket - the narrative eventually flows out from this at-times 'typical' westerner abroad theme.

It is only when they venture farther afield on the band's rare days off, and when she hits the road herself, that the true Korean spirit and country are slowly revealed.

Some of what follows is familiar: the stranger-abroad syndrome, where the reader is encouraged to laugh at the locals. 'The express bus terminal was modern, enormous, and splendid, but when I asked the girl behind the ticket counter in my best Korean if there was a bus, bosu, to Kongju, she ... giggled, said something to her colleague, and tried her best to ignore me. Because I didn't go away, she finally did summon assistance ... a young man who spoke English and explained I was in the Honam Terminal but should be in the Kyongbu Terminal. Such was the Seoul-style humiliation of the beginning of my first trip into the country.'

While the detail on culture and history is there (if a little light), Barclay does find herself in a variety of unusual and interesting situations as she delves deeper into the nooks and crannies of the national psyche.

There is the Buddhist monk who insists on giving her a lift to his monastery and letting her sleep in the storeroom, then imparting words of wisdom as she climbs the steps to the top of the mountain behind (mirroring the steps to enlightenment). As she leaves, he swaps holiday tales and postcards with her from his trips abroad.

At a popular beach destination she deals with the madding crowds of day-trippers, snapping away with their cameras and leaving a sea of litter, before fending off the grubby hands of a desperate student. In the industrial fishing town of Kampo she finds friendship with a young fisherwoman, sharing her house and meals, forging a bond that is more than language deep. Her encounter with the eponymous Mr Kim, a keen English speaker and walker who is both hospitable and welcoming, touches her deeply.

More comical is the insistence on quaffing soju, Korean whisky, with complete strangers often shocked at seeing a foreigner in their midst.

That theme of not fitting in, of loneliness, is strong throughout the book. Mirroring it is a Buddhist subtext, of a soul in search of itself.

While no Bruce Chatwin or Paul Theroux, Barclay writes well and Meeting Mr Kim succeeds where a lot of travel books have failed: it is entertaining, endearing and educational.