Only FOUR distinct seasons?

I can't believe that I've been living here for 2 and a half years, and have yet to mention Korea's "four distinct seasons". It's kind of a running joke, up there with being asked 400 times if you like kimchi (no, I don't), or the feigned surprise that you can use chopsticks (thanks, used chopsticks more in Canada than I do in Korea, actually), that you will be told that Korea is special because it has four distinct seasons.

I first read about it before I even arrived, and I was a bit curious as to why they were mentioning it. Surely they don't think that they are the only place in the world with 4 seasons... or do they? Another blogger printed a part of a student essay in which the student asserts that other countries are "jealous" because of Korea's four distinct seasons.

Now... I have been giving this some thought. Maybe this is because yesterday, we had snow, sun, rain, high winds, a thunder storm, lightning, hail, freezing rain/ice pellets and then a nice sunset. Maybe the "distinct seasons" of Korea mean "every single kind of weather in the world in one 24-hour period"....

...but I digress.

Korea is not boasting about how many seasons it has, it's being boastful about how *different* (or distinct) each season is from the other. I'd like to go back and erase the word "four" from all the guidebooks and student essays, and replace it with "many", so it could be more like "Korea has many distinct seasons".

There's the pretty-flower-and-blue-sky season, the typhoon season (2 of them), the so-dry-my-lips-will-fall-off-unless-I-book-a-flight-to-Malaysia-right-now season, the please-turn-on-the-aircon-NOW season, the amazing-sunsets season, the I'm-at-the-beach-in-October! season, and so on....

Right now, it happens to be the fluffy-snowflakes season, with a dash of it's-winter-so-turn-on-the-ondol (and close the windows, no really, CLOSE THE DAMN WINDOWS!).