For our final meeting before the exam, we reviewed everything we learned this semester for the final exam. Jimin provided us a study guide with topics that could be on the exam, and this helped me realize that i learned quite a bit of Korean over the semester, especially Korean history. I feel appreciative and enlightened by what I learned this semester, and I am very thankful towards Jimin for being such a great teacher. 

For the ninth meeting, we went to Grand Mart to order our food using Korean and to eat Korean food. I shared a Jjajangmyu (black bean noodles) and yookgaejang (spicy beef soup) with a friend, and they all tasted delicious. When ordering, we spoke politely to the cashier, saying “짜장면 하나랑 육계장 하나 주세요.”, which meant one jjangmyun and one yookgaejang, please. For our tenth meeting, we had a very relaxed class of speaking only in Korean. We sat outside of the library due to the nice weather, and we talked about how our week was in Korean. During the conversation, I realized how much I mixed english into daily Korean conversations, and it was slightly difficult at times. But overall, I thought this was a good practice, especially for talking to my family in Korea.

For our seventh meeting, we worked on reading comprehension and solving problems that were related to the readings. We read about two different topics, which were the history of the founding of Yonsei University in South Korea, and ancient Korean art. We learned that the founder of Yonsei University, which is considered one of the most prestigious universities in South Korea, was founded by an American missionary named Horace Grant Underwood, and how he fell in love with South Korea and its people. He dedicated his life to building education and Christianity within South Korea, and even during his death, he wished to go back to Korea. Now, he is buried in South Korea, and his legacy lives on in Yonsei University. We also read about two ancient Korean artworks, specifically the “Folding Screen with lotus flowers and birds” and “Irworobongdo”. The folding screen was a very popular gift from the parents to their sons, because it had a meaning of happy marriage and living a humble life. “Irworobongdo” was a painting that was always placed behind the King of the Joseon dynasty of South Korea. The name literally means the sun, moon, and the five mountains in Korea. The meaning behind the painting is that the king works hard during the day and night, and work to protect the country and its people like the five mountains. The amazing part of this painting is that there is a space in the center of the painting, and it is there for the king to sit in front of the painting to complete the painting. I thought it was really cool that the people thought of using a person to complete the painting, and shows how creative people were even back in the days.

For our fifth meeting, we learned about 삼일절, which is the March 1st movement that took place in 1919. We got to learn that March 1st is the day of resistance of Japanese imperialism rule, and our country would not be what it is today if it weren’t for the Korean patriots that sacrificed their lives for the nation. One of the most important individuals was Kwan-Sun Yu, who was was a Seventeen-year old girl that lost her parents to the Japanese soldiers during the revolution. She planned and led the demonstration, which led to her arrest. The Japanese threatened and tortured her to give up the resistance, but she stubbornly refused to do so. She passed away in her cell on September 28th, 1920, which was a few days before her release. We remember her and other on March 1st, which is now a national holiday, to give our thanks. For our sixth meeting, we watched a movie called “Swing Kids”, which was about the Korean war, and focused on a North Korean soldier and an American soldier who became through tap-dancing. With a help of a few prisoners and a South-Korean woman, they put on a tap-dance team within the military secretly. Their goal is to impress the higher-ups of the American military so they would be released, and this movie showed the manipulative side of the American military, and how they took advantage of Koreans during the war. Overall, it was a very enjoyable movie.

For the third meeting, we learned a few more metaphors/idioms and vocabularies. For the vocabularies, however, we learned words that have two different meanings within them. For example, we learned the word 천지, which meant sky and ground. These words are all based on the Chinese characters and sounds, which I thought were interesting. Then we watched a Korean weather forecast, and stopped after each sentence to review the vocab we learned the week before and understand what the forecaster was saying about the weather in South Korea. For the fourth meeting, we learned the geography of South Korea. This lesson was very interesting, since we never learned the geography of Korea before, and I never realized that Korea had quite a few provinces. There are 9 provinces, and they are Gyeonggi-do, Chungcheongbuk-do, Gangwon-do, Chungcheongnam-do, Gyeongsangbuk-do, Jeollabuk-do, Gyeongsangnam-do, Jeollanam-do, and Jeju-do. I learned that I used to live in Gyeonggi-do, which is where Seoul is located in.  

For the first meeting of our Korean Lesson, we planned on what we were going to study this semester. We decided that for our second meeting, we would learn about metaphors/idioms along with new vocabularies, which were used daily in Korean conversations. The metaphors/idioms were phrases that aren’t taken literally to its written words. An example is 입이 무겁다, which means one’s mouth is heavy. But the implied meaning is that a person with a heavy mouth keeps secrets very well and won’t tell others. One of the new vocabulary words that we learned was 인도, which had three different meanings. The meanings could be either the country of India, sidewalk, or to lead, and one would decide which meaning it would be based on the context of the rest of the sentence. We also learned about a few weather-related words, such as 한파, which means extremely cold weather.

our Korean teacher, Jimin, took my class and a few other from her other classes to Grand Mart for a Korean dinner. 

I shared a jjajangmyun and yookgaejaang with Brenda, and they all tasted really good! We ordered our food using Korean, and I thought it was a great experience overall.

The KASA banquet was on April 13th, and they gave the members dinner with samgyupsal (pork belly), japchae (glass noodles with vegetables), and rice. It was delicious, and reminded me of how much I miss home-cooked Korean food.

Here’s a conversation I had with my grandpa over Kakaotalk. 

Here’s a picture of a Korean album I’ve been listening to constantly. The artist is Heize, and she is a K-pop/contemporary r&b/neo-soul artist. Her new and very first full album, titled "She's fine", is a very easy-to-listen, and enjoyable album. 

I watched a very interesting documentary on Youtube about South Korea and its taboo on Tattoos. It talked about how the older generation thinks negatively on tattoos, and it had to do with the fact that in the earlier days, tattoos were linked to gangs. The taboo was so heavily embedded in the older generation that it is difficult to change their beliefs, but the younger generation is definitely putting in the effort to showing that tattoos are a form of expression and art, which is something I agree with as well. In the video, it shows a brief clip about a daughter and her dad getting tattoos together, and I thought that it was a heartwarming scene, because the father was willing to understand his daughter. I hope the beliefs within the older generation does start to shift soon, and at least try to understand the younger generation and tattoos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDm3PzbU0_w

I watched a Netflix series called “Kingdom”, which is a show about the contamination of the zombie disease during the Joseon dynasty. The crown prince, played by Ji-Hoon Joo, is frustrated about how he couldn’t see the King, his father, but what he didn’t know was that the government workers were hiding the King from others because he became a zombie. And because he became a zombie, he couldn’t rule the kingdom, so the government workers used the King as a puppet to rule the kingdom however they wanted to. However, it becomes a major problem when an infected body has been leaked to the starving citizens at the hospital, and one of the characters end up making soup for everybody with the infected body and causing anybody that consumed the soup to become zombies. Now with the majority of the citizens becoming zombies, the crown prince and a few others have to stop the disease from spreading to the rest of the Kingdom. Although the show only has 6 episodes so far, it is a very interesting story plot filled with irony and implication of the messy social construct of the Joseon dynasty. I recommend this to anybody that likes historical Korean dramas, and anybody that enjoyed “Train to Busan”, which was a zombie movie that was a big hit in Korea in 2016.

I watched a Korean movie called “Extreme Jobs”, which is a movie about a struggling group of prosecutors who were working to arrest a team of drug dealers. While they are on the verge of being relocated, they find that the drug dealers ordered fried chicken from a failing restaurant across their headquarter building, so the prosecutors buy the restaurant and start their own fried chicken business. However, the story takes a turn when the restaurant actually begins to do well due to its unique sauced chicken, and they end up focusing more on selling fried chicken than their prosecution jobs. I really recommend this movie to whoever likes comedy and crime movies.

South Korea has been growing within the fashion industry, and its very own fashion show period, Seoul Fashion Week, has become one of the most important fashion events in Asia. While the actual fashion shows by Korean designers is the main reason for the fashion show week, what gained the most attention were the people in their street-style clothing. The people varied from models, students, and even toddlers. The group of people stood out from the others, with their loud, yet cohesive, outfits that drew attention from anybody that passed by.

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For the ninth week of class, we reviewed everything we learned this semester for the exam. Although some things came easily for me, I realized that I forgot some of them, mainly because I didn’t use the proverbs or the historical vocabularies on an everyday basis. However, since I used the slangs often within text messages, it was easier for me to remember them. Then, for the tenth week, Jimin gave us a final exam on all of the things we learned. During the exam, I realized that we learned a lot over the semester, and in a way, I was content with myself for actually learning something over the semester and also thankful to Jimin for teaching us and doing so much for us.  

BTS, which is an abbreviation for BangTan Sonyeondan, is the most popular K-POP boy group worldwide. There are seven members in the group, which include Jin, Suga, J-Hope, RM, Jimin, V, and Jungkook. They debuted in 2013 with the album “2 Cool 4 Skool”, and continued to release an album almost every year since. They slowly gained popularity until their big hit in 2015, with the song “I Need U”. Ever since then, their popularity skyrocketed and all of their songs became big hits, and they had the highest selling albums. They were recognized worldwide, and they even received BillBoard awards for the Top Social Artist for 2 years in a row, and were invited to perform at the American Music Awards, and have collaborated with top U.S. artists, such as Nicki Minaj, Steve Aoki, Wale, and Charlie Puth. What is very admirable is that they mainly sing and rap in Korean- and although they mainly perform in Korean, they have many international fans, and always send out a message of “Love Yourself” which was their album title and RM’s speech at the UN. Not only are they recognized for their songs and their performances, they are also recognized for the messages they send in their songs.

Suneung, also known as the College Scholastic Ability test, is an exam taken by high school seniors in Korea. It is taken place only once a year, and is comprised of a korean language section, mathematics section, english section, Korean history and social studies section, and another second language/chinese character section. High school students prepare for years in order to take this test, and they do so by studying the materials in school, in cram schools, with private tutors, or just on their own. The suneung is heavily criticized because it is only held once a year- so if a student did not do well on the exam and did not get accepted into the college they wanted to attend, they would have to wait and study for another whole year. Meanwhile, in the U.S., we could take the SAT or the ACT numbers of times during the school year. And there are many people that do not do well even on their second and third tries, so they spend years even after graduating high school to get a good score on the exam. People criticize the exam for being time inefficient for the students that have to retake the exam, which I agree with as well.

The modern standard of beauty in Korea is a very controversial topic within Korea and internationally. The standard of beauty in Korea for women is to have clear and pale skin, with bigger eyes with double eyelids and eye bags, a small and high nose, and having a narrower jaw and chin. The standard of beauty body-wise is to be skinny with with thin and long arms and legs, but with bigger chest and curves. The Korean society judges people based on their looks quite often, and this used to happen even during job interviews, where the interviewee’s looks have a big influence on the interviewer on selecting their new employees. Because so many things are based on people’s looks, they often get plastic surgeries and diet, to the point where people would risk their lives to look just a bit more physically attractive. For example, finding plus-size clothes and darker foundation shades is relatively difficult in Korea. This has been a big, controversial issue in Korea and outside of Korea, and people have been speaking out and against the standard of beauty in Korea. Although things are slowly beginning to change, the change is too slow, and people are still fighting for equality.

Buddhism is a religion that is relatively popular in Korea, specifically with the older generation. It was introduced to Korea from China and Japan, and it has been the religion of Korea during the Joseon era. The movie “Along with the Gods” shows the buddhist aspect of the afterlife, which includes the 49 days of trials and judgement for reincarnation. Although it is a little bit different from the movie, there are five deadly sins of Buddhism, which are ignorance, attachment, aversion, pride, and jealousy. After the trials, they are judged to either be reincarnated or stay in hell. Although a little bit different from traditional Buddhism, Korean Buddhism took ideas of the Mahayana Buddhism, and added their own ideas and concepts of the afterlife. I was inspired to research about Korean Buddhism because my grandma is Buddhist, so I wanted to see what kinds of beliefs her religion held. I was also inspired because of the movie that we watched in class, “Along with the Gods”. The main character dies and goes to the underworld, where he is judged on how he lived his life, with trials based on the different types of sins for 49 days, and he must pass all of those trials within the 49 days in order to reincarnate.