Korea has is the birthplace of webtoons, a comic characterized by having fully colored images. Korea has many web pages where you can read webtoons for free or for a fixed price. Webtoon is so popular in Korea that many dramas are actually based off of some popular webtoons that teens read. Being a webtoon artist/author is a full-time job and people can get famous off of their work. To further my Korean language enrichment, I actually tried reading a couple of Korean webtoons during my free time. I find them very fun and easy to read because the images help me with understanding what is happening in each scenario. 

There has been a huge scandal in Korea regarding multiple big name celebrities being part of a group chat. This scandal lead to a re-investigation of the death of Jang Ja Yeon. She was an actress who committed suicide and left a note explaining that she was sexually mistreated by certain big name company CEOs and her own entertainment company. Although it was revealed that she committed suicide, some believe that she was murdered because she had the intention of revealing the corruptness of the entertainment industry to the public. Currently, Yoon Ji Oh, a friend of Jang Ja Yeon, believes that her death was not a suicide. The friend is a sole witness to the death of Jang Ja Yeon and has been risking her life to give testimonies about what she saw and experienced. Yoon Ji Oh has published a book explaining what Jan Ja Yeon has been through and has been the center of public attention recently. 

Artifact #3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8swU0C0U4ec

Today, we went to a Korean restaurant to enjoy and bond over Korean food. The entire time we were there, we had to speak and order food in Korean without the help of Evelyn. While we were there, I got into an extensive conversation with the cashier lady. We talked about what school I am from and what major I was. I didn't know some of the Korean vocabulary that I wanted to use, so I tried explaining the meaning using other descriptive words.  I order a well-known Korean dish called kimchi jjigae (kimchi stew) and ate it with a variety of side dishes. 

Accessibility in Korea is on a whole other level. Every corner you walk there are 24 hour convenience stores stocked up with pre-made meals, alcohol, and daily essentials. Additionally, if you didn't feel like walking a little bit to the nearest convenience store, the food delivery services will find you wherever you are. If you are walking by the Han River and start to feel hungry, you can order any food you want with an app and the delivery guy will find you. Whether it is fried chicken or just ramen, delivery will come to you and you don't have to pay tip! Korea also has an extensive subway system set up so you can virtually go anywhere you want. All of the lines are also government owned, so you only need to have one card to pay for the ride. 

While america celebrates Valentine's day, Korea celebrates Valentine's day and White Day. Unlike America, on Valentine's day in Korea, the women are expected to give men chocolates/gifts only. This is because a little later, on White day, the men are supposed to reciprocate by giving women a gift (usually two time more expensive). Korea also celebrates pepero day, which is on November 11. It is called pepero day because the date is 11/11, which looks like the popular Korean snake called pepero (similar to pocky). On this day, you are to give your friends and boyfriends/girlfriends pepero to show them how much you appreciate them. From these unofficial holidays, you can really see that Koreans care about the couple culture and are not afraid of showing some PDA.

In Korea, blood type is often associated with the type of personality you have. It is often said that people who have blood type A are known to be perfectionist, responsible, stubborn, and sensitive. Blood type B people are creative, optimistic, forgetful, irresponsible, and selfish. Blood type O people are outgoing, social, leaders, arrogant, jealous, and insensitive. Finally, blood type AB people are cool, eccentric, talented, critical, and unforgiving. Many people think that blood type AB people are crazy, so when someone tells you that they think you are blood type AB, it is taken as an insult. Even though blood type does not actually determine your personality, the terms are used extensively in Korea. I think they use it more as a way to put people in categories based on personality. I do not think Koreans actually believe that the blood type determines what personality you have.

When talking about crime, Korea is famous for its practice of "crime re-creation". Citizens who are suspected of crimes, like murder, are led to to the crime scene by police. They are handcuffed while they do this and are told to reenact the crime scene step by step. Crime scene reenactments are intended to get a clear record of what just took place during the crime but can often times make the suspect look even more guilty. To make things even more bizarre, journalists and media crews are invited to the reenactment to take pictures and report on what they saw to the public. This has caused some trouble in Korea in the past where citizens would get so enraged during the reenactment that they would cause a scene and try to hurt the suspect.  

This year marks the 5th year anniversary of the Sewol Ferry tragedy and so I wanted to include it as my first cultural post. Sewol was a ferry that was en route from Incheon to Jeju Island in South Korea. At the time the ferry was carrying 476 people on the ship, which was over the max limit allowed by law. Of the 476 people, most of the passengers were students from Danwon High School who were there having a school field ship. On April 16, 2014 the ferry sank, killing 304 passengers and crew members on board. The captain of the ferry announced that passengers stay put in their rooms, even though the ferry was already tipping over. Although he advised people to stay in their rooms, the captain ultimately escaped and was rescued from the ship. This event caused uproar in Korea and caught the attention of the world. This event also started a protest to impeach President Park Geun Hye because of her negligence and lack of knowledge about the extent of the situation of Sewol. Although she was offered aide from both the U.S. and Japan, she rejected their help stating that people in Sewol would be rescued. 

Artifact 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_A8dq2fA5o 

For the last week of Korean lessons we decided to review all of our material for our final exam coming up. We went over all the things we did and Evelyn asks us questions from all the worksheets/quizzes we did. Overall, this semester I was able to expand my vocabulary a lot more compared to last semester's Korean lessons. Unlike last semester, I feel like the vocab that I memorized is more applicable when talking to other Korean friends on a casual basis. Although I did not get to accomplish everything that I wanted to do, I am happy with the level of teaching I received from Evelyn and what I was able to learn for my last semester. 

This week we had a case study on a forest fire that happened on a mountain in Korea. We looked at a news video and article that talked about how one of the residents on the mountain was a father. He was extremely sick and didn't have that much longer to live so he collected cash in his home to give to his son. Unfortunately, when the fire started on the mountain, it burned all of his cash, leaving him with nothing. It was a really sad article because there was nothing the father could have done and he lost thousands of dollars in a flash. Currently, there is a donation box (like GoFundMe in Korea) that asks people to donate their money to give back the father's lost cash. There was also a discussion about whether the government should do anything to refund the father. After watching the video, we filled out a worksheet about the forest fire case study and what we would do if we were in that situation. 

Because me and Kevin are science majors, we learned about particulate matter and environmental issues in Korea. I've been wanting to learn about this subject for a while because I know Korea has some serious environmental problems regarding their air quality. Evelyn talked about yellow dust in Korea and showed us a website that talked about the different sizes of particulate matter. This was a difficult subject because all of the scientific articles were in Korean. There were a lot of figures on the webpage so that helped me to understand the material. I actually learned a lot about particulate matter in a science class that I was currently taking, so it was interesting to see it taught in Korean. Additionally, when I went to Korea last time, I experienced some of the yellow dust. I had to wear a mask out in public because I was not used to it. It really made me realize how important air quality is and that we need to do something to reduce the amount of pollution we are putting out into the environment. 

For the last two weeks we started learning about colloquial language that is used in Korea. There is actually a lot of Korean slang used by people and I have seen people use it in conversation or when I watch a Korean drama. Koreans love to short words and mash it up with other words. Therefore, I knew some of the expressions we learned but I did not know what the actual full expression words were. During class, there were a lot of variety shows that we watched to pick up on the slang terms. I learned that a lot of the older people (starting from mid 20s) also did not know all of the slang words. Like in the America, new slang words are also made by primarily middle and high school students. 

This week we learned about sports in Korea. We focused heavily on volleyball because that was what Evelyn was the most knowledgeable about. We learned about the different positions and moves and what they were called in Korean. We also learned about the different mannerisms that Koreans use while watching the game in the audience that was different to the U.S. While teaching us about the sport, we watched clips of people playing volleyball and we had to name each position and move that we learned. We were assigned homework to memorize the all of the different positions because we would be quizzed on the material next week. Overall, I really enjoyed this material because sports is something that I have participated in and is universal across all languages. 

During our lessons, we were able to apply our Korean knowledge to our religion (because we were all Christians). Me and Kevin stated that we wanted to learn how to read the Bible in Korean because they use very formal and specific language when addressing God. We went over the names of different people and I was surprised at how different the names are in Korean compared to English. Also we went over some of the stories. Because many of the stories had a lot of metaphors and used a lot of figurative language, Evelyn had to help us a lot with the translation and the interpretation aspect. I particularly had a lot of trouble with this part because Kevin has more experience learning about the Bible in Korean compared to me. So there were a couple times where I was lost throughout the stories.

For the first class of the semester, we focused on setting up our learning goals and plans. Because this is my last semester, I wanted to focus on expanding my vocabulary as much as I can. I wanted to apply my Korean language in a professional world in some kind of way and with confidence. I find that even though I know how to speak properly, I lack confidence when I am facing native Korean speakers and decide to just talk to them in English instead. I also wanted to expand my reading and writing skills and try more advanced level readings. Last semester I was able to learn a lot by reading web comics in Korean. I hope to try and read more web comics but read ones that is set in maybe the Joseon period. Although I may not be able to reach all of my goals, if I am able to just expand my vocabulary to an extent and learn something new, I think I will have a very successful last semester here at the University of Richmond. 

This is an image of a Korean dish we made following a Korean cookbook online. 

This is a picture of some us going out and ordering food at a Korean restaurant. We all had to say what we wanted to the cashier and ask how much it was. 

This semester I am learning Korean as my target language. I am native to the United States and only visited Korea once in my entire life. Therefore, I do not have a lot of knowledge in Korean. What I do know about Korean was acquired from listening to my parents talk and watching Korean dramas and music videos. The relationship between Korean culture and Korean language is very important. Unlike America, which is very individualistic, Korea is very collective. They value tradition and working together as a group. A lot of their language is shaped by this culture. An example of this would be when talking to people of higher authority or to an elder. If you do not use a formal language with them it is seen to be extremely disrespectful. As a Korean employee, you are also expected to join company dinners. If you have plans on the same day, you would be expected to cancel the plans in order to join the company dinner. Because of this culture, it is looked down upon if you talk back to an elder or a boss. It is also disrespectful if you make direct eye contact with them during conversations. As a native born American, this became a culture shock for me because you would not do any of those things in the states. In fact, gestures such as looking at an elder or a boss directly in the eye would actually be a sign of respect in America. After my first trip to Korea, it made me realize how much I have yet to learn about the culture and the language. Although I grew up in a Korean household, there are things you absolutely cannot learn unless you go a visit the country yourself.

To become better at my target language I need to be more cautious and aware of my situation. I had a lot of times where elders would think of me as being rude because I did not respond or gesture to them a certain way. One major culture difference I experienced in Korea was in the metro. There is a spot in the subway that is only designated for elders and those that are pregnant. However, I was originally born in New York and anyone is able to sit anywhere regardless of their age, even when it was only supposed to be designated for elders. Therefore, without much thought, I picked the only available seat left since my ride was around one hour long. Once I sat down, two elders came up to me and started yelling at me in Korean. At that time I was not proficient in Korean and had a hard time apologizing to them and explaining that I was not from Korea and that I had made a mistake. Because of this, I think I need to improve my strategic competence in order to get my meaning across. To do this, my language partner assigned me some readings and variety shows to watch.

I personally learned a lot about my own culture during the cultural presentations. I really liked Diego's and Jessica's presentation on Korean marriages and Korean universities. I did not know so much went into traditional Korean marriages and I also did not know a lot of the terms he used in Korean. For Jessica's presentation, I did not know that Korean universities had OT (orientation trainings) and were very close with their own department. I kind of wish American universities had OT because I feel like I do not know a lot of people in my own department. I think OT will also be very useful to freshmans who have a hard time socializing with others. 

Korean attitude about time is very different compared to America. There is a saying that Koreans run on Korean time because we are known to be consistently late to everything. In fact, in Korea it is common to even be an hour late to appointments with friends. And instead of picking an exact time to meet up, many friends will give a rough estimate of what time they should meet up. It is not really known why Koreans have such a relaxed attitude towards time, but there are some speculations that there are historical influences.