Bi-weekly journal 3

[Jae Wan Kim]

For the past two weeks, I’ve been closely monitoring the success of the film Parasite, directed by Bong Joon Ho. I’ve also been reading Korean, studying vocabulary, and trying to integrate the language into my daily life.Earlier this week, Parasite received four major Oscar awards out of six nominations shortly after winning an award at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, which is an awards ceremony that consists of fellow actors and directors. I was really proud of these achievements as it is the first time that an international film has won awards from both ceremonies in one year. However, the topic of this journal is not the awards ceremony, but the way the Korean cast and crew communicates with the interviewers and audience members through an interpreter.As I was following the journey of the cast and crew members, I learned that translation of words does not necessarily equate to the translation of feelings and emotions. When director Bong Joon Ho speaks to interviewers in Korean, he doesn’t just communicate with his words. He also communicates through facial expressions and his body language. Sharon Choi, Bong’s interpreter, beautifully captures the meaning of his words through careful choice of words that most accurately translates his intentions.I also think Bong’s speech for his award for Best Director was interesting because he was able to make people laugh without speaking English. Based on my observations, he was able to relate emotionally with his audience by using English words that are used in daily communications in Korea.I’ve also been trying to incorporate Korean into my daily life by changing my default language on my phone to Korean. This is an exercise that I learned from my peers who are also learning a new language. They’ve told me that this exercise has pushed them to remember the words that they’ve learned. I’ve been seeing these benefits as well, as I’ve been able to associate words with the images on my phone. Sometimes I mistake certain settings on my phone for others due to the fact that I haven't mastered this technique yet, but I’m confident and hopeful that my skill sets will improve.In the future, I hope to push myself by changing the default language on my laptop to Korean. I’m unable to complete this task at the moment because I feel that I can complete my schoolwork if the language was in English. However, I plan to change the language on the weekends or whenever I do not have a major assignment coming up.Overall, the past two weeks have been intellectually and culturally significant. With Parasite’s win, Korea has made its mark in American cinema. Intellectually, my Korean learning has been very productive and I hope to continue this journey further.