I honestly cannot believe that I am writing my last bi-weekly journal of the semester. This not only signifies my last time taking a self-directed Korean class, but also the midpoint of my senior year. I am proud of how far I have come in my Korean studies. I improved my writing, reading, speaking, and grammar skills dramatically from when I first started learning Korean on campus. I plan to continue this journey, even when I am not taking a college course.
For the past two weeks, I continued to practice my conversation skills not only in person, but also through text messages. Conversing through text was always my weakest point because I did not know how to replicate casual speaking into text. I would always feel awkward using slang and non-formal speech. I also was self-conscious in the past about my spelling as I knew my spelling was imperfect. However, I started to see progress slowly, but surely. I was using vocabulary words that I could not use in the past and my spelling improved dramatically. I think working on several skills at once helped me to improve communication through text. I also did not realize that I was improving until I started receiving feedback from the people that I communicated with. For example, my mother complimented me on my Korean and that she was proud to have raised a son to use hangul. Many of my friends recognized that I was articulating my thoughts more coherently than I did in the past. I’m glad that I have more than self-affirmation about my learning because I have more feedback to reflect and improve upon.
I also learned about the working conditions in the Korean entertainment industry and the effect that these conditions have on young celebrities. This is an issue that I wanted to study for a while because the number of suicides in the industry has increased over time. In the past two months, two celebrities took their own lives in their own apartments. According to several articles, many suicide cases in the Korean entertainment industry were caused by intense pressures to maintain popularity and a perfect image. This burden is placed upon these young celebrities during their teenage years, when they train and prepare to become global stars. K-pop stars are always monitored and restricted from going outside of their training dorms without the consent of management. Their diet and bodyweight are monitored at all times as well as K-pop stars are expected to uphold a beauty standard that is already deeply rooted in Korean society. These restrictions prevent K-pop stars to socialize only among their groups and are unable to enjoy the freedom that ordinary citizens can enjoy. Many of them may also experience bodily insecurities as they are expected to meet unrealistic and unhealthy beauty standards. The worst part is that these stars do no get paid much until their debut. In other words, K-pop starts are treated more like assets of a company rather than workers.
Comments
Hi Brandon! You're completely right about the dark working conditions that a lot of Korean entertainment industry faces right now and the recent suicides are really sad. You're also right about the stringent beauty standards that exist in Korea both for celebrities and for normal people in Korean society.
This semester did go by really quickly! I think that the recent suicide rates amongst Korean pop stars is really alarming as well. I think that a lot of people only see the entertainment industry for all the fun parts, but don't recognize there's a darker side to it as well.
I am so happy for you that you were able to improve your Korean abilities during the course of this semester. I also had the same problem with texting and spelling things wrong, but I also found that I improved too. Regarding the K-pop industry, I did an analysis on the same topic for one of my cultural posts, and I totally agree.
I also feel extremely shocked by the fact that the semester went by super quick! I believe this Korean study is my last semester since I have taken three semesters of Korean. Over the last three years, I really learned a lot about Korean language and, most importantly, the culture. I remember I talked to you in Korean a couple times. It did feel a little weird, but I thought it was good experience.