SDLC 112 First Culture Post

[Hongzhen Chen]

In the past two semesters, I learned Korean food, political, and social culture such as women's status in Korean, Korean military service, Korean housewife culture, etc. This semester, I would like to explore the drama and k-pop culture in Korean. Although these seem to be the entry-level knowledge for Korean culture lovers, I chose to explore the k-drama and k-pop at this stage rather than at the beginning because I want to be able to really understand the lyrics and simple lines rather than reading the English subtitles. After self learning Korean for two semesters, I can now understand most of the simple dialogues and can read simple lines in k-drama. I feel great when I could really understand the Korean singers introducing the songs and emotions in Korean since there is always a translation difference. Therefore my goal for the Korean culture learning this semester is to watch more Korean dramas, concerts, interviews, and TV shows and try to read the Korean subtitles rather than English subtitles. My goal is to explore how and why Korean entertainment companies could make so successful pop songs and dramas and make them popular all over the world. I also would like to explore the synergy and commonalities between k-pop and hip-pop.