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Similar to our Independence day of July 4th, South Korea celebrates their Liberation Day on August 15th of each year.  In 1945, Japan signed the Allies' terms of surrender to end World War ll which terminated Japan's occupation of Korea.  On the 15th of August in 1948, the Republic of Korea was established by Syngman Rhee, South Korea's first president.  It's interesting to think about how the US has been a nation for almost 250 years and South Korea hasn't been around for even a century.  The sensation of their victory of final independence after being colonized and in war must still be fresh and strong.  

Liberation Day is called 광복절 gwangbogjeol which literally translates to "the day the light returned".   In North Korea, it is referred to as  조국해방의 날 Jogukhaebangui nal which literally translates to "liberation of fatherland day".  It is the only holiday shared between the two countries because it happened right before the Korean War split them into North and South Korea that we know today.  To celebrate this holiday in South Korea, their flag otherwise called Taegeukgi (태극기), meaning supreme, ultimate flag, is flown just about everywhere, along streets and outside people's homes. The white background represents peace and the blue and red circle was inspired by the yin and yang that represent balance.  The black trigrams represent fundamental principles of movement and harmony.  

People also get the day off of work to celebrate.  There is a special ceremony where the president will visit Independence Hall of Korea for the playing of their national anthem. 

https://10mag.com/national-liberation-day-gwangbokjeol/ ;

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ks.html

This week Atul and I reviewed everything in preparation for the final assessment. We spent 90 minutes on Sunday reviewing and doing a practice test, with the majority of the time spent going very slowly through a Hindi YouTube video for kids. Understanding spoken Hindi is definitely more difficult for me than understanding written Hindi, so it was good practice.

The final assessment itself had three components. First was reading: I read a paragraph of Hindi text - it was a story about visiting a church and a temple, and then I briefly summarized (in English) what it said. Second was listening: I watched a minute of a Hindi kids' story read aloud on YouTube, and then I again summarized what I understood from it. Third was speaking: I responded to some basic questions about my daily life in Hindi.

Attached is my reflection paper.

Kelly_Breakall_Final_Paper.docx

            As a language learner, I have seen myself grow from passively absorbing information like a sponge, to chasing down new words and ideas.  The most marked difference from this semester is this enthusiasm, previously hidden or nonexistent, now developed into a hunger.  Over this time, I have come to appreciate and understand the language and culture of Greece with a fresh pair of eyes and ears.  Before, it was just another country in the Mediterranean, which almost didn’t even exist.  It was just an idea, nothing more. Though language and culture cannot be held, they are as real to me now as the air I breathe, and almost as necessary.  Now that I have embarked on this language learning quest, I can hardly imagine not knowing all that I do now, but also cannot easily imagine how much more still awaits my discovery.  Certainly, this is the greater portion, but I think that with my greater understanding of the culture over my previous self, the words will come more easily, and that I will learn more quickly on this curve.

            I will admit that at first, it seemed a very easy thing for an English speaker to learn Greek.  After all, we do derive many of our words from the language.  I was very much mistaken, and started off the semester on a rough course, thinking this should all be easy.  To underestimate the complexity of a language, a culture, and a people is one of the gravest errors I have ever made.  I started to learn from this folly, and put more effort into the course as it progressed.  Smaragda helped me on this road to recovery by always answering any concerns I had, while also staying tough as nails, unwaveringly challenging me, insisting that I challenge myself.  We could have toned down the volume or complexity of the lessons, but instead we kept forging on.

            I enjoyed the opportunities that all the Greek students at UR gave me to practice my skills, and offer extracurricular lessons and insights.  Thanks to them, I now know about aspects of Greek life like Grandma’s recipe for the world’s best παστήτσιο to how to pick a college in Greece.  Of course, these kinds of lessons did not vastly increase my vocabulary or knowledge of the grammar and syntax, but gave me an invaluable glimpse into the real world from Greek eyes.  Having had no such prior experience, I found these stories to be very refreshing, but also often exhausting whenever one of the Greek students would begin straying farther and farther from English in its narration.  One of the Greek girls here, Myrsini, only ever speaks Greek to me.  She has very good English, but refuses to waste it on me during this semester, except to explain a word here and there, but not every time.  She often insists that I just figure it out from context (exhorting me in Greek to do so).  These glimpses and challenges force me to dive into being Greek, but the force is no longer as necessary.  They don’t have to push me in when I’m already jumping in.

            During the semester, I found the readings and videos about the babies recognizing miniscule phonetic differences to be wistful and hopeful.  Surely, if I had only had some exposure to the influence of Greek while I was a baby, I could have learned the language and the people with ease, and could go to Greece fully prepared and ready to experience it to the fullest, but instead I have to fight to break out of my fossil.  On the other hand, knowing that it is possible, and employing some of Bennie Lewis’ “hacking”, I do believe I can make my way.  I also found the videos about visual perception differences from the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis utterly intriguing and mind-boggling.  Seeing a ring of squares of identical colors, I was dumbstruck to learn that to another culture, the difference was noticeable, even obvious, and that a similar test proved the opposite.  I wonder what kinds of new colors, ideas, and perceptions I will gain from my continued study and visit to Greece.

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Imagine that you have received a research grant to conduct a linguistic study of your target language and culture. How would you get started, and what would you investigate? How would different structural components presented in class appear in your work?

If I received a research grant to study Korean linguistically, I would want to first start out with the Korean alphabet and its history. I think the origin of the Korean language is a fairly unique one, because it was created completely from scratch and while it did have some Chinese influences, it was a mostly independently created language. I also think the historical circumstances surrounding it are extraordinary. The language was created by the Korean king so the peasants who couldn't afford the time or money to learn Chinese could still read; knowing this backstory to the language gives an understanding about why its formatted the way it is and why it is written the way it is. I would also give special attention to the relationship between the way each letter is written and spoken in the Korean alphabet. When it was being created, Korean was given extreme attention from a linguistic standpoint. Each letter's shape tries to imitate the shape that the mouth or tongue or other parts of the body create when making this sound, and that is probably why it is such an easy language to learn. 

In my ninth class, Jimin and I went over what we had learned throughout the semester, reviewing everything from the proverbs and slang from the very beginning of the semester to the history we had recently learned. This review session was really valuable in kind of consolidating and organizing everything we had learned so far and it also helped me realize just how much I had been able to learn in a short semester. I felt really proud of the progress I had made in not only my comprehension and knowledge of the Korean language, but in Korean culture as well through activities like watching Along with the Gods, going to Grand Mart and learning the history of Korea. 

In my tenth class, I took the final exam

In my seventh class, we finished the second half of the movie Along with the Gods, and wrote a paragraph in Korean about what we liked, disliked or thought important about the movie. Jimin reviewed the paragraphs and helped fix certain grammar mistakes and we talked about what we thought about the movie in relation to Korean culture, history, etc.

In my eighth class, Jimin gave us a lecture of a brief, broad overview of Korean history. She covered the entire history of Korea, going from origin stories that exist about how Korea was founded, all the way to present day. We wanted to learn more about the more modern history of Korea (so about Japanese colonization of Korea and the political upheavals that occurred even after Korea was liberated), so we spent a bit more time on that section of Korean history. We learned about the three-kingdom era of Korea and how it used to be split up into several different kingdoms that were constantly at war with each other until they eventually were conquered by one kingdom and became Joseon--the predecessor to modern South Korea. We then learned about how Japan colonized Korea during the Pacific War and we learned about the hardships that the Korean people faced at this time. We then learned about the dictator-like presidents that took over after the liberation and after the Korean War, and what actions they took to try and hold on to the presidency. 

In my fifth class, we took a field trip to Grand Mart to eat some real Korean food. We had to order our food in Korean and read the korean descriptions of the food in order to figure out what we wanted which was interesting. Jimin then taught us about what ordering food is like in Korea, and talked about how much more advanced food delivery is there. We learned about the food delivery culture in Korea and how its much more of a norm to have food delivered regularly since it is so easy and usually much cheaper than it is in the U.S. 

In my sixth class, Jimin gave a pop quiz to review everything we learned so far, including the slang we learned the second class and also the proverbs we went over in the third class. Jimin also quizzed us on commonly made mistakes in grammar or spelling and then we watched a movie called Along with the Gods. We watched it with English subtitles, just in case we weren't able to understand the plot of the movie because of the advanced vocabulary used in it. We decided to split the movie into two parts because of our quiz and to have a chance to review the part of the movie we watched. 

In my third class we learned about proverbs or 속담, which are sayings that often have a traditional/historical origin and are used to convey a deeper meaning. They are used very often in everyday conversation, and I had a very limited knowledge of them, so learning about them was really useful. We went over a list of frequently used proverbs, and Jimin again gave the korean interpretation/meaning behind them and then the english translation. For example, we learned the proverb 병 주고 약 준다, and the literal english translation is to give a disease and then give medicine, which still seems a bit nonsensical. However, the korean meaning behind it was that someone will hurt you and then try to help you (e.g. insulting you and then complimenting you right after). I had often heard this proverb in korean variety shows but didn't know what it meant exactly, so it was really helpful. We also learned 사자성어, which are also proverbs, but are in a four letter format because they're derived from chinese characters; this means that each letter in the four letter combination comes from a chinese character and so each letter has a specific meaning that combines together with the meanings of the other three letters to create the message of the proverb. In this class, Jimin gave us the literal korean meaning of each of the four letters and taught us what the combination was supposed to mean, and what message it was supposed to send. We then wrote down our own English interpretation/translation. 

The fourth week of class was thanksgiving break so we didn't have class, but I tried to practice Korean at home with my parents both in speaking conversation and through text. 

In my first meeting with my korean tutor Jimin, we went over logistics like when we were both available to meet, whether we would want to do one 2 hour lesson a week or two 1 hour lessons, etc. We then spent the rest of the lesson figuring out what my goals for this semester was and Jimin helped me with my learning plan, suggesting some activities that she thought would be helpful in reaching my goal and that we could accomplish together in class. 

In my second meeting with Jimin, she gave us a lesson on a broad overview of korean slang and started out by handing out a worksheet with a list she made of popular slang terms and shortened/combined phrases. She first asked me to see if there were any I already knew and then we went over the ones I didn't know. She gave both the korean meaning and then an english meaning so I could have both contexts. 

Just as pc cafes have become really popular because they met the demand for gaming that exists in Korea, comic cafes or 만화방 are really popular too. I attached two videos from when I went to Korea and went to a comic cafe, but they're spacious spaces with a variety of chairs, sofas, hammocks and beds to read from and floor to ceiling shelves filled with japanese manga, korean manga and other comics. In the same concept as pc cafes, you rent a certain amount of time to stay in the cafe, and then have access to thousands of comic books, thus making a lot comics available at a much cheaper cost. 

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Gaming is also a really important part of Korean culture, and the popularity of gaming has no doubt been influenced a lot by the existence and popularity of pc cafes or 피시방 in Korea. These pc cafes are pretty much "cafes" where there are just rows and rows of high-tech computers that you can rent for fairly cheap prices and play games or browse the internet on. They are often open 24 hour in Korea and you can even order food and drinks there. These pc cafes are really popular among high schoolers and middle schoolers, and make gaming more accessible. Many recent popular games like Overwatch or League of Legends require a lot of processing power to play, and these pc cafes make it possible to play these popular games without having to actually own an expensive computer with the specs to run them at home. This creation and popularization of pc cafes have led to a way to fulfill this nationwide obsession with playing computer games. 

야식 (which is what food eaten late at night is usually called) is a really popular part of modern Korean culture. While late night food might not seem like a big deal to foreigners, 야식 isn't just a typical late midnight snack. Because there is a widespread "diet culture" of sorts (almost all women diet in some way because of the strict beauty standards in Korea), there is arguably just as strong of an urge to break that diet. The menu that makes up the most popular foods for 야식 are exactly the kinds of foods that are the worst to eat at night: greasy, spicy, high-calorie, fried foods are the go-to. Foods like fried chicken and spicy ramen (also known as bul-ddak or 불닭 볶음면 is a brand of ramen that became enormously popular for how almost painfully spicy it was) are some examples of popular choices. Videos of people eating, called mukbang or 먹방 are extremely popular because they act as a way of enjoying the food but not having to face the consequences of actually eating it. 

This link is to a mukbang video of a popular youtuber eating spicy chicken and rice at night: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNrzR8RN3LU

Webtoons, or korean comics are also extremely popular in Korea and one of my learning goals was actually to read one through without needing to look up any words. I attached a screenshot from one of the webtoons I was trying to read below, and found that learning the slang and the process by which koreans shortened/combined words or letters in popular slang, was really helpful in reading it. This was especially true because it was a webtoon that took place in a high school in Korea. 

The link below is a screenshot I took of the webtoon mentioned above:

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While people usually adhere to similar fashion trends and makeup styles depending on what is popular at the moment, this is especially true for Korean culture: especially nowadays. Because it is a country that puts a lot of focus on outward appearance: evidenced by the extremely high plastic surgery rates, it's not surprising that fashion and makeup have such large influences there. One of the main outlets for this influence in Korea is through the enormously popular k-pop"idol" groups in Korea. The clothes that these "idols" wear, the type of makeup they put on, are all both informed by the trends at the time and also create those said trends. This type of practice is not unheard of in most other westernized countries too; a celebrity wearing a certain article of clothing, and that clothing becoming a trend, is a fairly common way for fashion trends to start. However, it is especially accentuated because of both the sheer number of "idols" or "idol groups" in South Korea, and how small of a country it is to begin with. I was reminded of this cultural aspect of Korea when I saw a post on social media from a popular Korean blogger; she often posts pictures taken of popular idols and tries to identify the articles of clothing they're wearing, or at least something very similar. 

Another important aspect of Korean culture is the food. I went to a korean food restaurant in Richmond that actually has the same name as me (it's also named Yewon). I ordered my food and my friend's food in Korean, and even asked the waiter why they didn't give us side dishes. Side dishes (which are called 반찬) are usually served along with the main dish at every meal. I ordered a 감자탕 (which is a type of spicy potato stew) and i ordered 갈비 (marinated and grilled beef short ribs) for my friend. 

Picture below is of my food:

Korean music and especially Korean "idol" groups are becoming world-wide sensations, and while there were groups like Girls Generation and Shinee that had been popular outside of Korea before, the scale of their popularity is incomparable to groups like BTS who are trending nowadays. While the korean music that most people know is generally called "k-pop," there are actually several different music genres that are combined both in the korean music industry and in most popular Korean songs. For example, two of the most popular genres that "k-pop" utilizes are jazz and hip hop. There are jazz undercurrents or the specific rhythms associated with jazz, present in many popular korean songs by various artists like Heize or Dean, and hip hop is featured in songs by boy groups like Ikon. There is also a subgenre for korean hip hop specifically that is making its way into mainstream, worldwide attention with artists like Jay Park and Gray. 

Wonjun%20Kim.docx

In Korea, slang or shortened phrases are used a lot in text conversations. This is especially common among younger groups like high school or middle school-age students. I recently watched a youtube video that went over the differences between the slang that people usually use nowadays (which we learned about in class with my tutor Jimin), and the slang that was popular in the 90's. This difference was both really interesting to see what changed in Korean culture throughout that period of time. 

The link below is to the youtube video: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0jLNt0-TGQ ;