Blogs

     As Spring is upon us, the main attraction that is very popular right now are cherry blossoms! Just last week, I went to Washington D.C. to explore their famous Cherry Blossom Festival and this inspired me to look at the culture of Cherry Blossom Festivals in South Korea to compare!

     When I was studying abroad at Yonsei University in South Korea last year, I remember that I went to see the cherry blossoms at Yeouido Park, which is next to the National Assembly Building!. As I was researching popular locations for cherry blossoms, Yeouido Park was by far the most famous and I could tell why when I went there because it was so incredibly beautiful! There was a street full of cherry blossom trees and other activities going on nearby, such as concerts and food venues. I was able to experience it all, so it was really fun to explore!

     However, of course there are other places hosting these Festivals as well. Two examples of other locations include Jeju and Hwagae, where the latter is held around a market. Also in the second location, there is a so-called “wedding road,” where there is a belief that if a couple walks down the road while holding hands, they will grow old together forever.That is a very cute belief!

     There are certainly many more other locations for these festivals, so it will be interesting to go to all of the different locations to compare the experiences! I hope that this post can also incite some people to see some cherry blossoms, if not done so already!

I watched a very interesting documentary on Youtube about South Korea and its taboo on Tattoos. It talked about how the older generation thinks negatively on tattoos, and it had to do with the fact that in the earlier days, tattoos were linked to gangs. The taboo was so heavily embedded in the older generation that it is difficult to change their beliefs, but the younger generation is definitely putting in the effort to showing that tattoos are a form of expression and art, which is something I agree with as well. In the video, it shows a brief clip about a daughter and her dad getting tattoos together, and I thought that it was a heartwarming scene, because the father was willing to understand his daughter. I hope the beliefs within the older generation does start to shift soon, and at least try to understand the younger generation and tattoos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDm3PzbU0_w

I watched a Netflix series called “Kingdom”, which is a show about the contamination of the zombie disease during the Joseon dynasty. The crown prince, played by Ji-Hoon Joo, is frustrated about how he couldn’t see the King, his father, but what he didn’t know was that the government workers were hiding the King from others because he became a zombie. And because he became a zombie, he couldn’t rule the kingdom, so the government workers used the King as a puppet to rule the kingdom however they wanted to. However, it becomes a major problem when an infected body has been leaked to the starving citizens at the hospital, and one of the characters end up making soup for everybody with the infected body and causing anybody that consumed the soup to become zombies. Now with the majority of the citizens becoming zombies, the crown prince and a few others have to stop the disease from spreading to the rest of the Kingdom. Although the show only has 6 episodes so far, it is a very interesting story plot filled with irony and implication of the messy social construct of the Joseon dynasty. I recommend this to anybody that likes historical Korean dramas, and anybody that enjoyed “Train to Busan”, which was a zombie movie that was a big hit in Korea in 2016.

I watched a Korean movie called “Extreme Jobs”, which is a movie about a struggling group of prosecutors who were working to arrest a team of drug dealers. While they are on the verge of being relocated, they find that the drug dealers ordered fried chicken from a failing restaurant across their headquarter building, so the prosecutors buy the restaurant and start their own fried chicken business. However, the story takes a turn when the restaurant actually begins to do well due to its unique sauced chicken, and they end up focusing more on selling fried chicken than their prosecution jobs. I really recommend this movie to whoever likes comedy and crime movies.

South Korea has been growing within the fashion industry, and its very own fashion show period, Seoul Fashion Week, has become one of the most important fashion events in Asia. While the actual fashion shows by Korean designers is the main reason for the fashion show week, what gained the most attention were the people in their street-style clothing. The people varied from models, students, and even toddlers. The group of people stood out from the others, with their loud, yet cohesive, outfits that drew attention from anybody that passed by.

Sound%20Recording.m4a

I recorded a conversation that I had with some of my friends. We talked about the atmosphere and the food that we were going to eat that day. In the recording, we asked and answered questions to one another and even joked around at the end in Korean. This recording shows that I'm improving in my conversational skills in Korean.

I went on a field trip to New Grand Mart with a couple of my friends to get our monthly dose of Korean food. I ordered the spicy squid and vegetables with white rice on the side. I also got to try some of my friends' sweet and sour pork and black bean noodles.

I watched a movie called "Swing Kids", a fictional story about a group of dancers that formed in the Geoje Prison Camp during the Korean War in 1951. The dance team consists of individuals that were considered outcasts in each of their countries. The team is lead by an African American soldier who recruits a South Korean female, North Korean prisoner, and a Chinese prisoner. Through the characters' interactions, the movie tells a story about family and belonging. Because of war and propaganda, the characters are initially at conflict, but they eventually unite through dance and become family.

This picture shows a conversation that I had with my fellow students in my SLDC 110 class. During our conversations, we refrain from using English as much as possible so that we can practice our Korean. I can confidently say that my Korean has improved after conversing with my classmates.

My first experience seeing Turkish in a non-educational setting was when I watched the movie Mustang on Netflix in high school. The movie is about these Turkish sisters whose lives are impacted by conservative social expectations for girls entering womanhood. I decided to rewatch the movie after having learned some Turkish both to apply what I've learned this semester and to reminisce about my first encounter with the language. Throughout the film, a lot of family vocabulary was used that I could recognize. I was also able to identify when questions were being asked and could pick out the verbs and the different cases that were being used in various sentences. Aside from the Turkish language, the movie also revealed many aspects of Turkish culture, covering Turkish weddings, how Turkish people interact with others (strangers, family members, etc.), and Turkish food.

In my last bi-weekly post my goal was to focus on dictation practice and proverbs. I have been working on both those things with my language partner. After a brief discussion, we decided to combine both of those items into one activity. My language partner would prepare 10 proverbs for me to learn each class and those proverbs are used for my dictation practice the same day. This activity has been really useful in improving my writing/listening skills. It's also helped with preparing for my final presentations. Some of the proverbs given have Chinese origins and are used in a lot historical dramas and cải lương.

Instead of the situational talking practice, we decided to try having me talk about a given topic. For example, one topic my language partner gave was the political situation in Asia. This was an interesting activity in that it's just me talking and the vocabulary used is a lot wider and more academic than daily conversation. Through this activity I was able to learn new words such as communism, minister, imperial examinations, etc. Other topics picked was travel and history.

In the next two weeks, I think we will continue with the dictation and proverb practice. Additionally, I want to have a discussion with my language partner about what the final exam will look like and perhaps start some activities to prepare for it.

Following through on my goal to read more Korean articles and watch Korean movies, I read a few articles on the recent charges focused on the popular entertainer Jung Joon-young and other well-known entertainers. These articles were a bit difficult to understand, since they used more advanced legal terminology. I searched up the translation for those terms and tried to make sense of the entire article doing so. For movies, I watched a movie called Intimate Strangers (완벽한 타인) which was dialogue-heavy. The entire movie was about a group of lifelong friends who have dinner at one's housewarming party, therefore I had to rely heavily on my understanding of such dialogues. Unlike the news articles, the movie was much easier to understand since they would use commonly-used terms in every-day conversations.

1. Recording:
   1. Angella Lee's Artifact #3

1. Translation:
   1. Hello! This week, we learned about business terms, so I will make some sentences based on what I learned. I learned how to say “research of the trends of the market,” so I was able to say “we are investigating the current reaction of the consumers of the new products.”
      
      I also learned how to say “analyze,” so I can say that the trend that they are analyzing is the consumers’ reaction of the product!

We watched a Korean movie called Extreme Job (극한직업). We watched the entire film without English subtitles and tried to understand the plot and dialogue. The dialogue wasn't that difficult to understand, and since it is an action movie, the plot was less dependent on the dialogue. Since one of my goals this semester was to keep assessing my capability of understanding conversations by watching Korean programs and movies, we had decided to schedule a movie week. We would stop and ask a question regarding a part which we couldn't understand, making the movie a learning process.

    This week, we added on to the business terms that we learned about in previous  weeks. For example, we learned about “jeen-haeng sang-hwang,” which means “progress/process report.” This can be used to say “eoul-man-ha jeen-haeng-duet-seo-yo?” which asks “how much progress has been made?” This is important to learn because it is always necessary to track the progress of one’s work, which is how this word is used!

    Other good vocabulary terms to know include “boon-seok hae-seo,” which means to analyze. This term is used in the business world because you are attempting to analyze the trends and patterns of the product of interest. This can also relate to another term that I learned, which is “she-jang jo-sah,” which is “research of the trends of the market.” This directly relates because analyzing and researching the trends are similar concepts and are both important in the business world since one needs to analyze these trends to learn which strategies work and which do not!

    It is exciting to add on to my previous knowledge of business terms as this is one of my main goals for working on my interpersonal communication skills!

This week I learned how to cook 떡볶이 (Tteok-bokki). Stir-fried rice cakes is a popular Korean food made from small-sized garae-tteok called tteokmyeon or commonly tteok-bokki-tteok. My friend and I cooked it in my room with the use of an electric pot. We went to Grand Market to buy the necessary groceries such as rice cakes, fish cakes, sugar, pepper paste (gochujang), green onions, and sesame oil. First, you measure the appropriate amount of water and boil the water. Once the water is boiled, you can add the pepper paste and rice and fish cakes. As the rice and fish cakes get ready, you add sugar and sesame oil for flavor, topped with green onions on top. 

떡볶이 (video)

How to cook 떡볶이 (tteokbokki), a spicy Korean rice cake dish:

First, you measure the appropriate amount of water and boil the water. Once the water is boiled, you can add the pepper paste and rice and fish cakes. As the rice and fish cakes get ready, you add sugar and sesame oil for flavor, topped with green onions on top. (From Bi-Weekly Report #4- Week 9).

This is another set of directions from an online website:

1. Combine water and anchovies in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Cook for 10 minutes. Remove anchovies.
2. Combine chile paste, sugar, soy sauce, and corn syrup in a bowl to make the sauce.
3. Add rice cakes and onion to the anchovy water in the saucepan. Add sauce. Bring to a boil and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add spring onion and boil 3 minutes more.

Learning Plan

Farmer treasure story

Busker busker song/ common idioms

These past two weeks, we analyzed another Korean folktale. It was about a farmer who had four sons who were uninterested in farming but were eager to make quick money. Therefore, when the farmer was about to pass away, he shared with his sons that he had buried treasure under the grape seed farmland. The sons, hearing this and wanting to strike it rich, picked up their shovels and dug for months across the entire land. However, when they did not find anything, they gave up. When grape season arrived, they saw that the land they were plowing had reaped a whole field of crops. They then realized the true treasure their father had wanted them to find: the value of hard work.

We also, similarly to Baby Shark, also listened to the Spring Blossoms Ending by Busker Busker. However, many of the vocabulary words were redacted, and we had to fill in the blanks. After listening to the song several times, we also learned about other vocabulary words we missed as well as some common idioms. It was cool to learn these idioms because many of them had meanings I did not expect. For example, there is an idiom that roughly translates to someone’s ear being too thin. This means that the individual listens to others’ perspectives too much and is easily swayed by what other people suggest they do. Another translates to your stomach hurting. However, this means that you are jealous. It was fun to learn these because it is one thing to learn what words and phrases mean. It is another to learn the indirect meanings and contexts of idioms.

• Teach someone using the activity you created in Week 9; reflect upon the effectiveness of the activity.

I taught my friend the different names of stores in Korean. I then asked him to try to flip the cards up and see if he could remember the Korean word associated with the card. I think that overall the activity was harder than it seemed. He remembered some stores, but, for the most part, he could only remember a few syllables from the words. I think that it was a challenge because not only were the words multiple syllables, but they also did not have much meaning to him.

I think that in the future, I would make the activity more simple by maybe giving some of the syllables of the word. By having some sort of familiarity to the sounds, it may be possible that the word will be easier to recall and recognize. Overall, the activity was entertaining to administer and watch. However, I do not think it was fully effective for learning. I think that it was too challenging to remember and recall multiple syllable words for a beginner.