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During the spring break, I watched a Korean drama named “쌉니다 천리마마트” (Pegasus Market). This is a drama that is different from all the Korean dramas I’ve ever watched. Looking for something to do during the break, I picked this drama to watch since it has two main actors that I knew to be good: 김병철, who took part in the Sky Castle, and 이동휘, who played a part in 응답하라 1988 (Reply 1988). Both of these dramas are well produced and popular in Korea and China, so I expected the Pegasus Market to be good in a similar way. However, it turned out to be completely another style.

The drama started with정복동 being demoted to the Pegasus Market by his boss. The Pegasus Market is regarded as the worst business owned by the company. Even though the market is at the corner of the most crowded street in the town, few people walk into it. It has two employees, but they do nothing at work. This is an unbearable situation for 정복동, who has worked hard for the company during his entire career. As a result, he wanted to revenge the company by wasting all its money on stocking at the market and hiring unhelpful workers. However, as the story goes on, whatever 정복동 does to try to ruin the market or the reputation of the company, the result always turns out to be opposite to his expectation. The market starts to grow and becomes famous in the town unintentionally under 정복동’s lead.

I quit after episode 2 the first time I was watching it. It appeared to me that this drama mixes so many irrelevant elements that the story appears messy and illogical, such as an ethnic group of people with a superpower, a 깡패 (gangster) who needs the salary for his grandma, and an old man who lost his job due to the Korean financial crisis. All these people are now hired at the market and planning out wired events. However, as I kept watching it the second time, I realized that they are all representations of the neglected group in society. Also, there is a theme hidden under the main story in each episode. One is criticizing the insufficiency of care for the old and children in Korea. Another talks about people being judgmental of other people’s looks, and so on. Instead of the massive fancy effects or the romantic couples that are common in other Korean dramas, the hidden themes make me focus on the story while noticing the problems in the society that the writer wants to address.

The drama is rewritten from a webtoon, so it has the power of turning impossibilities into reality. There are also a lot of scenes in the drama where people sing and dance together as if they are in musicals, which is fun to watch. Overall, the drama is funny and healing with some themes hidden behind. I would say 천리마마트 is a creative Korean drama that introduces me to many cultural aspects of modern society in South Korea.

Through the self-directed language learning program this semester, I have learned that learning a language takes persistence and constant effort. I came into this program with a good deal of knowledge about Korean. Although I have never received proper Hangul education, I have still spoken Korean with my family and friends in our daily conversations. As a result, I set one of my goals this semester to go beyond simply learning vocabulary words and basic phrases. I wanted to push myself to be a better, all-rounded Korean speaker. 

Specifically, one of my goals this semester was to be able to read analytically and fully comprehend Korean news articles and broadcasting channels. Since I plan to be a business major and work in the business field in Korea in the near future, I wanted to be able to learn technical vocabulary words that pertain to business and the economy. This is why Jenna and I worked persistently to try and read different news articles to improve my linguistic knowledge. At first, we started off with simply reading the weather forecast in Korea. Initially, I thought it was going to be a breeze reading this article because in my mind, “it was a weather forecast, how hard can it be.” However, the moment I finished reading the first sentence, I had no idea what it said or meant at all. I don’t know why but I believed that it would come to me very easily and quickly. Therefore, I decided to slow down and read sentence by sentence, word by word out loud to make sure I grasp exactly what I was reading in my head. All in all, it took me almost 30 minutes to read a 2 page weather forecast article. From this moment, I realized that learning a language takes time and patience. I think I need to stop having the mindset that learning will come gradually and naturally. I need to make a conscious effort to try and improve my Korean skills everyday whether it be through reading more weather forecasts or challenging myself to listen to Korean news. 

The most interesting reading from SDLC 105 was the reading about collectivism vs. individualism. I always knew that Korean and American culture were vastly different, but I could never actually point to what was the main difference. However, when I read that article, it really resonated with me because the way in which the entire culture thinks is almost polar opposite. And, I think that also reflected back into how different cultures reacted to COVID-19 pandemic. In Korea, since it is a collectivist society, every member worked unitedly to quarantine themselves out of their own will (without the government having to push them) to stop the spread of coronavirus as fast as possible. However, the United States, which is an individualist society, acted in the mindset of “every man for themselves” in the beginning. In the future, I would definitely want to explore more about the underlying cultural differences between the U.S. and South Korea. 

I attended my last two Korean class sessions in the past two weeks. I honestly cannot believe that I finished another semester of the self-directed language and am proud to say that I have improved my hangul more than I have before. In retrospect, I can say with confidence that I enjoyed every class session because my language partner and my peers helped make them enjoyable. For these past two weeks, I voice chatted with my language instructor and reviewed everything that we went over this semester. Upon reviewing a semester's worth of material, I could not believe how much I accomplished. I was able to read news articles and academic journals with the highest level of hangul grammar and vocabulary. I still remember when I struggled to read a short news article about a sports event that took place in Korea. I am now able to read articles that update me on the coronavirus outbreak, geopolitical issues between the two Koreas, economic losses from lack of business activities, and more. After gaining a clearer understanding of what I've accomplished during the semester, my language instructor and I created our podcast to document this milestone.

I also learned new phrases and Korean concepts such as root words. I learned the root words for terms such as fire, water, mankind, power, office, teaching, and etc. While I knew these terms intuitively by practicing Korean, I had never learned this conceptually. I think these root words will be very useful in the future when I have to learn the meaning of new words. Instead of referring to a dictionary or Google Translate, I could use context clues and my knowledge of the root words to figure it out.

If there is anything I would do differently, I would be more proactive in my studies. Because my course load for the past two years have been tremendously in quantity, I was unable to exert my full effort into each class session and assignment. During the weekends, I would take breaks and spend more time resting. In retrospect, I should've used at least thirty minutes in those rest days to practice more Korean. Although my hangul skills are quite impressive right now, I would be at another level if I spent that time studying.

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There has been a saying that has been popular in Korea amongst the quarantine period that has been happening worldwide. It goes like this: “확진자도 돼지 말고 확찐자도 되지 말자.” It is basically a play on words between “confirmed” and “person who gains weight,” and it translates to “let’s not be confirmed and let’s also not gain weight” during this quarantine. Since we are trapped in our homes with nothing to do, but to sleep and waste our nights away in bowls of ice cream and hot Cheetos, it is very likely that many people will put on some weight. However, in Korea, gaining weight can even be scarier than actually contracting the Coronavirus due to Korea’s beauty standards. In Korea, diet is a very popular subject especially for women. Ever since I could remember, Korean female idols (aka celebrities) have always promoted thin bodies and deemed this specific body type to be considered beautiful. They have very specific and almost impossible body standards and weight (although it has improved in the past few years) and it can be directly seen through the interviews and tv shows conducted by Korean broadcasting channels. 

I was looking through some videos on Youtube and I came across a video of IU and her diet plan. IU is one of the most famous solo female artists in Korea. She is basically the “Billie Eilish” of Korea if I had to compare to give you more reference. She came out with her infamous diet plan which consists of 1 apple, 2 sweet potatoes, and 1 glass of protein shake a day. Along with her limited nutritional plan, she also exercised and did cardio for at least 2 hours a day. 

 In the United States, she would have probably gotten a lot of negative backlash for spreading and promoting such an unhealthy diet that young teenagers/girls could follow. Intaking such a low amount of calories could potentially lead to malnutrition and severe health complications. However in South Korea, many people including young teenage girls and other celebrities actually were in great awe of her strength and admired her for her will power and determination to lose weight. There were many comments below the video saying: “so this is why she is so thin and pretty,” “I wish I could be strong like her,” and many more. I also saw many other youtube videos in which other youtubers challenged themselves to try out IU’s diet for themselves. I think this really shows just how different people treat extreme dieting in these two different cultures. In Korea, your looks reflect back on you as a person and your values. It also reflects back on the beauty standards of Korea. In Korea, if you go over 50 kg (110 pounds), you are considered overweight or even “fat.” However, in the United States, I heard a lot more comments talking about how everyone is different and that weight is simply a number. It does not reflect back on your health. Body positivity and self-love is very much encouraged. 

As we are forced to quarantine inside our homes for a longer period of time, my time spent on Youtube has also increased dramatically as well. There is a show called We Got Married that I have not watched in a very long time, however, it started to pop back up on my feed, so I recently got back into it. We Got Married was a South Korean reality variety show that aired on MCB from 2008 to 2017. The show paired up celebrities who pretended to be married couples and completed various challenges together. Although this show is simply supposed to be light and romantic tv show for teenagers, I thought it revealed a great deal of Korean culture and differences in tv show standards between Korea and the United States. 

First of all, the main difference between Korean and American reality shows is their level of provocativeness. In We Got Married, it is quite “PG” and very “cute” with many adorable gestures and words. For example, a gesture in which the male lead pats the girl’s head is illustrated as overly romantic and suitable for their audiences to see. Also, cursing is not allowed on any Korean tv shows. However, when I see American reality tv shows like Love is Blind and Too Hot to Handle, it is very different on what is deemed acceptable to air on national tv. On shows like these, people talk about sex and relationships very openly and swear occasionally as well, which is not something you will find on Korean tv shows. In shows like We Got Married, it is almost like a forbidden word in which no one can ever speak of. However, on a show like Love is Blind, it is basically about a show in which singles try to find a match and fall in love -- without ever seeing each other face-to-face, as emotional connection attempts to conquer physical attraction. Too Hot to Handle is about singles who meet and mingle for a chance to win $100,000 but they must not have any sexual intercourse with each other. Korean and American reality tv shows are polar opposites of each other. 

These shows also directly translate back to different celebrity dating cultures in Korea and the U.S. In Korea, dating between celebrities is something that is very controversial and it is very rare that couples willingly reveal their relationship to the public. If they do, it is very likely that they will receive heavy negative backlash from their fans and their entertainment companies. If they break up, it reflects even more badly on them and sometimes these things even end their careers. However in the United States, celebrities come out with their relationships very openly and even show public display of affection. Many times, no one actually even cares about their relationship and it is not considered a very big deal. In this manner, one can really see the different cultural aspects in these two countries’ dating life. 

One of my future goals in life is to work in the business field in South Korea. Jenna and I were supposed to get to our business-related work for our sdlc 110 class later on in the semester, however that obviously got cut short due to the pandemic. For the next few weeks after spring break, we simply decided to improve my overall hangul skills by watching Korean dramas through Netflix. However, for our last sdlc 110 session, I decided that I wanted to still work on getting better at listening to the news especially about the economy and the different markets. Currently, I am also taking macroeconomics and we are studying the effects and trends of what COVID-19 caused on different economies of the world. I knew how to interpret the data and statistics in English, but when I read Korean economic articles, I had no clue what they were talking about. For our first meeting, I attempted to read a weather report in Korean, but I had a very tough time understanding the content, so for this time, we decided to listen to broadcasting news about Korea. 

The video was called “한국이 코로나19 확진자 수 세계 2위인데, 왜 해외에서 칭찬하지?/스브스뉴스” It basically translates to “Korea’s confirmed cases in #2 in the world, but why are other countries praising us for our work?” Below, I am going to list many of the vocabulary words I failed to understand when I listened to the video the first time:

• “저명한” 
• “진단 능력” 
• “입증” 
• “비판” 
• “논의” 
• “적자” 

These words are not words I use very often or ever when I speak or write in Hangul. However, I thought it was still important to know these words because this one news broadcasting was not the only source where these words popped out. I always have heard of these words, but I never took the time to actually learn it and digest their meanings. The second time I heard the video, Jenna asked me to turn on the Korean subtitles and see if looking at the spelling of the words and their context clues would help me understand what it means. At first, simply hearing made it harder to understand and think about what those words would mean. So for the second time, I looked for those words in the subtitles and paused the video to see the full sentence of where that word was placed. Then using the context clues, I was able to define at least 3/6 words correctly. I think this method really worked for me because it forced me to think critically and pay attention to the context clues of the news source. It made me feel more confident with my analytical skills. Before, I thought I could never be able to understand a Korean news article or show, but this activity made me feel better about my reading and listening abilities. 

• “저명한” = famous
• “진단 능력” = ability to diagnose (correct)
• “입증” = prove (correct)
• “비판” = criticize 
• “논의” = discuss (correct)
• “적자” = deficit 

Quarantine life has gotten even more weary as Illinois Governor, J.B Pritzker pushed the stay-at-home order until May 30th. My everyday routine has been this: sleep, eat, complete assignments, watch Netflix, nap, eat, and sleep. It is not the most energy-intense routine to say the least. My body has adapted to this slow paced lifestyle, so if I do anything physically or mentally exhausting, I feel like crashing. This is why for my sdlc 110, Jenna and I have been simply watching Netflix together. However, unlike other times we watched Netflix together, we decided to watch it on a chrome extension called “Netflix Party” which enables multiple people to watch the same series at the same time and comment on it. We decided to use this tool because I thought it would help me ask questions while watching the series. It would make it easier to remember and Jenna can also quiz me on certain Korean vocabulary words and phrases. Since we made the choice to watch it on this extension, Jenna and I agreed to take the subtitles off and if I had questions, I could then ask her directly through the chat. In addition to watching Netflix together, Jenna and I recorded our very awkward (at first), but chill podcast as well. 

The Netflix show we watched was a classic Korean drama called Boys Over Flowers. It is a 2009 South Korean television series that is based on the Japanese mango series Boys Over Flowers. The series is about a working-class girl who gets tangled up in the lives of a group of wealthy young men in her high school. It earned extremely high viewership ratings in South Korea and popularity throughout Asia. Starring Ku Hye-sun, Lee Min Ho, Kim Hyunjoong, Kim Bum, Kim Joon, and Kim Soeun, it was one of the most popular romantic comedy Korean dramas when it first released. Although it aired over a decade ago, it still remains as one of the most representative dramas of Korean culture. To make it easier to understand for people who do not know Korean dramas, it can be compared to American tv shows like Grey’s Anatomy, Friends Wars, or The Office. 

The first thing I noticed was how cringe it was, obviously since it was from a decade ago. Regarding the language used, the hangul used in this tv show was easier to understand than the hangul used in Kingdom. This is most likely the case because it was a drama based on teenagers. The Netflix Party chrome extension I thought helped a lot because now, I was forced to actually listen to the listeners rather than reading off of the subtitles. Additionally, we could pause the episode and I could ask Jenna about some plot or word confusion. There was a word I didn’t quite understand which was “찐따.” I asked Jenna on the chat and she asked me what I thought it meant based on the context clues of the show. I ended up guessing correctly and it meant “loser.” All in all, we used this chrome extension successfully to help me better learn hangul in a more effective way. 

Classes have started to move online, so interacting with my language partner has gotten more difficult. However, Jenna and I decided to meet up through a kakaotalk video call and discuss our learning plan for the rest of the semester. During this time of isolation and weariness, Jenna and I thought it would be the best to continue to watch Korean dramas to improve my hangul. Before, we studied and discussed articles about the coronavirus and other news information, however, I really did not desire to do that anymore. I simply wanted to improve my Korean, but in a relaxed and stress-free manner. 

As a result, I decided to start another Korean drama called Kingdom with Jenna. It is a South Korean political horror thriller web television series starring Ju Jihoon, Rye Seungryong, Bae Doona, Kim Sangho, Kim Sungkyu, and Kim Hyejun. This drama is set during Korea's Joseon period a few years after the Japanese invasions of Korea all the while investigating a mysterious plague that is spreading across the entire peninsula. Furthermore, it is a plague that appears to bring the dead back to life as blood-thirsty monsters. Personally, I never really liked gruesome and bloody dramas, so I was very reluctant to start this series. However, Kingdom received such high ratings and everyone I spoke to recommended me to start this drama. So, I was convinced to begin. 

At first, the series was very slow as it was slowly building the main plot line, however, once it started to pick up, I was easily hooked and I could not stop watching. Therefore, I finished 2 seasons in less than 2 days (although it only had 6 episodes per season). I thought it was such an interesting concept of combining zombies with imperial Korea. It was such a unique idea and it personally, it had a way better and more developed plot line than The Walking Dead. Kingdom was set in a time where the people of Korea were starving and living under intense poverty while the royalty ruled cruelly yet lived lavishly. And now, ironically, the people turned into a literal hungry monster, searching for human blood and they will always be hungry for more, never satisfied. 

In addition to the stellar plot, I was very intrigued by the language used in this series. Netflix actually gives its audience the opportunity to have subtitles and also English dubbing, however, I decided to not use dubbing because then, I would not learn anything. Even if they are Korean dramas, I usually do not even use English subtitles, however, for Kingdom, since the language was so different to modern Korean, I needed the subtitles to help me along. Many of the vocabulary used were definitely foreign. For example, there’s a phrase that was said quite often from the ministers to the king. That phrase was “통촉하여 주시옵소서.” I had no idea what this meant, but when I searched it up, it basically means to “please be considerate” in thinking about a certain proposed policy. Phrases like these were something I never knew about, but after watching this drama, I think my knowledge about imperial Korea and its language grew a little more. 

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In the past two weeks in Korean class, since the heroine of the Korean drama "Crash landing on you" is a fashion company owner, and she mentioned popular colors in the TV series, so we learned Korean words about colors. I found that all the words related to colors is ending with “색”, like “white” is “하얀색”,  “yellow” is “노랑색” and “green” is “녹색”. This rule really helps me remember new words. In a love drama like "Crash landing on you" the heroine's clothes and jewelry, or even her favorite food, can easily become popular. I remember a long time ago there was a TV show in which the heroine said, "On a snowy day, fried chicken and beer go best together." after the TV show, there was a time when everyone would buy fried chicken and beer.  You can always see people buying the same necklace or earrings on the Internet, and I think that’s why many brands sponsor TV shows, which can increase there sales a lot.

In class we begin to learn polite informal expression “아요/-어요”, which is is in present tense. This ending differs from the previous endings in that it is not distinguished by vowels or consonants, but by the vowels found in the main part. Every Korean word must have a vowel sound, so this rule is not difficult to understand and apply. Verb stems that contain vowels  “ㅗ” or  “ㅏ” are followed by “-아요”, and verb stems that contain vowels  “ㅜ” or “ㅓ” or “ㅣ” are followed by “-어요”. For us to have a better understanding of this rule, Ms. Kim gives us several examples. “놀다 ” means “to play” and its main part “놀다” contains vowel “ㅗ”, so by the definition we will use “-아요” and write as “놀아요”. And also, “살다” means “to live” and we can see its main part “살” contains vowel “ㅏ”, so by the definition we will use “-아요” and write as “살아요”. Ms. Kim told us that there are always exceptions to every rule. In this rule, because the ending contains vowel sound “ㅏ”, so the main part of the verb changes when it ends in vowel sound “ㅏ”, but since how it changes depends on the word, so we need to remember each change. Take “가다” and “하다” for example, we can see they all contains vowel sound “ㅏ”, if we follow the rules we'll write as “가아요” and “하아요”. However, it is inconvenient for us to pronounce double “ㅏ”, so we change them in to “가요” and “해요”. Ending “-어요” is similar to ending “-아요”, and there are also exceptions. “이다” means “to be”, and we can write it in to two forms “이에요” and “예요”. If the verb has final consonant, like “물”, we use “이에요” and write as “물이에요”. If If the verb has no final consonant, like “커피”, we use “에요” and write as “커피에요”. Ms. Jin only taught us some common verbs and the special forms of common verbs, and we are sure to encounter more special forms in the future study, which we need to remember all of them.

Over these past two weeks, I did the same thing with Jenna where I watch episodes of Reply 1997 and write a reflection on it. My reflections became longer and longer as I got more into the series and could relate more to the characters. I actually finished the show and thought it was overall a funny, heartfelt series and I also want to watch the sequels with my mom who also enjoyed watching them a couple years ago. I also recorded my podcast with Jenna, and it was nice to review what we have accomplished this semester and how much I have progressed.

At home, I began to realize that I have speaking more in Korean whether it was to my parents or siblings. My mom, sister, and I enjoy watching Korean variety shows on the weekends, so we watched shows like Running Man (variety show with celebrities playing a game) and The Return of Superman (celebrity dads spend time with their young children without the help of his wife). The language used in these shows are fairly simple to understand, so I didn’t need to put on the subtitles. Whenever there was a word or phrase, I was unfamiliar with, I could just ask my mom. She would respond with the answer and sometimes, a whole history lesson about the subject. In an older episode of The Return of Superman, one of the dads tried to make dalgona candy for his son but failed miserably. After watching that scene, my parents felt nostalgic by seeing their favorite childhood street candy, so our family decided to make it. Just like the dad on the show, my sister and I accidentally burnt the sugar the first time. We learned from our mistake and made some more dalgona and imprinted a heart shape on the candy, just like how people running the street vendors would do it.

I’ve also been listening to more Korean music because my parents like to sing older Korean songs while doing their work and my sister enjoys blasting K-pop music from her room. Also, one night as our family was finishing up a game, my mom mentioned how Korean people say that someone’s blood type relates to their personality. People reported that they didn’t get along in relationships with other people of specific blood types. Pop artists in Korea even released songs centered around blood type and personalities in the early 2000’s. According to this theory of the four primary blood types, people with type A are emotional, passionate, sensitive and clever, type B are driven, creative, decisive, and stubborn, type AB are a mix of both type A and B, and type O are daring, outgoing, generous, and confident. There is even a chart that reveals which people with specific blood types are compatible with who. I even took a quiz to see if the it could guess my type; it was close, but not correct. I thought that this was interesting and could be compared to how others look at their horoscope. Even though the blood type to personality doesn’t seem to be scientifically true, it is accurate that blood type correlates to certain physical immunities.

Recipe

For me, the first thing that pops up in my mind when the word culture comes up is the food. The items that people generally think of Korean food are bulgogi (marinated beef), japchae (stir fried noodles), kimchi (fermented vegetables), bibimbap (mixed rice), or soondae (blood sausage). What many people don’t know about is the commonly eaten Korean soup called miyeokguk (미역국). Miyeok means seaweed and guk (pronounced with a long u) means soup. This soup can be seen in many Korean dramas and variety shows. Although I have been around this soup my whole life, I learned more while researching this soup.

According to one source, the origin of this food dates back to the Goryeo Dynasty when people had observed and quickly learned that after delivering a calf, whales would eat seaweed to heal. Another source indicated that the Goryeo people just liked eating seaweed and would make this soup for its taste. Nowadays, it is a tradition for mothers to eat miyeokguk after giving birth (it is actually the leading postpartum food in Korea) and also for people to eat this on their birthday. It is said that this food purifies blood, detoxifies the body, and helps the metabolism process. It’s very healthy for the mother and child because it contains a high level of calcium which will be important for nursing mothers. Usually a close relative or friend will bring the mother this seaweed soup so that she can heal quickly.

When I was younger, my grandparents and relatives would call me to ask, “Did Mom make you miyeokguk today?” and I was always confused why they would ask me that question until I was told this tradition. Since the mother had this soup after giving birth, the child has the same type of soup on their birthday as a thanks to their mother.

Another interesting fact I learned was that many people in Korea don’t have miyeokguk on the day of an exam or on the day of a job interview. This is because seaweed is slippery and gives the idea of slipping up and failing (or doing bad). That’s why some would “I had miyeokguk!” if they didn’t do well. What they do eat instead on these important days as a sign of good luck are chapssaltteok (Korean style mochi) or yeot (Korean traditional taffy) because they are sticky.

Like many foods, there are so many varieties of miyeokguk that can be made such as one with beef, another that has more seafood such as mussels and oysters, and another type with potatoes. Whichever recipe is made, the ingredients seem to be fairly minimal. The one for miyeokguk with beef contains dried seaweed, beef brisket, sesame oil, soup soy sauce, minced garlic, and water. I like how easy it is to make and that even though it is eaten for birthdays, it can be a side dish on any given day as well. It’s healthy, low in calorie, and I always feel refreshed after having this delicious soup.

I hoped to learn more grammar and review the vocabulary that I’ve been learning. I think I was able to complete these goals these past two weeks.

As usual, I met with Professor Kim over Zoom these past two weeks. The vocabulary we have been learning these past two weeks have been about different buildings, such as “bookstore”, “bank”, “department store”, and “restaurant”. She also tested me on different adjectives and miscellaneous items. I’ve been doing pretty well on the vocabulary test and things are getting easier to remember. Something Professor Kim has been doing that I’ve found very helpful is after each word we go over; she will ask me a question in which I have to use the word. I think it’s helpful to practice using the word and gives me a better context of when it would be used. It also helps me practice my speaking and grammar. After the vocabulary test, we did a conjugation activity. Professor Kim sent me a worksheet with a bunch of verbs on it. In one column I was supposed to change the verb to polite informal and in another column, I was supposed to change the verb to polite formal. This was an interesting and fun activity that gave me a lot of practice with conjugation. Some of the irregular verbs were tricky but it was a good reminder that those verbs had special exceptions. Another activity we did was finish reading the sentences that we didn’t get to in previous weeks. We were able to finish the reading activity which was good practice for my reading and speaking skills.

These past two weeks, I also met with Jannette. Since I practiced verb conjugation with Professor Kim, I wanted to practice verb conjugation and speaking with Jannette. We came up with hypothetical situations where depending on the context, I would conjugate the verb accordingly. I thought that this was a fun activity and was very engaging. I liked that it reflected real life situations and forced me to be aware of the context and who I was speaking to. I find it so interesting that depending on who you are speaking to, the conjugation of the verb will change. This doesn’t really exist in English, so it has been hard for me to get into that mindset. I often default to the informal conjugation of a verb even when I am speaking to someone older than me, such as Professor Kim. I think this was good practice to rewire my brain to think as a Korean so I can conjugate verbs correctly without much thought.

In order to practice what I’ve learned these past two weeks I will continue having practice conversations. I liked the activity that I did with Jannette where I would conjugate depending on the situation, so I think I would like to continue doing that. As I’ve said in the past, watching Korean dramas and movies has been a fun way to practice. I try to pick up on how they are conjugating verbs depending on who they are speaking to. It’s cool to notice how someone’s speech will change depending on whether they are talking to someone younger than them or someone older than them.

I think my strategies have been effective so far. My vocabulary continues to expand, and I am becoming more efficient at recalling vocabulary. I think that my listening skills are also improving after exposing myself to Korean more often. Understanding a sentence when watching Korean dramas or movies is a really great feeling and makes me confident in my learning.

In order to build on what I’ve learned so far, I hope to continue expanding my vocabulary and learning new grammar rules. I also want to make sure that I reinforce the material that I’ve learned in previous weeks so I will look over that material. I will continue using apps to teach me new vocabulary that I can try to use when speaking.

If I were to receive a research grant to conduct a linguistic study of Korean and its culture, I would like to study two things: aegyo and how that affect Korean’s pop culture. During my first year seminar class with Dr. Kissling, I actually got the opportunity to do a research paper on the purpose and effects of a phenomenon called “aegyo.”Aegyo can be described as performed winsomeness, or the feeling of childlike joy or innocence that is attractive or pleasing to others. More specifically, it is a layered articulation of behaviors, gestures, vocal and linguistic adjustments, narratives, and fashions that serve to enact child-like charm and infantilized cuteness. Then, I argued that aegyo gave an individual social power. I thought this topic was fascinating of itself, however, when I started to conduct intense research on it, there were not many published data and sources about this topic. I think something I would like to conduct if I receive this grant is to see how performers of aegyo switch up the grammatical structures of their sentences in order to sound more cute and innocent-like, thus making them more likeable. 

Aegyo plays a significant role in East Asian countries mainly due to the influence of Korean pop culture and girl group figures that regularly practice performed winsomeness. I also want to research just how much aegyo is influenced by pop culture and vise versa.

I believe the best way to get started on this project is to immerse myself into the culture directly with people who use aegyo. As a result, I would travel to Korea to be in direct contact with the individuals and see the results for myself. 

I have started to write in Korean through mostly text messages. At first, I started mainly having to text my parents in Korean. They would not necessarily correct me, however, I would see what they wrote and began to correct mistakes. If I wrote, “되서" and my parents used “돼서,” in the next text message, I would keep that in mind and change it the next time I text them. I do not really write free hand as much as possible because I somehow cannot make my handwriting in Korean look neat and clean. This is why I try to avoid it as much as possible. Personally, I think Korean is a very difficult language to write neatly when writing free hand. There are a lot of different characters that need to fit under one area. For example, for English, all of the characters/letters have their own space. However, for Korean, there are words like “안녕하세요" or “닭강정 먹고싶어요" in which there are multiple characters combined under one space. 

I’ve started to see better now just how different Korean is compared to English. I realized that with Korean, we switch up the subject and the verb. For English, the verb comes before the subject. For example, in this sentence, “Go buy the store,” the verb, “buy” comes before the subject, “store.” However in Korean, it would be written as “가게를 사요.” “가게" is store and “사요" means to buy. So, the subject comes before the verb.  Sometimes, I get this confused a lot between Korean and English, so when I start talking to my parents in English, I tend to text them in English too that day. However, when I talk to my parents in Korea, I constantly text my parents in Korean to avoid confusion. 

Growing up, I listened to my parents play and sing various type of Vietnamese music. Their taste in music was and still is more traditional than my own. Their favorite types of music include folk and ballads. I find that these types of Vietnamese songs tend to be more poetic and symbolic than western music. Ballads often reference love stories using colorful imageries and metaphors to the natural world.

Traditionally, there are 3 main styles of Vietnamese music: The Hue style, the northern professional style, and the southern amateur style. The Hue style has an emphasis on solo pieces and is very traditional. This style of music is usually thought of as court music since it is typically used in ritualistic fashion or in fine art such as opera.

The northern professional style which is often accompanied by a lute is also traditional. However, unlike Hue the northern professional style of music is consider folksy. This kind of music is derived from ancient cultural practices that developed along the rivers of north Vietnam.

Lastly the southern amateur style which incorporates more western instruments such as violins and Hawaiian guitars is a mixture of the two other kinds of music. It attempts to take court music and give it folksier elements.

Vietnam also has its own traditional musical instruments. There are four groups of Vietnamese instruments: plucked strings, bowed strings, winds and percussion. Some of these instruments include the bamboo flute, Đàn đá (lithophone), Đàn tam thập lục (hammered dulcimer), and the k’ni (mouth violin) These instruments have long been attached to the /cultural and spiritual life of the Vietnamese. The k’ni is especially popular among many ethnic minority groups living in central Vietnam.

However, Vietnamese music is beginning to change. With the rising popularity of K-pop, Vietnamese pop music has started to change to imitate aspects of Korean entertainment. V-Pop like K-pop infuses parts of western pop music to tell stories. Music videos now present some type of “plot” and they can be quite colorful and creative.

One of my favorite V-Pop star is Sơn Tùng M-TP. Sơn Tùng M-TP is undeniably the biggest star in Vietnamese pop music today. In 2017, he became the first Vietnamese singer to reach one million YouTube subscribers. This achievement earned him the Gold Play Button – just one of his many awards. He is at the forefront of Vietnamese musicians who are blending styles from around the world to change the local music landscape, combining raw talent with style and entertainment value. He recently made headlines on international charts after a rather interesting collab with Snoop Dog.

However, I have also started to venture into lesser known artists such as Nguyễn Trần Trung Quân and Lê Trung Thành (ERIK). I am particularly interested in Nguyễn Trần Trung Quân mostly due to his rather controversial music videos’ creative concepts. Some of his pieces addressed topics such as transgender, sex reassignment, and same-sex relationship. In the conservative culture of Vietnam, controversial topics such as LGBTQ tend to be frowned upon, especially by the older generation, however, consider the success of Quân’s work, it is possible that the standard is slowly changing.

Below are links to the music videos on youtube. Please do check them out if you're interested.

Màu Nước Mắt - Nguyễn Trần Trung Quân | Official Music Video

TỰ TÂM - NGUYỄN TRẦN TRUNG QUÂN | OFFICIAL MV

Chúng Ta Không Thuộc Về Nhau | Official Music Video | Sơn Tùng M-TP

Here is a recording of my Podcast Interview with Language Partner Jimin and Tommy. 

The file was too large, so I add a link to it: 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mk8s_2TtPBwXnrw5u_jYYX3kYNeWLSa0

Thank you! 

Podcast.m4a

This week, my language partner and I went over a couple of grammar points to address some more complex sentences.  We covered two endings ‘고 들었다’ and ‘지만’.  The first refers to what someone has said previously in the conversation or something you heard someone else say a while ago.  For example, in the conversation we practiced about the semester and classes, the sentence ‘I heard accounting classes are difficult’ came up.  In Korean, this is ‘회계수업은 어렵다고 들었어요’.  I was confused when we first read it because I thought the particle ‘고’ meant ‘as well’ and I didn’t see anything additional being added in the sentence.  When I asked Jenna about it, she said that the ‘고’ in this context is referring to what someone has previously said.  That’s how the ‘as well’ factors in by adding what someone has said to what you’re currently saying.   

The particle ‘지만’ means ‘even though’ when added to the first part of a sentence making the second part contradictory.  For example, if I was hungry even though I ate, I would say ‘밥을 먹었지만 배고파요’.  ‘지만’ can also be used for ‘but’ in a sentence with the same placement as before.  The translation to English switches the phrases, so this can be a bit confusing at first.  If I wanted to read a book, but I didn’t have time, I would say ‘첵을 읽고 싶지만 시간이 없어요.’  This directly translates to, ‘I want to read a book, even though I don’t have time', but it can be understood in the same format as the first sentence. 

After practicing some sentences using these two particles/endings, I decided to watch a video from Talk To Me In Korean about some conversational phrases that I thought would be helpful to know.  In this video (linked below), viewers sent in questions about grammar, phrases, or anything else related to Korean for the teachers to answer.  For the section I focused on, the question was how to say ‘let me think’ when someone asks you a question.  There are a couple of answers to this depending on the use of self-speech (I wrote about this in my last post).  If you look away from the other person and direct the phrase ‘let me see’ to yourself, you would say ‘어디보자...’.  Before this video, I’d only known the word ‘어디’ to mean ‘where’.  It was interesting to see the same word carry a different meaning when used in another context.  Another phrase that can be used similarly is ‘글세요’ which is ‘let me see’ or ‘I’m not sure’.  If you want to speak directly to the person who asked you the question, you can say ‘생각 점 해볼게요’ which literally means ‘I will think a little more’.

My language partner and I have covered a lot this semester, and I think I’ve been progressing with my understanding of the language.  My weakest link is keeping up practice when I’m not actively receiving formal instruction.  As I am graduating this semester, I will continue studying Korean on my own through the online resources I’ve utilized thus far.  Patience is really important when learning a language, especially one that’s so different from your native one.  I’ve learned a lot about how I retain vocabulary and remember grammar structures through this program, so I can use that knowledge in my further studies.   

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Phy0n8CB9Vc