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Unlike the United States, Korea is heavily based on collectivism. Collectivism refers to the practice or principle of giving a group priority over each individual in it. Korea scored 18 on individualism while America scored 91 on individualism. The power of collectivism in Korean culture is demonstrated in the miracle of Han River. Because of collectivism, Koreans work together as if the whole country is one family in times of hardships. After Korean War ended in 1953, Korea saw a incredibly rapid growth following the war and transformed from a developing country to a developed country within 50 years. By the end of the century, Korea had grown to become the world's 11th largest economy. This was possible because of how Koreans work together to achieve a common goal that is better for the whole instead of focusing on individual benefits. During IMF Crisis, within the first two days of the gold collection movement, over 100,000 South Koreans donated more than 20 tons of gold worth over $100 million. In total, it added up to $150-$200 million and helped Korea overcome IMF crisis in a short amount of time (1997-2001). Recently, about 1.5 million people turned out for the non-violent protest for previous president's impeachment and it was praised worldwide for their civil protest. Although collectivism brought great results to collectivism, it has cons like commoditization of employees, sacrifice their personal lives and lack of diversity. 

Social hierarchy and age is very important in Korean culture. As weird as it may sound, many Koreans would ask each other "how old are you?" or "what year were you born" the first time they meet someone so they can figure out the hierarchy situation before forming an relationship as to who is older and deserves formal addresses. So obviously this culture is embedded in Korean language as well. In terms of language itself, the vocabulary, vocab endings and suffixes change depending on whom you are talking to. For example, to ask someone if they have eaten yet, there are two separate words used to address people of different ages. When asking someone a lot older than you, you would ask if they had "jin-ji"and when asking someone of your age or younger, you use the word "bab" even though they both mean meals. Also, you would use "yeon-sae" to ask someone's age if that person is older than you but use "na-yi" if that person is of your age or younger. Social hierarchy is very deeply reflected in Korean language, and therefore Koreans often find it difficult to address someone by calling their first names because that is considered impolite. One interesting fact I found while researching was that calling someone only by the family name which Koreans often do to be polite is actually considered impolite in Germany. Another linguistic aspect of Korean culture is that because it's a relatively more collectivistic culture than others, Koreans say "we" or "our" a lot more even when they are referring to personal property belonging just to themselves. Often times, you add "yo" at the end of each sentence to make it formal. 

I want to be at a level of superior or distinguished for all 5 categories in Korean (interpersonal communication, presentational speaking, presentational writing, interpretive listening and interpretive reading). I want to be able to speak  Korean fluently about a variety of topics especially in formal work settings even about unfamiliar topics and complex issues. I also want to be able to write professionally with more advanced level of vocabulary use and understand complex and abstract issues presented in advanced media such as news. I also have had a problem understanding professional words, Chinese characters incorporated idioms and regular phrase-like idioms. So I would like to learn them so that I can understand and also use them in my communication as well. Eventually, I want to be able to keep up with current events and more complex issues in Korean as well so I can have more professional and academic conversations with other professionals. I also barely read any books in Korean, so I want to read many novels in Korean and possibly study some of history of Korea which I barely know anything about.   

My learning goal for this week was to learn about the important history of Korea that I'm unfamiliar of. I recently watched a Korean movie called 1987 which was huge in Korea and even came to the United States to show at a few theatres. It was about a massive series of protests against the military-run corrupt government under President Chun. Even though the movie was very well-made, I had a hard time understanding the context. So I studied the June Struggle of 1987 using Wikipedia pages and a few historical resources and made my cultural presentation on this. I also watched a few Youtube videos and referenced a few Korean website like Naver.com to make my presentation. 

I have experienced myself and also heard that Koreans, especially the older generations, use idioms and proverbs a lot in their daily lives to refer to certain situations as there are many business jargons in the United States. I have personally felt really dumb when I couldn't understand these proverbs that everyone in Korea seems to know. So my learning goal for this week was to learn proverbs. To do this, I looked at a collection of commonly used proverbs in Korea and my classmates also gave a presentation on proverbs they found interesting. Youngmin taught us about common proverbs that have to do with "words." I also made a presentation on the theme of "knowing yourself" to combine a few proverbs that had the topic of knowing yourself first before judging others. 

This week, my learning goal is to learn about the worklife in Korea. I have heard many horror stories about how Korean companies overwork their employees and how bad the work life balance is in Korean culture. Through a passage that Youngmin gave us to read that sums up a daily life of a corporate employee in Korea, my classmates and I got to learn about what an average day looks like to someone who works at a corporate in Korea. We also got to learn about a certain phrases that are commonly used to describe a group of people with particular characteristics. To achieve this learning goal, I also got to ask Youngmin a lot about the work culture in Korea and researched the effect of collectivism on Korean work culture. 

This week, I want to learn how to write about unforgettable or important moments in my life in a more professional way. To do this, Youngmin has given me and my classmates an assignment to write about a day we remember as unforgettable and we also got to discuss it in class to practice speaking. I wrote about the day my firs baby niece was born two years ago. To do this, I had to look up some words and phrases that I knew how to say in English but not in Korean. I also have a tendency to make the sentences too long both in written and verbal language in Korean. So I practiced breaking my sentences into a few to convey the same message. 

For this week, I wanted to learn about how Koreans have a huge emphasis on interpreting dreams. In class, we read a story about 길몽 and 흉몽 which mean good dreams and bad dreams. I wanted to dive deeper into this culture placing so much emphasis on dreams. So I achieved this goal by looking up/researching how Korean ancestors have used dreams for long to predict the positive and negative events in life. For instance, there are various kinds of dreams that indicate you or someone you are close to is pregnant. Also, there are other dreams that may seem like a nightmare but actually is believed to bring good luck. For example, if someone dies in your dream, that person is bound to live long. If you dream about pigs, it means you will get rich. It's very interesting how dependent Korean culture is on interpreting certain dreams.

For this week, I wanted to learn about the stories behind the scene of Winter Olympics which was held in Pyongchang, Korea. To do this, I read several articles regarding the process of Korea preparing itself to be the host of this Olympics and also read about the concerns of the public about what happens after the Olympics is over. I also watched the opening ceremony of Olympics to familiarize myself more with this historical event since I learned that Korea hasn't held Olympics in its territory since 1988 .

For this week, my learning plan is to dive deeper into learning about the recent impeachment of the president, the after fallouts of the event, what the current president is doing to bring changes to Republic of Korea. I also want to practice discussing situations that haven't happened yet or have a low probability of happening so I learn how to express my regrets or wishes. To do the first one, I had asked Youngmin to pick out a series of articles that discuss what happened to the involved stakeholders of the whole president cult scandal last year and learned about that event. To achieve the second goal, I learned different ways to express my wishes or thoughts about future and practiced it in writing and verbally with my classmates in class. 

So far, I enjoy the group study I have with other classmates to learn about Korean cultures and practice reading, writing and speaking with each other as a group. We learn from each other's mistakes and things that each student did well. So far, I have also been enjoying my separate meetings with Youngmin to study more advanced Korean by reading professional newspaper opinion page articles. I have had Youngmin choose an article for me so far which I read and highlighted the words I didn't know and practiced summarizing the article both verbally and in written language. From now on, I would like to choose my own article to challenge myself further and choose content that I am completely unfamiliar of or I have a hard time understanding the first time I read it. Overall, my learning plan and activities have been effective in pushing me forward in learning Korean. 

Learning goal for this week is to learn various kinds of onomatopoeia phrases in Korean. The phrases I plan on learning is 허우적거리다, 꼬르륵거리다, 두근거리다, 두리번거리다, 반짝거리다, 중얼거리다, 투덜거리다, 깔깔거리다. To accomplish this, my classmates and I under the instructions of Youngmin, acted out each phrase so everyone else could have a chance to try to guess the meaning of each phrase. Then we went over the meanings of each phrase and each one of us took turns to come up with situations that we would use each onomatopoeia phrases in. 

I practiced doing the greetings, farewells and introduction to my sister who is fluent in Korean by facetiming her. Even though it was a bit awkward doing introductions to her who knows me well, it was still a good practice for the future because I might come across a situation in the future where I have to introduce myself in Korean to a future employer. I could have also practiced doing greetings and farewells in an informal way as well for improvement. 

The learning goal I had for week 4 was that I learn how to pass along information to a third person in Korean. It went pretty well even though I had to make sure I use the proper suffixes and adjust them to various situations. My learning goal for week 5 was practice writing entirely in Korean to describe a movie I watched. I hand-wrote the summary of a Korean movie I recently watched called 강철비 and had it evaluated by Youngmin for grammar and sentence structure. 

Greetings: 안녕하세요 오랜만이에요. 잘 지내셨나요? 요즘 날씨가 좋아서 하늘도 맑고 나무도 푸르고 참 예쁜데 좋은 한 주 보내시기를 바래요.

Farewells: 오늘 초대해주셔서 감사합니다. 좋은 시간 보내고 맛있는 음식 맛있게 먹고 돌아가네요. 다음에는 제가 꼭 맛있는 저녁 대접할게요. 조심히 들어가세요! 

Introduction: 안녕하세요 제 이름은 장지영이고 저는 현재 리치몬드 대학교에 다니고 있는 4학년입니다. 곧 있으면 5월에 졸업할 예정입니다. 경영관에서 마케팅을 전공하였고 광고회사에서 일하고 싶은 생각이 있었으나 현재는 제가 정말로 좋아하는 일을 찾기위해 우선 한 회사에 취직한 상태입니다. 제가 꿈꿔왔던 직장은 아니지만 그냥 일하면서 제가 하고싶은 일을 찾아볼 계획입니다. 

My learning goal for this week is to learn how to deliver a message or information I heard from someone to another person both verbally and in written language of Korean. To practice speaking, my classmates and I came up with made-up situations that we pretended like we heard about somewhere and practiced telling it to each other. To practice writing, I texted my classmates and friends about information that was relevant to them but I heard from someone else. The resources I used were the textbook and my Korean friends. I will evaluate whether I said certain things properly by showing it to Youngmin and sharing it with my classmates to receive feedback. 

 My learning goal for this week is to learn about performance culture in Korea. My goal is to learn how to describe a performance or a movie fluently by summarizing the content and how I felt about the performance. I used the textbook Youngmin gave us as a resource to practice writing about a performance and also watched some videos on Youtube about a specific performance mentioned in the textbook which is "난타" to really see what the performance is like so I can describe it well. 

For this cultural post I am focusing on Sanskrit and Hindu classical poetry. Although Sanskrit is most known to be studied for its purely religious text in the forms of the vedas or epics of the Ramayana or Mahabarata, there is a great repository of Sanskrit poetry that is not purely part of the religious canon. I found a book of Sanskrit poetry in the library and I was really surprised by some of the subject matter and quality of the writing. Much of it is heavy in nature and eroticism. In this post, I’ll focus on the section “spring” which captures a description of the season and a woman’s gaze. The book only gives the English translation, which is a bit disappointing since I’d really like to see the original Sanskrit verses. I’ll copy some of the verses here:

Methinks that fire stole into the flame trees

In guise of winter frost

And it is he who made the forest dark

With smoke of burgeoning twigs.

How else, to tortue the poor hearts

Of absent travelers’ wives

Could he produce in guise of flowers

These blood-red rows of flame?

Bright chains of amaranth about their hips,

Fresh mango blossoms at their ears,

The red ashoka on their breasts

And maadhavii within their hair,

Their bodies rouged all over

With yellow pollen of the baluka:

Such is our lasses’ costume; may its advent bring joy to lusty lads

I’m not that familiar with non-religious Sanskrit poetry, so I found these verses interesting and surprising. The first stanza feels so cross cultural. I’ve read a lot of European renaissance and middle ages poetry, and these lines feel like they could easily fit in by any of those famous poets. The nature imagery and lines about flame, forests, and wives feel very universal. The next stanza was more surprising. There are a few Sanskrit specific words , italicized here. These lines are so sensual and beautiful and I was surprised with the intimate descriptions of women’s bodies. I find it so interesting how erotic Indian/Hindu art often is, but the culture today is still very repressive of the outward expression of women’s bodies or sexuality.

With Youngmin, my classmates and I have started learning Korean suffixes to complete sentences. We are learning about different situations we would use the suffixes in. To aid ourselves in this process, we are using a Korean middle schooler-level workbook and textbook. In addition to this, I will be reading opinion pages from a newspaper website called Maeil Economy. I will be reading these articles to expand on the amount of advanced and professional vocabulary. 

I want to be at a level of superior or distinguished for all 5 categories (interpersonal communication, presentational speaking, presentational writing, interpretive listening and interpretive reading). I want to be able to speak fluently about a variety of topics especially in formal work settings even about unfamiliar topics and complex issues. I also want to be able to write professionally with more advanced level of vocabulary use and understand complex and abstract issues presented in advanced media such as news. I also have had a problem understanding professional words, Chinese characters incorporated idioms and regular phrase-like idioms. So I would like to learn them so that I can understand and also use them in my communication as well. Eventually, I want to be able to keep up with current events and more complex issues in Korean as well so I can have more professional and academic conversations with other professionals. I also barely read any books in Korean, so I want to read many novels in Korean and possibly study some of history of Korea which I barely know anything about.   

Here's my slides from my Sanskrit Baghavad Gita presentation: 

Sanskrit%20Presentation.pptx