Blogs

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. 

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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 ;

I learned to make kimbap with my friend. We wanted some really good kimbap but could not find where to buy it near us, so we decided to make some kimbap on our own. We bought ingredients like ham, eggs, raddish, carrots, rice, dried seasoned seaweed, fish, and other vegetables. We cut up the ingredients and rolled the white rice and seaweed into rolls with the ham, egg, and other vegetables in the middle. In Korea, kimbap is a must have when you go camping or on trips. It is super simple to make, and there's a tradition that you bring kimbap to field trips or campfires.

Babi Kecap is a Chinese-Indonesian dish made up of pork slow-cooked with onions, garlic, spices, etc. in a sauce based with Kecap Manis (kecap - 'soy sauce', manis - 'sweet'), a variant of soy sauce with added palm or brown sugar. It is my favorite Indonesian dish, and I have made it four times here in the United States, twice in a pot for about two hours, and twice in a slow-cooker for 6 to 8 hours. I have found the slow-cooker method to be far superior due to the way it liquidizes the onion, garlic and spices, penetrates the flavors into the pork chunks, and tenderizes the pork to a point of buttery perfection. 

This dish is popular among many non-Muslim communities in Indonesia, including Chinese-Indonesians, Balinese, Batak, and Minahasan ethnic groups, as well as in the Netherlands.

Ingredients:

I was able to find my spices at two Asian supermarkets - New Grand Mart and Tan-A - both on Broad St. in Richmond. For the other ingredients I went to Kroger. 

• 1.5kg boned pork shoulder, cut into 5cm chunks

• ½ tsp ground black pepper

• 1 tsp ground coriander

• ½ tsp ground ginger

• ¼ tsp ground cinnamon

• ½ tsp salt

• 1 tbsp groundnut or vegetable oil

• 1 large onion, or 6 shallots, thinly sliced

• 5 garlic cloves, crushed

• 20g fresh root ginger, peeled and grated

• 4 red bird’s-eye chillies, deseeded and finely chopped (if you like it spicy!)

• 500ml chicken stock

• 4 tbsp kecap manis sauce (sweet soy sauce)

• 2 tbsp light soy sauce

• 2 tbsp tamarind paste (the non-concentrated sort)

Garnish:

• 2 tbsp groundnut oil

• 4 shallots, thinly sliced

• 2 mild red or green chillies, thinly sliced

• green onions

Instructions:

1. Put the pieces of pork in a bowl. Mix the spices and salt, then sprinkle them over the pork, turning the meat to make sure it is all well covered.

2. Heat the oil in a large flameproof casserole dish, then add the onion or shallots. Fry them gently over a gentle heat until soft and translucent. Add the garlic, ginger and chillies and cook for a further minute.

3. Add the pork to the casserole dish and cook on a medium heat for a few minutes, turning the pieces of meat until they are browned all over. Mix the chicken stock with the kecap manis, soy sauce and tamarind paste and pour this over the pork.

4. Brown the meat for a little while, then take everything and put it into a crock pot. Turn the slow cooker on and cook for 8 hours on low (recommended) or 4 hours on high (also works), stirring occasionally if possible. Turn up the heat or return to the stovetop towards the end of the cooking time if the sauce is still quite liquid. There will likely be an excess of oil, so feel free to spoon some of it off while 

5. To make the garnish, heat the oil in a frying pan and add the shallots. Fry over a medium to high heat, stirring frequently, until the shallots are golden-brown and crisp. Remove them from the pan, drain on kitchen paper and allow them to cool. Serve the pork garnished with the shallots, fresh green onions and sliced chillies.

In process...

The delicious results O.O mixed with nasi putih 'white rice' and kacang hijau 'green beans'

The image is upside down, and I can't get it to turn back.

As I learned about Hanja, the Chinese characteristics, I was curious to see how my name would look like. I knew that Hanja was used to come up with my name, and it had certain meaning from Hanja; however, I didn't know how it spelled out in Hanja. With the help of some Chinese students and Google, I found out how my name looks like in Hanja. The first character is the last name "Kim". The second character is "Won", and this means the best. The third character is "Jun" which mean from that group. So combining the characters together, Wonjun means best of the best. It was really interesting to see my name in Hanja as Hanja was used to come up with my name.

During Thanksgiving, I gathered with my friends and celebrated our own Thanksgiving but more Korean style. We made Kimchi and other Korean foods as well as American foods like turkey and spaghetti. This was more like a mixture of the 2 cultures, but I had a great time. It was my first time making kimchi from scratch. First, I had to wash and cut the cabbages into edible sizes. Then, I added the already prepared sauce into the cabbage. Next, I mixed the kimchi very thoroughly. And last, I stored them into containers to eat them when they go through fermentation. Even though this process sounds simple, this took almost 3 hours to finish. It was an amazing experience to make kimchi for the first time.

In addition to being the #3 producer of coffee, Indonesia is also the #3 producer of rice, or nasi. Rice is the central food of Indonesian cuisine, and a meal without rice is considered a light snack. This dependence on rice as a base for almost all meals consumed by Indonesians of all classes, and the growing rice cultivation industry that has been developing for at least 1500 years, is reflected in the Indonesian language by a rich vocabulary of words related to the crop:

Padi - rice in the field/as a growing plant

The rice terraces in Bali featured in this photo are likely fed by Subak, a complex irrigation system which originated on the island in the 9th century CE and feeds many rice fields from one source, usually designated with a water temple. It is a cooperative system, and inhabitants of Bali work together to keep the water in the many canals and aqueducts that make up Subak flowing.

Gabah - unhusked, raw rice grains

Beras - raw, uncooked rice as one buys from a pasar 'market'

Nasi - cooked rice (in this case topped with bawang goreng 'fried onions' on a plate of nasi campur 'mixed rice')

There are other forms of cooked rice in addition to plain steamed rice, including (but certainly not limited to):

Nasi Uduk - 'mixed rice' in Betawi dialect - rice cooked in coconut milk, clove, lemongrass, cinnamon and pandan leaf.

 Nasi Kuning - 'yellow rice' - rice cooked in coconut milk, tumeric, lemongrass and pandan leaf

Ketupat Nasi - 'rice diamond' - rice cooked in a woven packet made of palm leaves

Lontong Nasi - 'rice cake' - rice cooked wrapped in banana leaves

Rengginang - meaning unknown - sweet sticky rice flattened into a disk, sun-dried, then fried

In Korea, delivery services are so well organized that you can literally deliver almost any kind of food in Korea. This is BBQ chicken that I ordered in NOVA, and it is probably the best fried chicken I've ever had in my life. In Korea, there is a super famous saying "치맥" this means chicken and beer. Chicken and beer combination is so good that people in Korea came up with a slang to say this combination. So you may ask: what's the difference between Korean fried chicken and American fried chicken? Well, to answer that question, Korean fried chicken is made to better suit the type of sauces that Koreans like, so it is very subjective because all people can like that sauce. Korean chicken is so well known in Korea that people have chicken for midnight snack almost everyday. You've got to try it when you go to Korea. 

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This is my first conversation with Ertugrul, the really nice and patient pen-pal Merve Hocam, our language partner, helped me find! Speaking with him gave me plenty of Turkish practice and helped me get accustomed to what actual Turkish people commonly say. In my opening message, I say “Hello Ertugrul! My name is Azin, I am Merve’s student” when translated to English. Ertugrul replied with “Hello, Azin! Nice to meet you. Yes, Merve told me.”

This is an example of an Ezan. If you ever take a trip to Turkey, you will commonly hear the Ezan, or Muslim call to prayer, in any town or city you visit. The ezan is chanted six times a day, commonly originating from a mosque in the city. The times are called İmsak, Güneş, Öğle, İkindi, Akşam, and Yatsı, which translate to pre-dawn, sunrise, noon, mid-afternoon, evening, and night respectively. The locations and exact times for these calls are subject to change depending on the season and geographical relationship of the location to Mecca. The Turkish government, specifically the Republic of Turkey’s Presidency of Religious Affairs, provides information for all these times and locations on their website.

The Ezan is conducted as the Salaah, or fixed ritual of Islamic prayer, is conducted in many other Muslim-majority countries. A majority of people in Turkey are Sunni Muslims, about 80.5%, whereas Shia Muslims make up 16.5% of the population. In Sunni Islam, individuals are expected to pray 5 times a day for Salaah, to which Ezan follows rather than the Shia Islam ritual of praying 3 times a day.

A huge part of understanding a culture is immersing yourself into that culture’s environment. Every part of the world has its own unique sound environment, or soundscape, filled with sounds special to that place. Istanbul is no exception. Sounds of the Istanbul ‘nostalgic tram’, a historic tramway that travels across Istanbul, Turkish bagel vendors calling out to customers and selling their baked goods, tea stalls, calls to prayer, car horns, the sea, and so much more make Istanbul sound different than any other part of the world.

Istanbul’s soundscape is notably a mix of the old and new, with pieces of traditional Turkish culture, such as those of the call to prayer or vendors, coming into contact with sounds of modernity such as car horns, smartphone notification sounds, and construction (usually being done to make renovations on many old structures in Istanbul). Istanbul is also notably ‘louder’ than Western European cities, with many of the sounds old and new produced in the city creating an environment with more and louder sounds than those commonly found in Western European settings. I personally find the quiet to be boring, so I certainly do not mind!

The song “Üzülmedin mi?”, which translates to "Are you not upset?" in English, by Simge is one of my favorite pieces of modern Turkish music. Even prior to taking Turkish here at UR, I was listening to this song. It is awesome! This song is a good example for what modern Turkish music commonly sounds like. Modern Turkish music often infuses modern popular, standard pop music sounds with sounds unique to traditional Turkish music.

If you look at the viewer count for the video right now, it is at a staggeringly high 99,557,511 views. If you look at the comments, in addition to all the posts in Turkish, you see people from all over Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Central and South Asia proclaiming their love for Turkish music. Turkish music is amazingly popular and has a huge impact all across not only Turkey but its neighbors both near and far as well. Everyone knows how awesome it is!

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During week #12 and week #13, Jimin and I simply reviewed material for the final. She answered any final questions that I had concerning the material and also asked me if I had any requests for the next semester. I asked her if we could do more sessions about Korean history because it was a topic of interest of mine. Jimin also gave me the basic format of the final exam and arranged a meeting time for it. Overall, we discussed our thoughts on the past semester and recapped on what we accomplished. In addition, we discussed the goals from my learning plan that we were not able to accomplish and further discussed how to achieve them during the next semester. It was nice to wrap up the semester with this discussion because it made me realize how flexible and focused this language learning class is. It also gave me insight on how much I had learned in just one semester and gave me hope in my future language learning plans.

During week #9, Jimin and I talked about Korean history based off of a timeline that she created. It had the major historical events such as the different dynasties, the 6.25 Independence War, the different presidents who reigned, and the corresponding details for each event. It was particularly interesting for me because I have always been interested in Korean history due to how different it is from US history. We also researched more in-depth about certain events that I was especially interested in during our session, for I was interested in the Japanese regime in Korea.

            During week #10, Jimin taught me about Korean writing and grammar. She first had me write a paragraph about a randomly chosen topic and then corrected it. Then, she proceeded to give me different variations of words that had the same or similar pronunciation. She also quizzed me on how to spell words that could have multiple spellings. It was motivating to see that I got most of the spelling right and also gained clarification on some spellings that I had always struggled with.

During week #7, Jimin and I viewed the popular Korean film called “Along with the Gods 2.” Although I had heard about it and its popularity, I had not had the chance to watch it yet. We both watched it without subtitles and stopped the film whenever I had a question about the dialogue or plot itself. It was a very engaging and relaxed way of learning the Korean language, for I heard words that I did not know the meaning of, and I also picked up on different sayings that the actors used. During week #8, we finished viewing the movie because it was too long to finish during our first meeting. After finishing it, Jimin had me write a paragraph in Korean about my thoughts on the film itself. She also corrected any grammatical errors I had and replaced words with better and more advanced vocabulary.