Korean%E2%80%99s%20Perceptions%20of%20South%20Korea%E2%80%99s%20Politics%20and%20Presidency.pptx
My cultural project was on exploring the ways Korean's perceive and view politics in South Korea. I mainly talk about the political regionalism between the southeast region and southwest region. I also discuss the significance of some of Korea's former presidents and how they affected the rise of regionalism in Korea.
Fifth Cultural Post: Reflect upon what you have learned about the culture(s) you have been studying.
I think that I have learned so much about Korean culture through learning the language.
I realize why we say certain words, and what they mean in context of our language and culture.
I learned about holiday traditions in Korea, and how the legacy of deceased loved ones is kept forever through family traditions. I learned about how prominent the city of Seoul is, and how this impacts the whole country. The city planning, social life, living proximity, and more are all impacted because of how many people live in Seoul compared to other parts of Korea. I learned about the geography of Korea, and how each region is famous for something.
I learned about how Seoul serves as a representation of pride to many Koreans. It is where the prestigious universities are located, where technology was created, and where the successful people start.
Looking back, I learned a lot about South Korean culture. I think what I enjoyed learning most about the culture is how evergrowing and changing it is. It is influenced by the USA and other countries all around the world. However, South Korea is somehow able to take bits from other countries, combine it, and use it to further its own cultural advancements.
South Korea's culture has inspired so many people around the world, changing peoples' lives to dream bigger.
It makes me proud to be Korean.
I think one thing I am looking forward to when I go back home is all of the Korean food I will get to eat.
One thing I have noted about Korean food that is not in other cultures is that we have many side dishes. I remember mentioning it in 105, but Korean meals typically consist of rice and side dishes. Side dishes in Korean are called banchan. These side dishes include soups, kimchi, varieties of pickled vegetables, potatoes, and more. The soups are usually very healthy, as a large portion of Korean soups are bean and vegetable-based.
I was personally very curious about why we have so many side dishes, so I decided to look it up. One theory that I have found is that, by eating side dishes, we get full quickly, feel light, and it helps our digestion. One thing I should note about Korean banchan is that they are overwhelmingly on the healthy side. Most that I have seen are a form of raw vegetables. All the flavors we use are natural, and it lends Korean food to be very refreshing. With the new health movements going on, maybe this could explain why Korean food has been becoming more popular.
I learned in one of my classes this semester how there are health disparities among ethnic groups. One reason for this is the diets many of these groups eat. I was surprised to see that Koreans are among the healthiest eaters in the world, and maybe this tradition of eating banchan has helped us thrive in a healthy manner.
I remember going to a Korean restaurant with my non-Korean friend, and she was fascinated that the restaurant was giving us so much free food (when she saw the banchan). I remember telling her that we usually eat this alongside rice, and it is not typical to eat the banchan by itself.
I think even now, in college where I live in an apartment, I struggle to eat regular foods by themselves. If I am eating anything, I always find myself looking for rice to eat it with. However, it will no longer be a struggle when I get to go home and I finally get to eat rice and banchan again!!
https://asianinspirations.com.au/asian-culture/why-do-koreans-have-a-lot-of-side-dishes/
Reflect on your learning experiences this semester.
(a) What insights have you gained about yourself as a language learner and cultural explorer? What did you find difficult? What have you enjoyed? How will you continue your learning?
(b) Which readings and learning activities did you find most useful? What would you like to learn more about?
Since taking the SDLC 105 and 110 courses, I have learned that I learn best when I have a specific interest or goal in mind. Pursuing topics that held my curiosity felt easy to study, whereas things that seemed boring or tedious took longer to understand and were forgotten quickly. I also realized that I am a very impatient learner, meaning that I become frustrated or discouraged if I feel as though I’m not progressing fast enough or cannot jump right into something more intriguing because I must work on the basics first. This impatience popped up frequently because I had no previous knowledge about Korean, but I had been studying higher level foreign language for the past two years. Having to take a step back into a novice’s role was frustrating and having to study such basic material so thoroughly and slowly felt foreign in a way. Besides having to slowing down, establishing a whole new vocabulary and learning how to pronounce those words somewhat correctly was difficult. The Korean language has several sounds that do not exist in standard American English and depends on an ear that can distinguish between tense letters and their relaxed counterparts. This was particularly difficult during the first few weeks of study, but working with a Korean language partner was critical in getting me past the pronunciation and listening hurdle.
Although it may sound boring, I really enjoyed learning grammar. Because I have a background in a language with a similar grammar system, I could simply place Korean words into grammar structures that I already understood and communicate effectively, something which satisfied my impatience as a language learner. On top of studying grammar, I enjoyed looking into Korean culture as well. For 105, I looked into Korean Hanbok (traditional dress from the Jeosan Dynasty), surasang (royal court cuisine), views on time, and much more. I feel like I gained more exposure to aspects of Korean culture that I had encountered in passing, but had never stopped to dig deeper into the subject.
From this point, I don’t know how I will continue my learning. I’m still interested in the Korean language and Korean culture, but my studies of it will probably decrease in intensity. I won’t stop all together, but I will probably continue my studies more as a hobby rather than as a course.
I found that the readings that gave insight into how language has evolved and adapted, like “Family Tree of Language Has Roots in Anatolia, Biologists Say,” were helpful in explaining the interconnectedness of language. I also think that the short presentations were very useful. They gave me a crash course in an eclectic mix of culture topics that I knew nothing about and enhanced my understanding of several cultures. In addition to what we covered in class, it would be interesting to learn more about what similarities most languages have and why those similarities exist. I’m curious about why most languages can be broken down into verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc. and I want to know more about languages that may defy that system of categorization.
Introduce yourself and your family
Korean Text:
안녕하세요! 만나서 반갑슴니다. 제 이름이 카슨이에요. 저는 스무살 이에요.미국인 이고 리치몬드 대헉교 이헉년이애요.
우리 가족은 모두 셋명이에요. 삼촌은 칠십살 이고 미국사람이에요. 아주머도이에요. 아주머는 선생님이고 예순육살 이에요. 보라삭은 가잠 좋아해요.
전부탁드립니다!
Translation:
Hello! It’s nice to meet you! My name is Carson. I’m 20 years old. I’m and American and a sophomore at the University of Richmond.
There are 3 people in my family. My uncle is 70 years old and he is an American. My aunt on my mother’s side is also an American. She is a teacher and is 66 years old. Her favorite color is purple.
Please look after us!
Capture of a Korean drama 미생, that is related to a business professional topics that I learned. Evelyn and I had a discussion after watching a 30 minutes clips from this drama.
http://www.koreatimes.com/article/1091879
https://search.naver.com/p/crd/rd?m=1&px=364&py=872&sx=364&sy=580&p=TAXkMdpVuEwsscuwNXhsssssstC-301628&q=%BE%C6%B8%F0%B7%B9%C6%DB%BD%C3%C7%C8&ssc=tab.news.all&f=news&w=news&s=KHxiC9C5cHhHvItHKu5Gyw==&time=1512807298448&a=nws*y.outtit&r=24&i=880000C2_000000000000000003976186&g=008.0003976186&u=http%3A//www.mt.co.kr/view/mtview.php%3Ftype%3D1%26no%3D2017120816164998416%26outlink%3D1
Link to an article that talks about the struggles of Korean cosmetic companies and how foreigners are a huge fan of this. It also talks about the decline of stock market price and the cause and effects of it.
Impeachment of President Park and the issue within
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0dGwW3sxT0
SAAD problem between China and South Korea
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ1IMRvSf-0
These are the links that I watched for in class discussion regarding the political issues in Korea.
Screenshot of a powerpoint that Evelyn and I went over in order to learn about business professional way of communication in process reporting, marketing, and researching.
As i was interested in learning more deeply into Korean politics, I would like to share a political culture in Korea. According to Gabriel A. Almond, he stated that "It is a set of attitudes, beliefs, and orientations of the people towards the political system" in his thesis. He was also the first person to brought up an idea about political culture. The characteristics of political culture are that every political system has distinct political culture, that it is a part of general culture and that it influences political system. It also falls into four different categories which are parochial, subject and participant. I see four problematic characteristics from Korea's political culture which are alienation, resistance, formalism and regionalism.
One of the strongest characteristics of Korean people is collectivism. Korean people think in a way that "we" move together, we "do" together, and "we" live together. Therefore, the idea of community is very important to Korean people. Which also links to a matter of family. As English speakers say its "my mom", Korean people usually say its "our mom" or "our wife" rather than "my wife". These phrases are probably formed by culture in the past, and it affects our way of thinking and acting by affecting us. Moreover, the hierarchical system in family is treated very importantly.
It was very interesting to learn about how time expression in Korean relates to a nature, in particular, the universe. For example, a year is expressed in a notion of sun whereas a month is expressed in moon. Article explains that this is originated from looking at the sky when figuring out the time in the past. Traditionally, Koreans tend to divide up a day into five sections which are dawn, morning, lunchtime, late afternoon, and evening. Moreover, Koreans do not have separate words for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The word for morning and breakfast is the same, the word for lunch and afternoon is the same, and the word for dinner and evening is the same. Likewise, it is interesting to learn about time expression in Korean.
The writing system of my target language, Korean, is complicated. The order of subject verb is always the opposite from English and there are some particles that does not even exist in English. It will be very hard for a foreigner, especially English speaker, to master the writing style of Korean. There are some complicated grammar rules and sentence structures that are necessary to be kept in order to make sense out of sentences. Context wise, I think Korean language is less direct than English as it uses a lot of analogies and idiomatic phrases. Therefore, knowing them is also important.
I focused on the idea of community and "jeong," of Korean people. Jeong can be explained as a heart or love, but there simply isn't an equivalent in English since its part of a culture. Jeong contains affection, compassion, sympathy, community and attachment. Often, this might be the reason why Korean people are very sensitive at trends as they are less likely to be individualistic. It is not hard to find people with the same styles of clothes on in Korea. This idea of following trend might make one as a "cool" person, but I believe that following too much of a trend ruins one's individuality and creativity.
Since I am a native speaker and wanting to learn deeper into my first language, I don't recall learning a sentence structure or grammar structure of a language. However, I definitely think that learning a structure of language would improve my comprehension skill when I read and to think in more logical ways. Encountering dense articles or news, I always use to break up one sentence into multiple parts and read them again. I would break up the sentence into parts and try to understand separately at first. Then, I would put the sentence together to make sense as a whole.
There is a definite line between formality and informality in Korean language. Formal style of saying things are usually used when the other is older than you are, or someone you respected while informal style is used in daily languages between friends and people who consider themselves to be in a similar age range.
Korean people traditionally thought that having an appropriate courtesy towards elders is very important matter. From the culture that elders are respected, the language has formed to have polite word. For example, there are different words for meal, sickness, asking and dying. These are not used in every situation where one is older than the other, but it should be used appropriately in Korean culture.
This semester, my biggest goal is to read news articles and to listen to news freely. Therefore I would like to work on this with Evelyn by reading and discussing about particular news topics. I expect that my experience of trying to read news articles to get gradually better as I gain more confidence and speed in reading. As I moved to the states, I was still able to have a daily conversation in Korean with friends, but I was not exposed to any Korean books or articles. Some of the phrases and wordings are still difficult for me to understand, but I will learn to make sense out of it by looking the relationship of sentence before and after.
I took a final exam!! It was a summation of everything we learned so far in this class. I think I did well on reading and listening part as I got relatively easy topics of news articles. However, I had to think a lot for writing sections as I had to pay attention on both context and grammar structures. I also realized that I am not familiar with writing in Korean at all. Moreover, speaking section required me to talk in business professional way, and I had to prepare a lot for this section also. Overall, I think I achieved what I planned for this semester and therefore I'm glad with my learning plans and outcomes.
As we are wrapping up the semester, we reviewed the whole thing that we learned throughout the semester. We talked about business professional way of conversation as well as the political issues that Korea is facing. It was mainly focused on reviewing for finals, so I didn't get to learn new materials. I will be tested on reading, listening, speaking and writing and I thought I should study for the parts that I am not too familiar with.
This week, we decided to watch a movie that is called "the classic." It is an old movie from 15 years ago, but I could still relate many of my experiences and emotions to the movie characters. It was mainly about the love story, and the point of view shifts from a daughter's life to her mom's early age life. The class was little different from other normal classes, but I still learned more about Korean cultures and the way they talk in dialects.
