Women's Human Rights Museum & Halmoni's Weekly Protest

Last Wednesday, May 16th, our group was suppose to attend the weekly protest for the Halmonis, the "comfort women" during the Japanese invasion. We were not able to make the protest on time and ended up not attending at all. Then it was yesterday, May 22nd, that our group had a museum tour at the Women's Human Rights Museum in Hongdae which had just opened earlier in May. I was not sure what to expect during our time at the museum but since we needed a translator to help with translating the Korean words into English for our group, since there are not English subtitles yet, I had many thoughts about how the tour might be like during our visit. I thought that the tour may be boring and hard to understand, including the fact that translation may be even hard to find literal meanings to translate into English.

I would like to say that my previous thoughts to the museum tour of the Women's Human RIghts Museum were not  what I experienced. I was surprised to find out how hidden the museum had been and how small it was compared to other museums. There was a lot of information for such a small building; this information was not useless, it was all helpful in understanding the "comfort women" in Korea and all over the world. Before going on the museum tour I hardly knew about the situation of these "comfort women" but after experiencing the tour I feel as though I have a way better understanding of the topic. 

I am very glad that our group was not able to attend the weekly protest on May 16th before going to the Women's Human Rights Museum. The museum tour helped me understand what these situations are like from the past and to today as well and understand what the women are feeling. After attending the weekly protest I cannot believe how much this issue impacts me. The halmonis have been waiting many, many years to just receive a verbal apology from the Japanese government. These women have been offered money and other things in order for hte Japanese government to show their apology, yet all these women would love before their time in this world has gone is to receive a sincere, verbal apology.

Empathy Skills

After being in Seoul for only 21 days, I cannot believe how many new friends I have, not only from SNU but from many different places. We have made friends in different ways and at different times. Personally I have met students from SNU at a party that our group went to, during class with our other SNU students, at the club, and even on the metro (subway)! I feel as though all these people that I have met have impacted me and my thoughts of the people in the country. People in South Korea are very friendly, and places where I did not think that I would meet friends, I did. I am a shy person, especially in a comfortable environment with new people. If the situation is uncomfortable, I would just let go, or be very open and ecstatic for no reason, and many of the times that is how I meet people. South Korea was not necessarily an uncomfortable environment, but it was new to me, so by acting a certain way I made myself feel more comfortable with the situations I was in.

At the University of Michigan there are many international students from all over the world. There is a great population of students from Korea and a couple other Asian countries at our school. I feel as though it depends on the person's personality and shyness to see whether or not that person will make friends wherever they will go. I am a shy person in many situations but if I want to meet someone new I will definitely try to jump outside of my comfort zone to meet the person, especially in a country in which I am in for a short period of time. But who knows, maybe if I would like to come back some day I would have all of the friends I made to help support me when I came back. I am not entirely sure if the experience of being an international student coming to SNU and an international student at UM is the same, but I feel like the situations can relate in many ways because the meeting of people relies on a persons comfort zone and personality.

Buddy Topic

My buddy and I come from two very different sides when we talk about the privileges we both have in the United States. As Americans, yes, we have the English language that gives us privilege against other people either traveling in the United States or an advantage as a universal language that if we go any where in the world that we could possibly communicate with other people in those countries. The other great privilege that we have is that we attend an amazing university, the University of Michigan, in which we have many, many great opportunities from our attendance at this university.

On the other side of privileges in which my partner and I had that are different is related to our races. As a white American I am granted many privileges in the United States. I personally do not boast about these privileges, of which ever sort they are because I do not have that mentality as a person. Yes, there are some privileges that I am granted that I do not even see that other races do see, as for me being white, and I now I am starting to notice these privileges, not take advantage of them, but just observe even in my own situation how I am treated because of my race. Another interesting situation in my case is talking about my race, or specifically people calling me 'white'. I understand that I am a white female, but until recently I had never acknowledged when a person would say my race to my face. I truly do not like the fact when I am called white to my face, not because I am trying to act like I do not know the privileges of a white person (not saying they are correct), but it is because I do not like how many white people represent the race at times. I will let you fill in the blanks with those comments, but those people are whom I do not appreciate very much.

On the other hand, I am not going to talk about my partner's views, race, or acknowledgements about this topic because if I were to do so, I would have to directly quote her out of respect and she is also making her own blog about this topic. We did agree on certain situations and what not between races, such as one race not taking advantage of situations that the particular race had fought for or the fact that there are ignorant people of all races, not just certain races, and prejudice against many different groups for different reasons.

English Education in Seoul

There is a great emphasis from the Korean Government for the students of South Korea to learn English as their second language during compulsory schooling. One of the jobs that is highest in Korea during these times are business men and women, and I feel that being able to communicate with English is an advantage to many business men and women in Korea. With the government pushing its students to take advantage of learning a language that is valued around the world, the government has a couple programs in which support the hiring college students and graduate students to come to South Korea to join these government programs and to teach English to many students in rural and urban areas. The two programs are called TaLK and Epik!

In urban areas many parents may send their children to after school studying schools called hagwons. These are places where students can learn English and be immersed in the English Language in which attending this type of private education is after a long school day and children may not come home until about Midnight, even for older elementary school children.

Our group was able to attend an English class that was taught by a Michigan Alum at a rural elementary school in South Korea. Although this particular school had many children at one point, the school now hosts 36 children on scholarship from the government in grades 1st through 6th. After shadowing our Michigan Alum's English class, which was after a regular school day, our group was able to sit down and ask him questions about his work at the school and his everyday life. It was great to hear how a native English speaker was doing after only being in the country for so long and to hear all of the progress that he has made with himself, and the students that attend the elementary school.

National Art Museum

Earlier today, our group took the opportunity to travel to the National Art Museum of South Korea. When arriving to the museum, I did not know which building it was because there were multiple buildings around the area. And all the buildings were rather large! Knowing this, I definitely did not think that our group would be able to see all of even one of the buildings. As we walked around and up to the museum, I remember spotting the National Art Museum. It was a fairly large building in which we were not able to see every piece of work. Before going to an exhibit we found ourselves at one of many museum stores, and yes, there were more than one. Then we went on to see a few exhibits that truly interested us.

After planning out our time carefully so that we would be able to look around the largest museum store, an hour had passed in our exhibit and we headed down to the store. I was surprised to see that in glass cases there were bracelets that were 15 dollars in the same box that had rings on the other side for 300 dollars! I appreciated everything about this experience because I know that I will not be able to come back anytime soon. I would like to be able to come back to see all of the exhibits though. One exhibit that I know a lot of people appreciated was the exhibit with the Buddha statues, our little group definitely appreciated seeing it all. I feel as though there is a strong relationship between art and culture because although there may be one particular type of art, it can be interpreted in many different ways by many different cultures and that is the amazing thing about art.

Christal Phillips & USO

Hello again! Today we had a coffee talk with a visitor from another University called Yonsei University in South Korea. Our visitor's name was Christal Phillips, and she has been in South Korea for a couple years now. Christal Phillips' job in South Korea is a professor at Yonsei University. She teachers women studies classes in English at this university. As many people have been explaining in their stories of landing their first job in South Korea, most all of the people will tell us that the reason why they are still in South Korea rather than going back to the United States is because from their first job and doing such a great job at that, the people get promoted to better and better jobs, and this can happen even within a year of a person's job in South Korea. Not so much like in the United States. Christal Phillips gave such great advice to us about our future after graduation, what we definitely should do and what is not totally necessary. One of the most important topics she talked to our group about was the use of a degree, whether it be high school diploma, a 4-year university degree, a masters, or a doctorate. She said that the top degrees aren't always necessary and that it is the way of going about things to get where you would like to be in life that matters more, especially for your career.

Only after talking to this wonderful lady for an hour and a half, I could not believe how much inspiration she had given us and I was glad that she was able to even come give a talk to our group. I feel as though she had inspired every person in our group in one way or another today and that is most important to me. Also relating her topic from her topics of poverty in other countries to when we volunteered to pass out food at Seoul Station to the homeless, it was interesting to actually make a connection, even when you're not in your home country. 

ALSO, today we had a presentation given by the USO from South Korean. USO stands for United Services Organization. A group of very wonderful people from the USO came to talk to us about their services that they provide for the United States military along with describing and talking about the Good Neighbors Program. The USO services that are provided to families of the military makes me very happy. There are many different events, get togethers, classes, and services that are available to the great people that serve our country. Although some of the people that came to present said that they did not use the services as much, or even not at all, they definitely had went to the USO concerts that are put on for soldiers around the world, which is amazing, and great entertainment. The good neighbors program is around so that not only the military and forces may have a better relationship with the citizens of the country that they are stationed in, South Korea, but it is to integrate these people and make it so that they can live together in one common place.

Some of the challenges in promoting positive relations between the United States military and Korean communities is that there are many United States military that do not want to be integrated with the Korean population. Also, there are younger Korean citizens that do not believe the the United States military is doing the right thing or is not in South Korea for the sake of the citizens' best interests for the North and South Korean war, in which is still occurring. To work on these challenges, the USO has created many different services available to military members for them to gain knowledge of the outside views along with learning about how to cope with these challenges. The USO definitely has the intentions of bringing the two communities together to live civilly together, yet there still may be tension from either sides.

One Week Anniversary!

Woo! Our program had just finished its first week today, there is so many things that I have seen and done in just over a week here in South Korea. Although this week has been very intense with not being able to get enough sleep and wondering about what other adventures will happen during our trip, it has been amazing so far! Exhaustion can't even describe us at the end of the day, but I can say that the traveling is very much worth it. On a daily basis if we are going outside of the University. We travel by walking all the way down the large hill from class, onto the city bus which then takes us to the subway station. From the subway station we then choose the route with the shortest distance to get to our destination. We have been a lot of places so far, so we haven't used all of the lines of the subway yet.

Even though we have only been in South Korea for a week, I still have many questions about the country. Since most of the time our group walks around the streets to get to a subway and walk around the streets to get to our destination after we exit a subway, I have found that there are some things that are foreign to me. For example, I walk into a convenience store, buy an ice cream and leave. I'm walking and I take my ice cream out of the wrapper, take my first bite of the ice cream and enjoy it very much..yet, it's time to throw away my wrapper. I look around, and a trash can is no where in sight; how is this possible? I am not entirely sure why there aren't any trash cans around the city, but I recognized that close by bus stops is where a trash can MAY be, but not all the time. My question is, why aren't there any trashcans around the city, especially a city that is highly populated.

Also, another example of a question I am eager to ask. As a classmate and I went to eat at a restaurant on the second floor of the building, we were able to see a large intersection and the streets. We are waiting for our food so we look out into the streets to watch the cars pass. As lights turn red there are taxis and motor scooters running these lights! Cars coming from the opposite direction might pause for a second to let them finish through the intersection but just as their light turns green, they bolt out of the intersection too. An interesting way of driving out here in Seoul I suppose. So my question is, are the traffic rules enforced in Seoul or are they just guidelines for taxis and motor scooters? Hmm..definitely something I will write about when I find the answer.