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.
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