240 get taste of S. Korean culture

Aniela Garay (right) snaps a photo of her friends Airam Morales (left) and Ubaldo Abrego — all from Panama City — during a Korean culture immersion event Saturday at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.
Aniela Garay (right) snaps a photo of her friends Airam Morales (left) and Ubaldo Abrego — all from Panama City — during a Korean culture immersion event Saturday at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.

When someone in South Korea asks for a mixer, he isn’t talking about a kitchen appliance with beaters that’s used to make cake batter. Instead, “mixer” refers to a blender - an electric appliance that liquefies, chops and purees, Minseong Son told her class Saturday.

Son, a 23-year-old accounting major from Seoul, acted as the English teacher at a mock South Korean high school as part of an annual cultural immersion event organized through the International Students and Scholars office at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.

About 240 participants registered for the event this year, said Cynthia Smith, assistant director of outreach for the office. Previous cultural-immersion programs have focused on the Dominican Republic, Rwanda, Jordan and the Philippines. The program allows international students to show Americansand other international students what their cultures are like, Smith said.

The Korean Student Association and the International Culture Team chose to demonstrate South Korean culture via a classroom experience, said Minji Park, president of the Korean association. Park, 24, grew up in Seoul but has lived in Arkansas for eight years. She initially arrived as a foreign-exchange student and then decided to stay and continue her high school education at Mount St. Mary Academy in Little Rock. She’s now an education major at UA-Fayetteville.

Saturday’s participants spent three hours at “Kosa High” in the Health, Physical Education and Recreation building. Half of the time they were in classes and half at a “festival day.”

In South Korea, high school is a stressful time of study, Park said. The school day begins at 7 a.m. and endsat 5 p.m. Students have dinner and then study until 10 p.m., she said. The goal is for students to gain admission into the highest-ranking universities in South Korea.

“Study is the life for Korea high school students,” Park said.

The only time students experience extracurricular activities, such as sports, is on occasional festival days, Park said. On a festival day, Korean students spend the morning in class and the afternoon at the festival.

The influence of American culture on South Korea is evident in the language, Son said. South Koreans have adopted many English words, she said, but the meanings of those words in the United States is often different in South Korean “Konglish.”

Son discussed several such words, displaying a picture of what a word meant in the U.S., and asking herstudents to guess the South Korean meaning.

South Koreans say “bond” when they mean glue, “hand phone” for cellphone and “handle” for steering wheel, she said.

“Fighting” isn’t a term for violence there. Instead, it is used to tell someone to cheer up.

The primary difference between American and South Korean schools, Son said, is the interactions among students and teachers.

In South Korea, there is little student-teacher interaction during class, she said. South Korean students sit down and avoid asking questions in class. Instead they are shy and wait until after class to ask questions.

“We want to look smart,” she said.

She likes the interaction in American schools. “If students are asking questions, they are learning and they are thinking something,” she said.

Michael Lea - a missionary who has traveled to Panama, Ecuador and Nicaragua and who has spent the past year living in Fayetteville with his family - said he liked learning about the Korean culture and greetings and how Korean and American interpretations of English words differ. His family is involved in a friendship program that connects international students with families in Northwest Arkansas.

“I’ve been to a lot of other countries,” he said. “You get to learn about different cultural meanings, understand how they [the people] live and who they are.”

Bin Lee, a 21-year-old biochemistry major at UA-Fayetteville, said he lived in Pusan, South Korea, until age 7, when his family moved to Harrison. He graduated from Conway High School and has also lived in Boston.

He remembers the pressure to learn in South Korea and that preschool included multiplication math.

“They forced you to study so much,” he said. “It’s better here. It’s more lenient. It’s at your own pace.”

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 15 on 04/13/2014

Upcoming Events