I keep getting asked the same question by everyone, so I thought I'd try to answer it here. The question is, "What's Korea Like?"
Well I can answer to what all of Korea is like, but I can talk about where I live and what that's like. I live in a town called Ilsan. It's north of Seoul, and is technically part of a town called Goyang. Ilsan is also known as "Ilsan New City" because it was built about 15-20 years ago as response to crowding in Seoul. Yeah, they just went and built a new city.
I've been told that there are between 1 million and 1.5 million people now living in Ilsan. Since it's a new city, it's fairly upper middle class.
And of course I'm from Farwell, a town of 855 people. So when people ask me, "What's Korea like?," my first thoughts are about how big and busy it is. But I suppose the same could be said if you lived in Houston, Chicago, New York or any number of large American cities.
The main difference, obviously, is language. I'm in Korea, and as a consequence of that everyone is Korean and they speak Korean. Also, most thing are written in Korean, but a surprising number of places have signs written in English. And all of the bus stops and subway stops are written in English as well as Korean. This makes it much easier to know where you are.
So I bet some of you are wondering what it's like to walk around and not be able to understand anything being said around you. Well it's like when you have a TV on, but just for noise in the background. Most of the time I have my iPod on and I'm listening to music sang in English.
As for hearing and speaking English, I do get to do both every day. Of course at school the number one rule is: NO SPEAKING KOREAN! But said in a fun sing-song way. And the cable here has two or three movie channels, which will sometimes play English speaking movies. And I get the Discovery Channel, in English. I get National Geographic, Nick Jr, and a few others but they are all in Korean. Sometimes the style network will have American programming. Do you remember that show, "World's Most Smartest Model"? Well that's on here, it's in English but with Korean subtitles. And they don't bleep the swear words.
For right now, I think I'm happy not knowing what's going on. I can remember last week, being in the US and everything was just so negative. The job market is horrible, the economy is horrible. Everyone being so cynical and negative. And I definitely felt myself being sucked into the negativity. I'm not going to say that the negativity is not happening here, I just don't understand Korean well enough to know. And I think I'm ok with that.
p.s. More pictures this weekend, I've been too busy with sleeping and work to take the camera outside yet.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
America's Most Smartest Model is the best show ever and I am so glad that VH1 LA showed it here. They also show it with subtitles and they don't bleep out the swear words. MUAH HA HA.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, your last paragraph made me LOL. I know the economy is bad here too (esp. since the Mexican economy is so intrinsically linked to the US economy. I hear it everyday (and I understand it, unlike you Mr I'm-in-Korea) but it's more of a "It's always been a shitty economy, now it's even shittier. Throw some more water in those beans to make more broth!"
My recommendation to you is to get your hands on some quality Korean music and throw it on your iPod.
lulz, you said quality Korean music. This is a country that had Mariah Carey and Luther Vandross from 15 years ago- at number 4 on the video chart!
ReplyDeleteActually, I've found some decent stuff. It's very poppy here.