new thoughts.

While I am obviously no longer in Korea, I am still very much in contact with Korean culture. I talk to anywhere from 10 to 18 Koreans every Sunday through Thursday. While the learning curve is a bit slower on this side of the world, I am still able to learn a lot from my students. It is one of my favorite things about working for Spicus.

I've learned that even though Korea's economy is not much better than the USA's economy, it is still important to hire new people. One of my students, a lawyer specializing in white collar crime, told me that his law firm hired 9 new lawyers a few weeks ago. He said that if his firm did not hire new personel, it would look bad to the public. This sort of idea parallels Korea's strong emphasis on matters of appearence. While all public companies face pressures from their stockholders, hiring new staff is less important than raising stock prices. Often, workers are sacrificed to benefit said stockholders. What's really important depends on your cultural viewpoint.

Today I learned about "White Day", which I believe is similar to Sweetest Day. For Valentine's Day in Korea, women give chocolate, usually hand-made, to a male as an expression of love or some kind of social obligation. For White Day, the men return the favor to their female counterparts. Traditionally the men gave their ladies white chocolate - thus the meaning of the holiday. Instead of white chocolate, men can also give marshmellos, jewelry, or other similar gifts. The idea is that on White Day, men give a larger gift than they receive. For those who do not celebrate Valentine's Day or White Day, there is the April holiday of Black Day. Black Day is marked by single Koreans eating a specific type of noodle dish with a black sauce. The dish comemorates the Korean version of "Single Awareness Day".

There is a lot about Korean culture I have never talked about. Tonight, as my last night in Seoul I am going to have Russian food and Russian beer with an intern from Russian and two of his Korean friends. I've never had Russian food, so it should be interesting; especially Korean style Russian food. Coming to Korea has been one of the best things I have ever done. I have learned so much and have so many new perspectives on things after meeting people from all over the world. Perhaps that is why I do not want to leave. I am not sure how much of it is big city life and how much of it is Korean culture, but I would have to live in an American city with about 11 million people to find out.

Yesterday, when Christina, Adam and I were shopping, Christina took me to have my fortune read. It is very popular here and generally costs anywhere from 5,000 - 12,000 Won. The woman told me I am tree/flower/vine in winter. I have a lot of water, which makes me mature, introspective, interested in money, and an initiator. Because I am so cold, I need fire to help find balance. I should not marry until I am older because I will still be changing a lot until I am in perfect balance at age 37. They tell you most of this by your birth date (Korean time) and part of it by looking at you. It was interesting, to say the least.

I am shopping and packing today until dinner. I always bring way more than I use overseas - I really need to work on that. Here's to hoping everything goes well tomorrow.

"You are not American," he says, "you are willing to learn and you are not fat so you are not American. People who speak two languages - we call that bilingual. And people who speak three languages - we call that trilingual. But the people who speak only one language, we call that American."

Ouch (kind of). More of an ouch for my family and friends than a personal ouch, but an ouch none the less. The speaker was a slightly intoxicated Mr. Oh, at a wonderful sashimi dinner after work. My mentor was extremely drunk and also extremely entertaining. They laugh when I say things in Korean because they think I have a very good accent. They are surprised and tell me I sound Korean, but because I know so little it is more flattery than anything else. They asked the waitress, in Korean, what country she thought I was from. She said Russia. When asked why, she said "because she is beautiful and all Russian women are beautiful". On my meager travels I never have people ask if I am American - ever. I have gotten British, Italian, French, South African, and now Russian. Dana: the all-american mutt.

The more I travel, the more I realize how strange the US really is. One of the biggest points of confusion between Americans and people from other countries is the subject of heritage. People who are not familiar with US customs are always extremely confused by it. To them, heritage is a subject of national pride while to Americans it is more of a way to describe the way you look. My surname is German, but no living person in my family speaks German or celebrates the customs. I do not identify with Germany in the slightest. When I say “my dad is German, but was born in the US” this is always met with a resounding “what???”. My German ancestors immigrated to Canada, my grandfather was born in Canada and illegally moved to the US where all 11 of his children were born. It has been quite a long time since anyone in my family lived in Germany, and yet we still say my dad’s side of the family is German. This makes absolutely no sense to people from other countries because to them it is more about nationalism. Even more confusing to other people is how we count nationality in percentages and fractions. “What the hell do you mean when you say you are this% that?” My mom is the ultimate in this category as somewhere along the line a German married a Polish person who married an Irishman who married a Cherokee Indian. This is one thing that is so different in the US as opposed to Korea or other countries – no one cares who you marry. Here, it is rare for a Korean to marry a foreigner, and by older people it is still looked down upon. People don’t seem to appreciate how cute Eurasian babies are. Even in dating, international relationships are not that common. While in general they are not common, you will more frequently see a Korean girl with a foreign boy than the opposite. Korean girls love foreigners – especially tall foreigners. Even guys who would not be considered attractive in the US are with some of the most beautiful Korean girls. It’s very strange. Korean men love meeting foreigners, but for many of them, we are “too beautiful to date”. Now you say: what? They love being introduced to us and introducing us to their friends, but that’s all.

Christina told me about cultural differences between Korean girls and Japanese girls while going to the Renoir exhibit on Saturday, and I thought is was very interesting. In the US we kind of lump all Asian people together as Koreans lump foreigners together here, so I was interested in learning about her perspective as a Korean. I guess a lot of Korean guys like dating Japanese girls because they are less opinionated than Korean girls. They will often agree with you, even if they do not agree, and are kind of like pretty dolls. I would think this would get confusing, but that is probably because I am an opinionated person. Korean women are more feministic and tend to make the man work harder in initiating a relationship. Meanwhile, Chinese women are usually not as well manicured as Japanese and Korean women. Looks are not as important to their culture.

From living with my Chinese roommate, I’ve recognized how different the Chinese language is from Japanese and Korean. When my roommate is speaking to her family or friends, it sounds like a rollercoaster. Her inflection is up and down and up and down – it’s constantly changing. Korean is monotone when compared with both Chinese and Japanese. When speaking English, your voice goes up at the end of a question while in Korean there are certain words to designate that it is a question. This is one of the reasons it is so hard for me to understand when my mentor is asking me a question and he must often say “I am asking” after I do not answer him. Japanese uses lot higher pitches than Chinese or Korean, and if you do not use the high pitches, it can completely change the meaning of what you are saying. For example, saying “it is delicious” without the correct inflection would be interpreted as saying it was horrible. From what I understand, Korean and Japanese share a very similar grammatical structure. What it would take an American to learn in a year, a Korean could learn in 3 months. It would probably be comparable to a native English speaker learning another romance language. Chinese is different as it is a pictorial language, and even though Koreans learn Chinese characters, they usually cannot speak it. Vietnamese is also completely different and most Koreans find their names extremely difficult to pronounce

We left for Pohang Thursday morning at 8 A.M., stopped for lunch, picked up another intern, and finally arrived at the Posco steel museum 5 hours later. Even though Posco has a large operation in Seoul, their headquarters is in Pohang as that's where their business began. After we toured the museum we watched a short movie before heading to the steel works. The steel works was very impressive. It was like a city within a city - except we weren't allowed to take pictures. So I found this picture per google image to show you something similar:

Above is an actual picture of Pohang steel works. Below is a picture some random steel mill that looks very similar to what we saw. Pohang is U-shaped so that huge barges filled with raw materials can sail directly up to their destinations. Posco makes a lot of different types of steel including hot rolled coil, cold rolled coil, plate steel, stainless steel, and electrical steel. About 70% of their product is used domestically and the rest is exported.

We toured a hot rolled coil factory and a plate factory. Hot rolled coil is produced at 1300 degrees Celsius (2372 degrees Fahrenheit) and the temperature in the building was incredible.

Have I mentioned POSCO has a pro soccer team? They're called the Pohang Steelers. Below are the pictures I took on the trip. After our tour of Pohang works, we traveled an hour away to Gyeongju for the night and a rainy tour of the city the following day. Posco paid for everything from our meals to our hotel to our bar tab.

more things

Every time I go abroad, I become more and more thankful that I am not blond. As if people do not stare at me enough, the attention would be 10x more if I had blond or red hair. Korea has westernized beauty standards and advertising feature people who are obviously not Korean is very common. This is one of the reasons why plastic surgery is so rampant among Korean women. According to Christina, a Korean intern who has lived all around the world, about 70% of Korean girls have some kind of plastic surgery; the most common forms being eyelid surgery or a small cut by each eye to make them appear larger. It is very strange because in Gangnam, a popular district for night life, there are plastic surgery places mixed in with western-style bars, clubs, and nightclubs. In Korea there is a difference between a night club and simply a club. Night clubs are extremely expensive, and groups of men go there to drink. The girls stand around and the groups of men pick out who they want to talk to. The waiter then goes and gets the girls and invites them back to the table to have drinks. The more you spend on alcohol, the harder the waiter will try to bring you the girls you want to talk to. Needless to say, I have no desire to go to a nightclub.

Yesterday I had my first negative work experience during lunch with my department. I was embarrassed and offended, but there is no one I can talk to about it. Because my department is older, I face more of a language barrier than most of the other foreign interns. There is also only one woman in my department of 20 people and she is rarely invited to participate in anything. I have never even been introduced to her. My mentor took me to lunch with most of the department, about 10 people, including the department boss. For a bit more background information, most Koreans are much better at written English than spoken English because English is not a phonetic language and they are often taught by Korean teachers with no experience abroad. Katka told me that it is extremely common at schools for Korean English teachers to be unable to talk with native English speakers, even though they are both teaching English. In the office, everyone’s opinion depends on their superior. It is much more important to agree with your boss than to offer any other kind of insight. If you know a certain way of doing something, it is still better to ask your superior his way of doing it. As far as lunch yesterday, because my department is older, their English skills are generally poor. My mentor is the best in the department having lived in Australia for 5 years, but there are still a lot of misunderstandings and miscommunications. Korean does not use inflection as English does as it is a monotone language, and thus, I can never tell when my boss is asking a question and my coworkers cannot understand when I am asking a question. Talking to Mr. Lim, the man at the desk next to mine, is comparable to talking with a brick wall as I am sure he does not understand 85% of what I say. At lunch, my mentor asked me what I thought was “how do you like walking at Posco”, but was actually “how do you like working at Posco”. Needless to say, my answer was pretty concise after what I heard. I said “it’s fine”. Only after about 10 minutes did I realize what he had actually said. This was the only question I was asked during our hour lunch outing. Despite having worked at Posco for over 2 weeks and having eaten in traditional-style restaurants many times, they gave me a fork, covered me in aprons, and gave me a chair. All while talking about me, not at me, and laughing. I kept hearing things like “Michigan” (which Koreans pronounce “mich-gan”) and “juege hak” (which means accounting). I felt like an object instead of a person.

The next few meals went 100x better as our program coordinator from MSU was in town and we ate with him and Mr. Kim from Dongguk University. At dinner on Tuesday night, Mr. Kim took us to a restaurant close to the university famous for “pig trotters” or pig feet. It was actually very good, although a bit fatty, and we had a very enjoyable evening. It was nice to finally meet Mr. Kim from Dongguk as he helped all of us find a suitable place to live during our stay here.This past weekend I saw Harry Potter with some students from the Czech Republic, went to Gyeongbok Gung (palace) with other interns and hiked up to Seoul Tower.

I took a lot of pictures of Gyeongbok Gung, but it is late and so pictures of my hike to Seoul Tower will have to suffice.

After I got off the subway, it was a bit confusing as to where I was supposed to go. I walked for about 15 minutes before I could finally see the Seoul Tower.

About 40 minutes away from my goal at this point

These are ancient smokestacks once used to signal emergencies and other important events.

Once at the top, Seoul Tower is dominated by couples. It is a Korean custom for couples to demonstrate their love by placing padlocks and love messages all along the railing. There are signs warning lovers to keep their keys, but I am unsure if this has something to do with a nasty breakup.

On Sunday night, Seoul Tower was kind of like a Disney park before the fireworks show. There was live music and shops and food stalls (including Coldstone if I wanted to eat enough calories to void my past 3 days of exercise) - it was beautiful and would have been even better if I had not been alone.

The color changes every 10 seconds or so.

Inside the tower, there were love tiles. I think it is because marriage is extremely important in Korea and thus they are obsessed with finding lasting love.

View through a dirty window.

#ididitmom!

I wrote this at work and emailed it to myself because I feel like my posts have been lacking descriptions lately. My mentor teaches me Korean every morning for 30 minutes, and then I read extremely boring powerpoints in bad english about Accounts Payable and POSCO's Financial Standards all day long. I am not even correcting them or writing a report - only reading. Needless to say I drink about 3 cups of instant coffee and 1 cup of "real" coffee every day. The instant coffee, despite being the best I've ever had, does not have much caffiene and contains a lot of sugar. It does not do much to keep you awake.

Every day from 12 to 1 is lunch. Everyone at POSCO takes his or her lunch at this time and the lights to the office go out at exactly 12 every day. Lunch here is never eaten by oneself, but always with collegues. Needless to say, no one brings his lunch to work, but food is relatively cheap in Korea and it is not much of an expense to go out every day. The cafeteria serves breakfast for 2000 Won/$1.58 USD, and lunch and dinner for 3000 Won/$2.37 USD. There are also hundreds of restaurants within walking distance of the POSCO building and many people choose to go out for lunch. If you go out to lunch with your mentor, he will always pay for you. This is an integral part of Korean culture. They always fight over the bill, but the oldest will generally always pay for everything.

The elderly in Korea are very important and must always be treated with respect. This generally means don’t speak before being spoken to, always bow first upon meeting, wait until they start eating before beginning your meal, only speak to them in the formal way, give up your seat on the subway if there is an elderly person without one, and other similar traditions. In Korea, your boss will always be older than you because their promotions are based on years with the company more so than individual performance. This is changing as Korean business becomes more westernized and the salary gap between low-performers and high-performers is increasing, but it is largely still true. This is especially true for women in Korea. In many ways, the interactions between sexes are similar to the US in the 1950’s. In the work place, older Koreans believe that women should not call attention to themselves by wearing bright colors or wearing shirts that expose the shoulder. My mentor told me to “wear whatever I want,” but Jaehee’s mentor, a Korean intern in the department next to mine, is much more strict. She told me she once wore a dress with red on it and her team leader was very upset with her. Some departments are more liberal than others, as some interns are even allowed to wear jeans, but POSCO is notoriously conservative. In the recent past, POSCO has only had a 3% women workforce, but they have begun to hire 20-30% women to create more of a balance. Generally, they do not hold the foreign interns to such rigorous standards because they do not actually intend to hire us. All upper level positions in Mexico, the US, China, Australia, Vietnam, Japan, India, and Poland are still held by Koreans.

Interactions between sexes, even in Universities, are small. Most dormitories in Korea have lock-in rules from 11 – 5:30 and some even have separate elevators for boys and girls. There are also quite a few women-only universities which are generally considered archaic in the US. My university has boys and girls living on the same floor, which I’ve come to learn is liberal for Korea. Of course, there are no Koreans living on my floor so that may be a large factor. I believe the guest house is only for foreigners. On the weekends, the lock-in time is not a problem as nothing closes at 2 as in the US. Clubs and bars are open all night long and are still packed with people until 7 in the morning. They say that New York is the city that never sleeps, but Seoul only sleeps on the subway or during the lunch hour. It’s kind of mind-blowing, really.

Because status is so important in Korea, Koreans will often ask questions that would seem too personal when meeting someone for the first time. The first question usually always being “how old are you” followed by “what is your name,” “where are you from,” and if in the workplace “how much do you make”. Your age is the most important part of determining your Korean status, but if you come from a rich country you will be treated with more respect than if you are from a poor country. To determine your age in Korea, take your age in the US and add one year. Instead of being “zero” when born, Koreans count the gestation period as one year. Therefore every child is one year old when they are born. On the subway there are even seats, 12 per car, designated only for pregnant, injured or elderly people. The subway can be completely packed, but those seats will still be empty. You dare not sit there unless you fit the above description.

Back to the work day, I believe my mentor is hung over almost every day. He often tells me this in the mornings, and usually always asks if I drank the night before. There is a health clinic on the 15th floor where you can go to sleep. I believe this is a relatively common office practice because so many of the employees drink every night. They also offer traditional Korean hand therapy and moxa, both of which I had done last Wednesday. They believe that different parts of your hand represent different parts of your body. Thus, since I was hung over on Wednesday, I followed a Korean intern named “April” to have this done. The woman in the health clinic put small band-aids with aluminum circles in them on the points of my fingers to make my hangover go away. She then wrapped them in medical tape and did moxa for 3 times to improve my circulation. Moxa has these little sticky band-aids with hot coals on them which you light in a candle. You then wait for 10ish minutes while they burn down. This was very relaxing, but by the end of the 3rd time my arms were sore from holding my palms flat on the table for 30 minutes.


Every day at 2 the entire building does stretching exercises. All computers on the network automatically prompt you to do this and a recorded woman's voice comes over the loudspeaker. She counts to 8 twice - hanah, eel, e, sam, sa . . . and tells how to to the next stretch. Not all Korean companies do this, but most of the large ones do. It is an interesting way to break up the day. At 3:30, all of the foreign interns and some of the Korean interns meet for a coffee break. Since we work until 6 on futile tasks for less than minimum wage, we mostly feel the most important thing we can gain from this internship is friendship. If I ever travel to France, Russia, Vietnam, Columbia, Poland, etc. I hope I can get some good advice on what to see. Even though I work a lot, I have really been enjoying my experience here and I am glad I decided to go.