I’ve been in Seoul for just under 4 days at this point, and its been amazing so far. I’ve already gotten to go around to various neighborhoods and districts in the city over the weekend to explore and shop. The food has been great so far too. There are so many cafes, I’ve been to probably 5 already, and there’s definitely still thousands to go.

For my Internship, I am working in the travel/tourism industry with a marketing focus. The company I am working for is a tour company that specializes in outdoor adventure programs such as camping, rock climbing, hiking, and more. They also offer team building activities for international schools and corporate events. Their main target audience is schools and their students, but regardless of the age of their participants, the trips all highlight team building as well as personal development, and then either outdoor activities, cultural and historical places, or a mix of some of them. 

For this industry, the employees as well as the company itself needs to have a few key skills as well as adaptations to the changing market. My company was founded in 2000 and it has had to undergo some changes throughout the years that it has been active.

The company originally was only one of a very select few tour companies that offered programs in South Korea. During this time, they often ran daily trips or weekend trips every week. This changed as K-pop and K-dramas grew in the West. At this time, knowledge of South Korea grew, the market for tours grew, and other tour companies began popping up all over the place. If my company hadn’t changed its ways, they would have seen less business as there was so many other competitors who would just lower their prices to get the most customers. Luckily, a few years before K-wave grew to the height it is at today, my boss switched the company to focus more on school trips, outdoor education, service learning, and unique outdoor activities and trips that not many other companies offered. This early adoption allowed the company to insert its name as one of the leading outdoor tour companies which has let it continue to be successful to this day.

The employees at my company including myself also need to have select competencies. As a marketing intern, I need to be able to do market research, know about the target audience and target markets, and understand what the customer wants or will enjoy seeing on social media sites. Part of this comes from my superiors telling me what they want me to look into or reach out to, while some of it stems from my what I find in my own time and looking to see out what will work best for the most amount of people.

In order to be successful in my host country of South Korea, the best competency would be to speak Korean. Of course, unless you’ve already put in a decent amount of work and time, that’s not reasonable for most people to learn on this program. As far as I have experienced, the workplace that I am in seems to be very similar to a company in the US. The company is small, I’m sure that a larger company in Korea would be much different, but as far as unique competencies, I don’t think there are too many. Of course, being respectful, responsible, attentive, and reliable are all important, but those aren’t uncommon in the US either. My hope is that in the next few weeks, I can figure out more differences between the US and South Korea work culture and expectations. One difference I did note was that my boss treated me and the other interns to both lunch and dinner. This is not common back home, and I don’t think it is just a one time thing either because he said that we will go out a lot.

In the next few weeks, I am super excited to experience more culture of Korea, experience the nightlife, fun entertainment, shops, cafes, and more that Seoul has to offer. There is only so much that I have seen so far, and it already feels like I saw so much and went to many places. This city is truly so much larger than I expected and I am looking forward to exploring it as much as I can in the next two months. My journey has only just begun and I am excited to see what more is in store for us.