Week 3 in Seoul has been off to a smooth start. I’m back in the office this week after an entire second week spent outside the office. While still working, I was visiting places around Seoul for research and gathering info for the company.
I visited Gyeongbokgung Palace and Bukchon Hanok Village on Monday. This historic neighborhood near the biggest royal palace in Seoul is filled with traditional style hanoks. The palace, rebuilt multiple times throughout the years, is one of the most visited attractions in Seoul and South Korea with 5.6 million visitors in 2023.
On Wednesday I visited the War Memorial of Korea, a memorial and large museum dedicated to the military history of Korea. They have displays of artifacts from hundreds of years ago to the Korean War and the present year. Outside the museum features a large space filled with planes, tanks, and vehicles involved in conflicts in the Korean Peninsula and around the world.
Thursday I was given a free day where I could choose a spot on my own and write about it. I decided to go to the trendy Seongsu neighborhood of Seoul which is known for its various cafes and pop-up stores.
Finally, Friday the other interns at my company and I hiked to the top of Inwangsan Mountain along the Seoul City Wall Trail, reaching the climax of the hike at the 339 meter peak of the mountain.
On all of these days I had either had to write articles detailing the trip or guides for the company to use in the future. These are mostly open ended, sometimes leading to me getting confused or being unsure of where to begin or what direction to go in. I have had to mostly overcome these issues myself, though I also have been able to go to my boss or supervisor with questions and ask for guidance. If I am confused on directions for an assignment, this has been my first idea mainly. Since they are the ones who gave the directions, asking the same person for clarification has made the most sense to me. On every occasion, every party has been cooperative and I come out of the interaction with a better understanding of what is expected of me and what needs to be done.
I sometimes also experience ambiguity when creating content for the company’s social media or website. On a few occasions, I have had templates to follow which helped me immensely. In those situations I just input the proper information and changed images or text. Other times though, I have had to create posts with designs from scratch. In these cases it is mostly up to me what direction I take, so I have sometimes been stuck for a second. Since there is almost full freedom, it can actually be harder. I tap into my creativity though and have always made out just fine. I do like to try and follow a general color scheme and text/font choice consistent with the rest of the company’s media, but overall I just go with what I think will look good.
Having freedom can be very nice since you can be more creative, don’t have to worry as much about following strict guidelines, and more. This being said, there are sometimes unclear directions or uncertainty about the direction the work you do should go into. This makes the topic of uncertainty and ambiguity a difficult balance to strike. Overall though, I have not had a bad experience with any directions that I have been given. They have either been clear enough from the start or easy to ask for clarification.
Going into the third week of work, I plan to continue the same strategies. I think that since I already have a nice balance and relationship with the co-workers at my company, the directions that they give shouldn’t fail to continue to be easy to understand. Even with language differences and things like accent, I haven’t found any difficulty. This week I am excited to continue to develop my skills in graphic design, marketing, writing, and more. I am going to work with the same excitement and values that I worked with the last two weeks.
I have a day off this Wednesday, so I have to decide where I want to spend that. This is a day to explore the city and country like I have been doing already. This past weekend we went on a trip to Sokcho city and Seoraksan National Park. These in addition to the other activities I saw last week make me extremely grateful that I have gotten to see so much of the country already.
