This past week has had a lot of highlights. Our company was hosting a team for a team-building event on Thursday. Originally we were going to host the activities in and near Bukchon Hanok Village, but it’s been raining here in Seoul all week, so we had to move it inside. To accomplish this while still keeping the main aspect of the games the same, we chose Gwangjang Market. This market was the first permanent market in Korea and one of the oldest in markets in South Korea, having opened in 1905. Originally it specialized in agricultural products, later characterized by a large textile and fabrics section. Now, the most popular part of the market is a food area with many vendors selling traditional Korean food.
Our company runs an orienteering type program in the market where teams have to complete missions throughout the areas. On top of this, the team we were hosting on Thursday wanted to have squid game activities. This meant things like ddakji, red light green light, gonggi, and more. We visited the market on Tuesday to scout out locations to play these since like I mentioned, we were moving the activities into the market.
On Thursday, we actually hosted the event. It was a group of about 15 which we led around from the afternoon until around 6pm when they went out to get dinner. This day was really fun for me. The group were all super expressive, very into the games, and it was fun to see them going around the market together. My station was the ddakji station, and I was dressed up as the recruiter who originally challenges participants to this game in the show.
Friday night I had to go to sleep early because I needed to wake up early Saturday morning for a weekend trip to the DMZ. We were leaving the bus station in Seoul at 8:00 AM and it was over 30 minutes away, so I had to wake up at about 6 or so. The bus ride was just under 2 hours I believe, and once we got up north, there were a few places we visited. We took stops at the 2nd Infiltration Tunnel, Labor Party Building ruins, Woljeongri Train Station, and Cheorwon Peace Observatory on Saturday. The Tunnel is one of the 4 tunnels dug by North Korean forces to infiltrate South Korea and attack. The tunnel goes about halfway through the DMZ towards the border with North Korea. It was really tight and narrow. The other spots we visited were an observatory that let you look across the border into North Korea with telescopes, a train station from the Japanese built railroad that originally connected the Korean Peninsula to Russia and the rest of the world, and lastly a ruins of North Korean workers party headquarters.
Saturday night we stayed in a pension house near the border. Only 4km away. That night we cooked bbq outside on a grill and ate as a group which was a lot of fun. We also cooked smores over a fire and ate marshmallows.
Sunday morning we woke up early to rain, but had a quick breakfast and a rice cake making demonstration. We all learned how to color, fill, and decorate rice cakes which was a really cool experience for me. Before departing, we stopped at Baekmagoji Battlefield, and a Hantan River trail which we walked over bridges spanning the river cliffs for 3km.
Regarding the US and South Korea, English and Korean are low and high context languages respectively. This has led to some interesting situations when communicating with people, but honestly less than I expected. Since I am not communicating in Korean at my office, I think that the high context-ness doesn’t come off as much. We communicate in English so it’s less evident if there is any difference from back home. There are definitely preferences that I may notice. I think now that we are not in the early stages of the internship anymore, it seems like my boss prefers to give me instructions though another employee – my supervisor, I guess. He will still give me advice though. Actually both my supervisors give me good advice and feedback, it’s just not immediately evident what they want. Sometimes I have to create something with no clue if its exactly what they want just so that they can give me more instruction or feedback, allowing me to get closer to the actual finished product. There haven’t been any miscommunication issues either since everyone I work with is fluent in English.
