This past weekend I enjoyed a trip with Absolute Internship to Jeonju! I have been wanting to go to Jeonju since I was in Korea last year, so this opportunity was one I was excited to take advantage of. Jeonju is a city fairly south on the Korean peninsula and it’s full of history. The weather ended up being quite rainy on our only full day, however we still got to explore the historical traditional Korean village built about one hundred years ago in opposition to Japanese colonial rule. It is now full of shops, cafes, restaurants, and guesthouses where you can stay the night in a hanok, a traditional Korean house. On this day, we also explored the facility that holds a few of the official portraits of past Korean kings, as well as one of the first archive buildings that held information about Korean history through the dynasties which was cool! For lunch we had bibimbap which is mixed rice with vegetables and meat, something I’ve eaten many times before but a classic dish in Jeonju. I finished the day by taking a much needed nap, then since it stopped raining my friends and I got dinner, walked around the cute streets near our hotel, and of course sang some karaoke. 

Sunday ended up being more eventful than I expected! We took a mini hike to a viewpoint that overlooked the aforementioned traditional Korean village, then we explored a Confucianist public school from the Joseon Dynasty, the last dynasty in Korea that successfully spread education across the peninsula. This was particularly interesting to me as I have been learning about these parts of Korean history for years now, and I finally got to see it in person! We finished off the morning with lunch, then headed back to Seoul on about a 3 hour bus ride.

Professional success in Korea seems to place an emphasis on being busy, not productive, which is the biggest difference from the US that I have noticed and heard other interns here discuss. In my job specifically, in the staffing and recruiting industry, success is also majorly defined by the ability to place students into roles they want. My job consists mostly of finding international volunteer and internship placements for students based on the specific details they provide, so success often means finding the students exactly what they want within a good time period. 

For example, one student I am working with wants to be in Budapest, Hungary starting in mid-November for two to three months. She is okay with either one or two placements over that time period, but she needs room and board to be covered by the placement site/s, and cannot earn money for work as she will not have a work visa. Additionally, her English skills are good but not great, so a position like a hostel where you can get by with intermediate English will be better than a school where she must teach English. These constrictions are not easy to work within, so in this case the term “success” has a bit more lenience. I did in fact find her two placements, but she rejected them; in this case I was not seen as wholly unsuccessful because it is clear to everyone that she is highly picky and that I am working hard to find placements even if they do not get finalized.

As far as differences from the US, it’s honestly hard to notice much. However, one thing that has stood out to me is the blind trust us employees have in our supervisor. Here, a successful employee is one that does exactly what is asked of them by the supervisor, regardless of if they agree with it or not. When I do exactly what my supervisor instructs, that is seen as a success regardless of if it becomes fruitful. In my experience in the US, it is more likely to be seen as a dual failed effort if the supervisor instructs their employee and it does not work out rather than a success on the part of the employee. I think this is due to the strict hierarchies here, so the supervisor expects blind trust and respect and in return the employee does not feel as much of a burden of the supervisor’s mistakes. With that being said, I work in quite a small company here, and none of the employees are Korean other than the CEO. I also have no experience working an office job or internship in the US. This means that my perceptions of these occurrences may be skewed by my assumptions rather than based on experience alone.