Beth Salerno

If you want to learn more about Korea…

June 10, 2009 Author: Beth Salerno

Recently I’ve had a variety of people ask me for information about Korea.  One was a student heading over to train with the Korean Olympic Tae Kwan Do team.  Tae Kwan Do is a traditional Korean martial art.  Another was a student thinking about teaching English in Korea.  A third was an accountant who will be teaching in her field at a Korean University next year.

I realized that since many people find out about me and my experiences through this blog, it would be good for me to post my suggestions here.  Perhaps even those not considering working in Korea will find something interesting to them.  The movies are at the end of the post!

For learning about the differences between U.S. and Korean culture, I found American/Korean Contrasts: Patterns and Expectations in the U.S. and Korea by Susan Oak and Virginia Martin to be a great read.  The book takes situations you might experience (dinner at someone’s home, a classroom lecture, a baby shower) and explains how an American and then how a Korean would experience that event.  I found it just as fascinating to read someone’s interpretation of the U.S. events as the Korean ones!  Another very short book is Living in South Korea by Rob White and Kyoung-mi Kim, which covers all the basics.

For learning the Korean language, I can recommend Teach Yourself Korean by Mark Vincent and Jaehoon Yeon.  This series comes at various levels; I chose “all around confidence”.  The CDs were easy to understand and apparently gave one a decent accent.  I only got half way through the book before I left, but it gave me the ability to speak and understand the basics.

For anyone thinking of teaching English in Korea, you need to read the U.S. State Department’s Guide to Teaching English in Korea.  It is located at http://travel.state.gov/travel/living/teaching/teaching_1240.html .  There are also a variety of websites dedicated to the Korean TESOL/ESL teacher community that are worth reading if you will be teaching in a hagwon (private English tutoring site).  Dave’s ESL cafe is the most popular.

For those who enjoy film, let me recommend two, which I’m happy to loan, or they seem to be fairly available in the U.S.  First, SWIRI, which is a Hollywood-like spy movie about a North Korean agent who infiltrates South Korea.  It has suspense, romance, and insight into the costs of the long North-South division (1999).  Second, and completely different is A Thousand Cranes (also known as Beyond the Years or Chun Nyun Hack on www.imdb.com), a much more traditional, much slower paced story about a traveling musician’s family.  This shows the changes in Korea as it modernized and features a very traditional Korean folk music called pansori (sort of like opera) (2007). 

Happy reading, watching, and traveling!

Entry Filed under: Announcements