Opportunities to Study or Teach in Korea

Options for undergraduates:

Korea America Student Conference (so awesome it is hard to explain in a single phrase, but essentially a month-long intensive cultural boot-camp ^^)

NSEP Boren Undergraduate Scholarship (for a summer or full-year of study abroad)

Freeman-Asia (for a summer or full-year of study abroad)

TALK and EPIC Programs (teaching English in Korea for one year, fully funded by South Korea; TALK is for currently enrolled undergraduates and EPIK is for graduates who already have a BA)

Options for graduates and undergraduates entering their senior year:

Flagship Language Program (fully funded, two years of intensive language study, spread between the University of Hawaii and Korea University)

Fulbright Full Grant or English Teaching Assistantships (ETA) (fully funded; graduating seniors and graduate students can apply to spend a year abroad in Korea either doing independent research or teaching English)

Graduate Study in Korea (numerous fully and partially funded opportunities for studying an MA in International Studies or many other fields at a university in South Korea ~ this can be a good step towards jobs in the foreign service, K-Studies PhD back in the states, doing business in Korea, etc.)

Refer to my earlier blog entry about scholarships and programs for Graduate Schools of International Studies in Korea.

Korea Studies @ Stanford

This fall I graduated from the University of Washington with an MA in sociology and am beginning a PhD in sociology at Stanford.  This week marks my third week in Palo Alto.

Stanford has a fantastic and rapidly growing Korea Studies program at the faculty level.  We have professors who study Korea in history (Yumi Moon), sociology (Gi-wook Shin), public policy through APARC (David Straub & Joyce Lee), and literature (Dafna Zur).  We also have Korean language lecturer (Hee-Sun Kim) and a Korea studies librarian (Kyungmi Chun).  Korea Studies has two more faculty lines in the social sciences and is currently conducting a search for professors, most likely in political science and anthropology.  Once these positions are filled, I believe we will have the most comprehensive group of K-Studies scholars in the social sciences than any university outside of Korea.

At the graduate level, this year a number of students entered graduate programs in sociology, history, anthropology, and a number of MA students in East Asia Studies, effectively doubling the number of graduate students studying Korea at Stanford.

What I am less certain of is what we have going for undergrads.  A couple of weeks ago I attended a Korea Studies event at Berkeley and met a number of undergraduates over there interested in Korea.  This year and in the years to come, I am planning to help organize and grow our undergrad K-Studies program and do joint activities with students at Berkeley.  I would like to help organize student groups such as Students for Korea Studies at the University of Washington and the North Korea Study Group, two groups that some friends and I started just two years ago at the University of Washington.  Many students have graduated and gone on to do various things related to Korea.  One friend got a job with the Korean consulate in Seattle.  Another is working covertly in Southeast Asia with LiNK, a North Korea human rights NGO, assisting defectors as they try to get from North Korea to South Korea.  A number of us have gone on to pursue K-Studies in graduate school.  Many of us have also done research or taught English in Korea and have established some deep connections there both in terms of friendships and cultural understanding.  It's a very exciting world and this is precisely what I hope we can get up and running at Stanford: a community of students, faculty, and local residents interested in building cultural ties, language proficiency, friendships, and possibly careers in or related to Korea(s).

Letter from China #5

P.S. I attached a picture of me at a school we visited last weekend.  The school was near the center of the earthquake.  1400 students were in the school and thankfully the building was sustained through the earthquake and all of them survived.  But you can see the crack in the wall.  The building had cracks in every wall, as though it had been picked up and dropped.  The building next to this one was originally at the same elevation.  During the earthquake, however, the entire building and the land under it rose up 2-3 meters.  The whole experience of being there and talking to people about their experiences was very unreal.  All of China responded to the earthquake and helped the people of Sichuan.  It was so touching to hear the stories of love and support, of communities reaching out to one another.  For those affected by the earthquake, I felt that their lives have been forever changed.  They are much more conscious of their neighbors, their family members, and how precious life is.

Letter from China #4

July 4, 2010

Dear Friends and Family,

My roommate at Sichuan University is Robert Thompson.  Robert has had an interesting life path and is currently a Protestant minister who works with the international community on and around Arizona State University.  Through his ministry and teaching part-time at ASU's AECP (American English and Culture Program), he has come to know many Chinese speakers and this has motivated him to take Chinese courses at ASU and now at Sichun University.  Robert has two children, two grandchildren.  He and his wife live in the East Valley.

Among my classmates, I've also befriended Collin and Chris, who are roommates and studying at the third year level.  Collin is LDS, an industrial engineering major at ASU, and served a Chinese speaking mission in California.  Chris is majoring in Chinese and will begin ASU's Chinese Flagship Program this fall.  The three of us also hang out with Stephanie Law, who will be a sophomore at ASU this coming fall.  Stephanie speaks some Cantonese and has family from Hong Kong.  She studies history and among other things is interested in writing an anthology about her family's connections to Hong Kong.

The four of us have watched some World Cup games together and get along really well.  Robert and I have had dinner together a few times and have found a lot to share with each other given that each of our interests in Asian culture and society intersect with our deeply rooted spiritual perspectives.  The same is true of Collin and Stephanie as well.  Collin, obviously being LDS and having served a mission among Chinese speaking peoples, and also Stephanie, who is very spiritually conscious and has a strong family history of Christian evangelism both in Hong Kong and the US.

As this program revives my formal study of Chinese, I have rediscovered the world of Chinese characters.  The script of our Western alphabet is not endowed with meaning as are Chinese characters.  While the sheer number of characters makes achieving fluency in reading and writing seem a nearly insurrmountable task to foreign and native learner alike, the meanings of radicals (symbols from which characters are composed) not only act as pnemonic devices for remembering how to write the characters but often tell stories, stories that reveal something about Chinese culture and society.  The character "an" found in the words "an-chuan" and "an-jing" meaning safety and tranquility is represented by a "home" radical resting above a "female" radical, suggesting that safety and tranquility are achieved when a female is present in the home.  I recently had trouble remembering how to write "yan-jiu" meaning research; "yan-jiu-sheng" also means graduate student.  I decided to dissect the meanings of the radicals in hopes of finding some pnemonic for remembering how to write the word.  I discovered that "yan" means to grind, as with a mortar and pestal, and is composed of the radicals "shi", meaning stone, and "kai", meaning to separate or open.  "Jiu" is composed of the radicals "kong", meaning a cave or deep hole, and "jiu", the number nine.  I was satisfied with the interpretation of "yan" as alchemy and chemistry are easily associated with research.  "Cave" and "nine" though had me confused until later that same evening, by sheer luck, happened to catch a five minute English lesson on CCTV explaining Chinese numerology behind the number nine.  In Chinese culture, the number five represents the center or the middle, as it falls in the middle of 1-9 or 0-10.  Eight symbolizes completeness or perfection.  And the number nine symbolizes abundance or great magnitude.  I don't know the true etymology of the character "jiu", but I have interpretted it to mean exploring deep into the unknown.

I have to admit, before coming to China on this program, my thirteen years of speaking poor Chinese had weakened my hopes that I could ever achieve proficiency in the language.  After a few short weeks, however, I am digging into the characters with new-found enthusiasm.  Immersion (or whatever this program offers) was just what I needed to bolster my confidence that I could master enough characters to have a base on which to build listening proficiency, conversational fluency and elementary reading and writing.  Not unlike my first six months in Korea, I think I will need a solid six months to a year in china, beyond the couple of years of preliminary classroom study I've already completed to really drill the basic characters, vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar forms into my memory.  When I began studying Korean, I was ignorant to both the possibilities and limitations of my potential ability.  In terms of the possibilities, I never imagined how far I would reach, even within a few short years, in terms of conversational fluency; on the other end of the spectrum, I never realized how much farther, possibly decades, I would have to study and practice if I ever wanted to approach the fluency of a native speaker.

I have been reminded recently of how universal this lesson is so many aspects of my life.  Spiritual progress, as well, can seem daunting, and my distance from the ideals of perfection that I aspire to so out of reach.  Hope, however, is not found neither in the achievement of those ideals nor my proximity to them, but rather in my progress toward them, regardless of where I am picking up from.  I have noticed how easily my outlook on life and satisfaction or frustration with myself can shift from day do day depending on my choices that day.  It is so easy to feel depressed and down after not having exercised or read my scriptures for just a day or two.  Likewise, it's amazing how quickly my spirits pick up after just one prayer, going out for a jog, cleaning the environment around me, taking a shower, listening to some uplifting music, or writing a heart-felt letter or journal entry.

Hot pot is one of china's signature dishes.  And Sichuan is famous for a spicier variety of the dish.  I dined at Chengdu's famous Kong Liang Huo Guo (huo guo = hot pot) restaurant last week and was treated to a meal I will never forget.  My friend, Sylvia, ordered a dozen small dishes, each containing a fresh vegetable, animal part, or tofu derivative.  The dishes were stacked in a small rack next to our table.  Dominating the center of the table was a large cauldron containing a deep red broth of oil and water, flavored with green onions, garlic, spicy peppers, and Sichuan's famed hwa jiao (which I endearingly refer to as "numbing balls" for the spicy-numbing sensation released when you bite into one).  I wasn't familiar with all of the animal parts, but Sylvia would point to various parts of her anatomy (throat, liver, kidney, etc.) and declare the name of farm animal: pig, cow, chicken.  At times I wasn't sure sure what part was coming from which animal, but the textures range from smooth and chewy esophagus and intestine, to soft and grainy organs, to slick and crunchy cartileges, each dish boiled one at a time in a deep red broth of spicy peppers, "numbing" berries, and oil.  Perhaps the most distinct and exotic dish to me was the pair of pigs brains, two fully intact, juicy pig brains, one for each of us.  Extracting the brains from the hot pot after simmering them for ten or fifteen minutes, I was surprised to see how much they had shrunk from their original size.  I now wonder what the effect of Arizona's heat is on the human brain, and whether this helps to explain the recent immigration law.  I don't want to make our meal sound more exotic than it was.  It was absolutely delicious and with one or two exceptions, not at all shocking or difficult to eat.  The vegetable, tofu, and noodle dishes were quite familiar and delicious, and we refreshed our palettes throughout the meal with swallows of walnut milk.  I have since enjoyed two more equally delightful hot pot meals as well as a number of other Sichuan specialties which I may detail in future updates.

Last Friday night (July 2) might be described as the ideal night.  My classmates and I met for dinner at a hotpot restaurant near campus and enjoyed a spicy feast of boiled vegetables and animal parts.  Afterwards a number of us walked to South Gate to enjoy a bao-bing (pronounced bow-bing, as in "take a bow").  Bao-bing is the Chinese equivalent of the Korean pat-bing-su, or the Japanese shaved ice with azuki beans, only it emphasizes the fruit toppings and sauces more than it does the red bean.  This dessert is the perfect complement to a spicy, oily, and savory hotpot.  Returning to campus, myself, Collin, and his roommate Chris, decided to find a place to watch the Brazil vs. Netherlands match.  One of our program's tutor-coordinator-friends, Zhang Can, learned that a nearby movie theather would be broadcasting the game in the theater, so the four of us walked over to the theater to meet Zhang Can's roommate and watch Brazil get upset by the Netherlands.  I came out of the game stunned, having believed for the last decade that team Brazil was more or less invincible.  After the game, the five of us walked back to campus, and stopping in front of Zhang Can's dorm, divided naturally into a couple of different groups and chatted for a while.  A couple of Zhang Can's friends happened to be returning to the dorm at the same time, and for the next ninety minutes or so, Zhang Can, her friend, and I dug deep into Chinese social psychology.  Albeit in English, this was probably the best conversation I have had since I arrrived in Chengdu.  I'll spare the details for now as I want to present the ideas more systematically in my next update; sufficeth to say, by time we parted ways at 2 AM, all three of us were a few steps closer to cultural enlightenment than we had ever been before.

I wish you a Happy Fourth of July and share my love from Chengdu.

My best,

Jacob

Letter from China #3

June 20, 2010

Dear Friends and Family,

This week has been a flurry of classes, introductions, shopping, and adjusting.

News from the material goods department has been mixed.  I set up a cell phone (15928935376, for those of you motivated or saavy enough to call abroad), bought a bike, had my bike stolen, resolved not to buy another bike, shopped over 30 shops to find shirts that fit, found no shirts that fit, resolved to continue searching for shirts that fit (or have them made).  Fortunately each shopping escapade was an exciting adventure, meaning that I focused less on the result and more on the experience.  I imagine if after two or three weeks I still cannot find shirts, I will start to get frustrated, but for the time being I'm enjoying the adventure.

In retrospect, the first indication I had of the commonplace and blatant nature of bike theft came as I was shopping around for a bike.  One back alley salesman said I couldn't test out a bike unless I was certain I would buy it because he didn't want break the lock off the back tire until he had to.  As for my stolen bike, yes I bought a dingy, used bike; and yes, I locked it up; and yes, I parked it next to a horde of similar looking bikes; and yes, it was still stolen only two days after purchasing it.  I have a sneaking suspicion, given that I bought it for about 25 USD out of a shed behind someone's house where the owner had stashed a dozen similar used bikes, that this might not have been the first time it was stolen.  I recounted the experience to one of my tutors who nonchallantly replied that after having two of her bikes stolen in one month she had resigned herself to taxis and walking on foot.  Given the frequency of bike theft on campus, I gather that most people think of their bicycle purchase as a rental fee for some undetermined period of time, rather than a long-term investment.  While I haven't ruled out buying another bike, I must admit a little extra walking wouldn't be bad for my health.

Counterpoint to my bittersweet bicycle adventure was my first experience with karaoke in China.  Yesterday when my tutor and her friend took a few of us to sing what turned out to be four hours of karaoke in the fanciest karaoke joint I have ever seen!  With six stories and nearly 100 rooms, this place was a literal palace.  Amenities included helicopter and disco lights, a digital control panel in the wall, a touchscreen panel mounted adjacent to three walls of spacious, plush couches, maracas, tambourines, a wide-screen television, a broad selection of Chinese and English classic and current pop songs, and all the fruit beverages you can drink.  Total cost for six people x four hours: 20 USD.  Of course, we went on a Saturday afternoon and finished before 6pm.  Evening prices can be considerably more expensive, upwards of $15-20 USD/hour, which if pricey by American standards is outrageous in China.  But if you've never sung karaoke in China, you might want to add that to your bucket list.  I sang the three or four Chinese songs I know but for the most part we switched back and forth between 80s classics (Michael Jackson, Richard Marx, Mariah Carey) and relatively recent pop (Brittney Spears, Lady Gaga, 50 cent).  Two or three Lady Gaga music videos was more than enough to motivate my recommitment to learning Chinese songs if for no other reason than that I would never again have to sing P-P-Poker Face.  That being said, last fall's movie, This Is It, opened my eyes to the magic that is Michael Jackson and yesterday's karaoke experience only strengthened my loyalty to the King of Pop.

I was equally happy to worship today and participate in my first virtual branch meeting.  It turns out there are three Mormon students among the 36 students in our program.  After sending out a few emails, we learned that Chengdu has a group (an informal unit smaller than a branch or ward) that meets every Sunday and Skypes into a weekly China-wide conference call hosted by another group in Beijing.  The meeting lasts two hours, from 10 to noon, and consists of a one hour sacrament meeting followed by one hour of Sunday School.  Talk and lesson assignments are emailed out in advance and speakers deliver their talks or lessons over the phone.  Roll call was called between the two meetings and groups checked in from Xiamen, Jinan, Chongqing, Hunan, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Chengdu, Beijing, and half a dozen other cities.  Some groups have upwards of 20 members, others as few as two or three.  In all, nearly 100 members must have been participating from all over the country.  Additionally, I am aware of larger branches in Beijing and Shanghai which do not call in but hold regular, face-to-face meetings. It was cool to see how expat church members worship in China and I look forward to interacting with this group for the next seven or eight weeks that I'm in Chengdu.

I've made some new friends this first week of class.  Our language program paired each student up, one-on-one, with an MA student studying Chinese Language Education.  In addition they assigned an MA student helper to each group of four students.  Most of these tutors and helpers live on the same campus as us have been incredibly generous with their time and patience.  One of my helpers, Robin, and her friend and neighbor since childhood, Lili, who is an anesthesiology student at the Sichuan University Medical Campus, took our group around to buy cell phones, to a park and historical district (think Insadong for those Koreanists out there), to karaoke, not to mention tirelessly answer our never-ending questions about the language.  In the past I have been critical of classroom foreign language pedagogy, and still am to a large degree; however, I have been impressed that the one-on-one tutoring component has the potential to greatly enhance (in my estimation, eclipse or outweigh) the classroom experience.  More importantly, I have been pleased to see the students and tutors move quickly beyond the formalities of their respective roles and become friends.  Beyond language learning, I think these cross-cultural friendships have the greatest educational potential and interpersonal meaning of anything we do during these few short weeks studying abroad.

My best,

Jacob

Letter from China #2

June 14, 2010

Dear Friends and Family,

After two days of site seeing in Shanghai I took a train to Chengdu.  And here I am, 41 hours later.  The train ride was awesome.  I met so many nice people, got to jump right back into the language, and had a chance to compare the urban glamour of Shanghai, Nanjing, Xi'an, and Chengdu with the rural communities in between.

From what I could observe from my window seat, the standard of rural living is significantly higher than that of North Korea.  I was conscious of power grids, cell phone towers, some mechanized agriculture and irrigation systems, paved roads (with vehicles on them), and countless construction projects both of housing and transportation.  If education, science, and medicine are the three primary ideals of egalitarian development, it will be the elevated expressways, credit and loans, and cell phones that physically transform the economy and improve people's lifestyles.

After spending one day at the Shanghai Expo, and the next plodding through rural Jiangsu and Henan, I was overwhelmed not by any absolute level of wealth in the city or absolute level of poverty in the countryside, but by the stark contrast between the two.  To keep perspective, I kept trying to imagine what China's farmers thought of the 2008 Olympics or 2010 World's Fair, or how the urbanites of Shanghai would feel living in rural Shanxi for a few weeks.

Many of the people I spoke with on the train, who were neither Shanghai elites nor rural farmers, but mostly residents of urban Chengdu who were returning home after a visit to Shanghai, felt that the Expo was a bit over the top.  Still the presence of construction projects and technology in the countryside is evidence that someone is trying to do something about narrowing that gap.  I was also humored by how often folks mentioned that the Expo specifically, and China generally, had too many people.  I can't count how many times I heard, "人太多了."   

I also couldn't resist comparing my train ride across China to my road trips across the US.  Before my first cross-country road trip, I couldn't understand who in America had re-elected George Bush.  Over the course of those trips, my eyes were opened to how different peoples' perspectives are in different areas.  How and where we grow up must affect how and what we think about our own culture (national, urban, religious, "racial" or "civilizational").  If visible contrasts in standard of living are any measure of differences in perspective, then the differences between folks in Shanghai and the central provinces must be like night and day.

Of course, here in Chengdu, I don't anticipate chatting it up with many rural farmers.  As cities go, Chengdu seems to have its fair share of hussle and bussle.  Even still, economically, Chengdu is a few notches down from Shanghai.  Sichuanese classmates at UW and fellow passengers on the train have told me that people in Chengdu enjoy a slower pace of life than the East Coast.  I only hope my Chinese can get up to par quickly enough for me to appreciate the insights and perspectives of those friends I have the pleasure of meeting during this summer's brief few months.

My best,

Jacob

Letter from China #1

June 12, 2010

Hi family,

Last night I arrived safely in Shanghai.  Today I bought my train ticket to Chengdu, spent most of the day at the Shanghai Expo.  I visited the DPRK and ROK pavillions along with a dozen others.  This evening I stepped to ask around for an Internet cafe and this guy invited me to use the computer in his shop.  Very nice of him.  Business and friendship convey such totally opposite emotions to me in China.  Businessmen will not give you a single inch.  Friends will give you everything.  As I've sat here typing on this guy's PC, his family has treated me to a dinner of fried dumplings and a cream sickle.

I will be on a train for the next three days and won't be able to email or call.  But I will shoot out an email when I arrive in Chengdu.  I hope you all are enjoying your summer.  I love you and will talk with you again soon.

Love,

Jacob