I found an interesting article from the Korean Herald several days ago, saying that people playing an important role in their fields turn out to be highly well educated in English. And the recent study shows that almost 90 percent of elementary school students say that they want to go abroad for English if they have a chance. Parents in Korea are also so eager in English education that they take all financial burden to send their children away. However, is it really necessary? The following three are the reasons why it is problematic for Korean youth.

It is unwavering belief that children should start learning English as early as possible so that they become more proficient in English and important players in society later on. It is true that children studying abroad can learn English much faster than those studying here in Korea. In addition, parents also expect their precious baby boys and girls to learn much more about English cultures. surely it is going to be valuable experience for children. This is why it is hard to see parents with luxurious life style.

However, going abroad is not always good nor a panacea for children. There is a serious problem. English should be a tool, and should not be everything for children. English is a tool to communicate with other people from different countries and it can let us do business or anything. But now when looking at people, they are studying like it’s everything in their life. I’m exaggerating of course, but it is not so far from the truth. Koreans have different goals about English. For example, for most people, they study English to enter university and to get a job. After that, they almost all seem lost with English. Why do people study English? Again, English should be a helper for you to do something more meaningful, learning English should not be an ultimate goal of your life.

Childhood is a important period in their lives to form their personality. They need more touch and love from parents and also close relationship with their friends. The problem happens when parents think their children are strong enough to fit well in a totally different country. Statistics indicates that over 85 percent of oversee students are going through hard time with life in another country. Some have homesick and some experience discrimination in their early times. Surprising? Trust me. It happens even now.

Even if your children are successful fitting in, it’s not the only problem. They endure every hardship and then finally go to a higher education. As statistics says, many students fail and give up their courses, and come back to Korea with little improvement of English. Students often suffer from depression and quite a few students become addicted to drug. Then, in worse case, they get involved themselves in crimes. It’s quite sad to look at this problem this way, but we need to consider this problem more seriously, because we might put our future hope in dangers.

As we have looked through, there is a high possibility that things don’t go the way it is supposed to go. Moreover, your children can experience unpleasant situations all alone without fun loving parents and friends. Do we really need to send them away? supposedly it it time parents in Korea reconsidered sending children away and looked for better ways that parents have children learn English.

     Most people think snow is very romantic because movie directors make snow a very lovely condition when a man and woman fall in love. One of the most famous examples for Koreans is “Love Letter” from Japan. In the movie, a woman screams out “Oganggi Deska?(How are you doing?)” to her ex-boyfriend. In that scene, snow makes the situation more plaintive and sorrowful. Because of that kind of movie, many people think snow is very romantic and dramatic. However, what Koreans thought about snow changed after a terrible blizzard in the winter 2 years ago. Actually, many people could be curious whether snowfall can be disaster or not. However, I am going to tell you why Korean people think tremendous snowfall is very dangerous and can be a disaster; need of equipment, inexperienced handling and negative effects of farming.

 In Korea, there was so much horrible snow 2 years ago. Also, we had gotten tremendous snowfall at least five times during the winter. Traditionally, Koreans had never had that much snow, so we did not have an ability to cope with it and enough snowplows to get rid of snow from places where people lived at that time. Overall, I can say that the the winter was like a war. When Koreans had heavy snow, I also got that much snow in Minnesota in the same winter. Snow in Minnesota can be more than in Korea, but I was not able to believe because after a few hours, highways and streets were all cleaned up as if it had not snowed at all. Even though my friends and family told me that it is too inconvenient, I did not feel inconvenience.

On the other hand, most Koreans could not go to work or schools because the Korean government did not have an ability to clean up in a short time. Many people took buses or subways instead of their cars. Especially, the number of people who want to take the subways exceeded the number of that could be admitted. Therefore, that produced other accidents like a pyramid. Some actors and actresses had no choice and also took buses or subways covering their faces with hats and masks in order to remain unrecognized. Several schools were closed for several days temporarily. During that time, even though a cause is just snow, we got many different kinds of results.

In part of farming, farmers had more trouble than they could have imagined. Especially, in the last year, the temperature was lower than before and the amount of sunshine was insufficient, so yield was reduced by about 20 percent. Until now, I have written about damages of people’s lives not from nature. However, this paragraph is about destroying the nature by nature.

Personally, when it snowed snow in Korea, I usually enjoyed it, but my friends called me and said that they are sick and tired of snow and are being tardy for a few days. The snow is not amount of being able to enjoy, but menacing us and making us rough it. Snow was not a welcome guest for us anymore. From the tremendous snowfall, I got mottos for myself. One of them is “Do not delay and be tardy.” That is when I can prepare something unexpected, prepare and grow an ability to handle something. For example, in Japan, traditionally there has been be a lot of earthquakes, but they are prepared for unexpected earthquakes. Therefore, though they would get earthquakes suddenly, these will be not catastrophic disaster. The other motto is limitation. Nothing should be over limit and everything has to be good enough. There is a famous proverb in Korea. That is “Too many good things are not an advantage, but just a disadvantage. There will be nothing good if it is excessive. Of course, it is like the snowfall, but good things are in the same way for example, going on diet, love for children and so on. Everything belongs to the ideas. I think the snowfall gave lessons to Koreans who never prepared to something in the future.

Nowadays auditioning programs like ‘American idol’ in America or ‘Super Star K’ and ‘The Great Audition’ in Korea are popular. People audition and try to show their talents on these shows regardless of age, sex, and race. Especially on the audition show ‘Super Star K’ a foreigner named Chris appeared on the show. He couldn’t speak Korean but he was an outstanding singer. Some people think that foreigners who can not speak Korean should not audition on Korea auditioning programs. However I disagree with those opinion.

First of all, the purpose of these programs are not to show off their language skills. These programs are made to give the opportunity to show one’s talent to the public. This means that the auditioning programs are focused on finding people’s possibility to become a great singer and make them one. Everyone has the chance to take part in this audition if they only have the talent to sing.

Some people say that language can be a barrier. However I strongly believe that foreigners can definitely improve their Korean as time goes by. Even though they can not speak a word they can fully deliver the feelings and emotions to people. For an example, there is a famous singer in Korean, and her name is Park Junghyun. She lived in the states for a very long time and could not speak a single word in Korean. However she is one of the most popular singers in Korea and is loved by many people. I think this shows that foreigners can absolutely improve their Korean and can communicate through singing even though they can not speak Korean.

Finally we can see that Korean actually don’t care whether foreigners can speak their language or not. This is proved by the fact that Chris, who auditioned on ‘Super Star K’, made it to the top7 even though he could not speak Korean. This shows that people in Korea do not care about their Korean skill. They just want a singer who can move their hearts by singing, and Chris dragged Korea people’s attention in this point of view.

There are some voices saying that people that have an audition on auditioning TV programs have to require language skills basically. However language has no relationship with showing one’s talent in singing, and has no problem delivering their emotion to the audience. Though foreigners can not speak Korean they have the right to audition and show their potential.

In the year of 2009, I returned to Korea from New Zealand. Around August, weather in New Zealand and Korea is winter and summer. When I got off the plane, you know what I felt? Suffocation. It was extremely hot that I could barely breathe at first. However, hot weather was not the only reason I felt something was killing me. It had been really comfortable to use the Internet in New Zealand despite the cow walking like internet speed, whereas Korea has always been asking all the residence registration number, and personal information every time  on the Internet. Why can’t you just let us use the Internet without absolutely useless interrogation for personal information? I tell you what. The three little stories will make your eyes open and see outside the world.

The Korean government has been contradicting themselves. Since the start of President Lee administration, the government has put much value on Korea’s globalization. However, Korea is the only one country in the world, which regulates freedom in the Internet. As a result of this, both citizens of Korea and foreigners come with high expectations about Korea have been going through every step to live with the Internet here. Last month, CNN reported an interesting news about Korea, which is to say that Korea is making fun of themselves by taking ridiculous measures that no country has ever done.

Moreover, the government of Korea has been acting like ‘Big Brother’. It is because they want to watch citizens as if the god watches people above the sky, and when his people have done something bad, those people are going to be executed. Several years ago, Americans strongly expressed their voice together to stop the US government from trying to make security department. People in the US clearly don’t want to stand on a slippery slope with feeling that they can be pushed under the slope anytime. Personally, We, Koreans, are already on the unstoppable slope. The government has been already collecting every movement we make, and our daily lives have been tracked for security reasons. Hey Korean government! Please look up the definition of ‘Democracy’.

Some people say that if it’s the government and for security reasons, it’s fine to give them their valuable information. I see what your point is. However, do we visit the government web site only? We have to give our information to company when we want some services from them. Then, companies always promise not to use our information for personal reason. Is the promise reliable? I don’t think so with a big question mark. So many companies have leaked or sold our information and this led to crimes like voice fishing using our information and illegally making credit card. What’s your solution to that, government?

Once again, we ought to remember that our valuable information is being collected and used somewhere and at the same time, the world is laughing at us. I hope that the government realizes this and does something about this and tries not to make an unreasonable excuse like it’s for your safety and security for our country. Korea is a democratic country, so use your brain if you have any and make it right!

When people live, they need lots of documents. Also, they have to know to how to fill out them. However, as the world is going to be more global than before, there are lots of foreigners in Korea. Of course, they are not perfect at Korean, so they need help. Language on documents is very different from it on day. The language on the documents is very difficult to understand. I am going to list the three specific examples, business certificates and health insurance, drivers’ license and some other documents which are necessary for living for foreigner in Korea.  

When I was in America, one of my aunt’ friends could not be good at English. She always struggled with how to fill out some kinds of documents like what I have written. Because of that, she always got help from translators. Even though she can speak English quite well, she has never learned reading and writing skills. Whenever she has to fill out and check some documents for living, she has to pay money to professional translators.

One of my Japanese friends had the same problem in America. She came to learn English, so she was not good at English. However, at that time, she really needed a car to go to her school. In Minnesota of America, there is not driving tests written by foreign language.  Before she moved to Minnesota, she had stayed in LA. LA. has so many different kinds of foreigners, so they have many kinds of documents like driving tests. My friend was not able to get a license in MN, so she used the license that she got in LA.

     Like what I wrote examples, even though foreigners have to get something for living, some of them cannot get it because of the language. In Korea, I do not think we have different kinds of language in the documents. Many women from East Asia countries are moving to Korea to get married. However, I think we are not ready to accept them. In America, I heard that there are many translators and volunteers to translate, but we do not. If foreigners in Korea are not good at Korean, they must have difficulties.

Korea has less foreigners than America has, so it is too much to make all of documents translated. However, they need to provide translated them for foreigners. Absolutely, I think the Korean governments cannot translate them into all kinds of the languges. However, we can hire translators volunteers for them. They can make an effort to translate them into English and Vietnamese. If we want to make our country more global and better, I think we need to prepare those kinds of thinks for foreigners in Korea.

The first time he became my hero was when I was a high school student. In 2002, the Korean national soccer team unbelievably reached the semi-finals cheering Koreans in despair and especially when the unnamed soccer player touched my heart with unbelievably sincere play on ground, I was curious who was the player. Then, I was able to know that his name was Ji-Sung Park and also that before the 2002 Worldcup, he was completely away from the public attention but he definitely grabbed the public’s attention after the 2002 Worldcup. Awaken to find himself famous and actually he deserved it.

However, it was only the beginning of his great career. Soon after Park’s national team manager Guus Hiddink moved back to the Netherlands to manage PSV Eindhoven, Park followed him to the Dutch side a year later. But his many fans(including me) doubted that prospect thinking it would be hard to adapt to European league style, so they were wary of getting excited about his challenge. Unlike the fans’ prospect, he tried to show that an Asian player could get a success in a European soccer league with his strong point, loyalness, sincere play and humble attitude. Especially after PSV reached the semi-finals of the 2004–05 UEFA Champions League, his talents were recognized ‘again’ by Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson who was one of the most famous football manager in the world. Park was able to play anywhere across the midfield and was noted for his exceptional fitness level, discipline, work ethic and off-the-ball movement.

I clearly remember the moment that the rumor that Park could be the first Korean Premier League Soccer player spreaded. People got afraid of getting excitement again, even some made some sarcastic comments about him. But I strongly believed that he could make it again. In the end, the Manchester United offered him a formal contract in July 2005 and he decided to begin a fresh start in the new team. He became the first Korean premier leaguer of all time!

At that time the news praising him was covered all day, I joined the army. I really missed because I knew I would be away from the society for two years. But I could hear the news about him. The news such as making a goal or an assist was really great encouragement to me during the period of military service. Whenever I heard the good news about Park, it was like I was getting power from his energetic plays in the British league. He was such a proudness of Koreans and compared to him, my hardship was nothing. That was that.

Anyway, since then, Park has won the Premier League four times and has also won the UEFA Champions League and the FIFA Club World Cup. Aside from his club career, unfortunately he recently retired from the Korean national soccer team to focus on his club career, but I believe his achievements are not finished yet.

As I get older and older, I know he gets older and older too. It is sad to imagine that I can’t watch his play soon. However, he will be still in my heart as a hero. I believe it.

The tuition of universities in Korea is the second highest in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations, following by the United States. Recently, excessively expensive tuition of universities has caused a great conflict between universities and students in Korea. Some say the only way to solve this problem is that university tuition must be free for all students in Korea for a few following reasons.

However, I don’t think free tuition fee or half-priced tuition fee is the best solution. According to the supporters of the half-priced tuition fee, they insist on that universities of Korea do not only rely on tuition fee from students, but also they are financially free and have alternative financial resources. They say that universities can be secured their budgets by invested from governmental foundations. The supporters also refer to the list released by Scholarships for Development, universities in fourteen states in Germany do not charge tuition fee and it is acquired from collecting taxes from citizens. Universities in Finland do not also charge tuition fees since it has already been charged as a part of tax.

However, Korea is a capitalist country. The supporters’ insistence is just limited in the cases of Finland and Germany. These two countries are well known as social welfare countries. The countries spend a lot of money for social welfare. However, Korea does not have enough financial resources to support the free education. Some say that the universities should generate money to fulfill its status by running its own business. But the point is that half tuition fee policy supporters are confused about the original role of universities. Like their saying, if universities are the places to generate profit, not to teach students and if universities run their own business to support the free tuition or the half tuition fee, it is easy for them to forget their own goal, teaching the students.

In conclusion, the tuition fee should not be half-priced. Korea is not still ready for that policy and it has a danger to be abused by “wrong populism.” If so, the citizens can not be away from the disaster of tax for it. That is what I am most afraid of.

I always want to be bilingually smart. It’s really difficult to learn foreign language, especially for Koreans to learn English. When I was a kid, I didn’t know the importance of learning foreign language and even I was not interested in it at all. So, it’s the main reason I have been getting a hard time since I started learning English. I would have studied English hard if I knew it in advance.

Anyway, by getting older and older, I have realized that the ability to several foreign languages is really important. It is obvious when we try to find a job. Of course, the recruiters require us to have a proficient skill. So, in order to survive among the competitors of job battle, we should be good at speaking foreign language. Speaking honestly, sometimes I want to curse the ‘English’ but I still want to be bilingually smart. 

Some article that I read today gives me some interesting information. “The high-level use of more than one language may actually improve early brain development.” Is that real? If it’s true, my brain is really bad. It’s too sad! It says that the most effective period of developing the capacity of learning language is between age 3 and 4. It is again devastating me because I am too old!

But there is some good news. The rule of thumb for improving in any language is just simple practice! “The more you use it, the better off you are.” says the expert. “The deficit can be compensated for with extra study.”  It means that we have to study really really hard for it.

In conclusion, the best way is that I need to practice over and over. Someone says that learning language is not only learning vocabulary and grammar but also inheriting a global consciousness that opens the mind to more than one culture or way of life Because I know I can’t go back to the time when I was a kid, I have to deal with the time that I have now to make efforts to be better off. I really want to be bilingually smart.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/09/10/college-degree-premium-why-higher-ed-is-overvalued.html

This article by professor X talks about the value of college and basically what he maintains in the article is that the increasing number of American students are going to college and students think that it is necessary to finish their degree in order to get opportunities in job markets. However, he explains with specific examples and statistics that we overly value colleges that cannot boost the economy and where students learn less.

I partly agree with the author. The situation between the US and Korea is almost same. There are several dreams for Korean parents to make happen during lifetime. No! wait a minute. It is more like obsession. One is to buy a house of their own and the other one is to get kids to go to college. Clearly Korean parents put too much value on college, despite the fact that not all the college kids can get a job nowadays. In fact, very few of them get a decent job and then another few of them get a job and then finally it may sound too negative but the majority of Korean students are still struggling in the job markets. However, even though all of these are true, given the situation and under the education system in Korea, students still need to go to college. Hopefully, the greater University they enter, the brighter future will be for them. The following three parts of this essay are why going to helpless university is still the best option for Korean powerless students.

Sadly for students, going to college is no longer optional, unless students were born with the sufficient amount of money that they can live on during their life time. Now, let’s see the economic situation first. It is all like a vicious cycle. Companies have been facing the global economic crisis and then, as a result of this, they are hiring fewer students who are much more competent and able to do more at the same time which is so-called ‘Multitasking”. Naturally, students severely put a great deal of makeup on them with many kinds of certificates and very high score in TOEIC, which I would consider the most impractical and meaningless English test in the world. However, what can we make ourselves look much more attractive to companies trying to hire students? Go to college! It is certainly overvalued in our society, and yet again sadly the best way to be successful.

‘Perception’ more specifically ‘ Biased, prejudiced perception’ is like hideous nightmare for Korean adolescents. Basically entering university has become their ultimate goal for life. High school students are very much stressed about the fact that on every national holiday when relatives are all gathered, students are always told and questioned that you have to enter at least Korea University or just go work in a factory. Some students often fail to enter a desired college and then try to enter again in the following year. Please ask them about how they felt during the time they were spending for studying and people looked at them. Surely 95 of 100 students would say that they felt like they became a loser and people looked at them differently and very sorry for their parents who might have had high expectations on them. This is what causes students to go to college.

Another very scary reason why students must graduate from college, even though they know they earn nothing but a graduation certificate from a college, is to have a high hope that they might be paid more. Taking about a graduation certificate, there really is a big salary gap between haves and have-nots. Last year, a very interesting news was aired on MBC saying that after two years people start working at a company, college graduates have an steep increase in the yearly salary, while high school counterparts have almost no wage raise. Admittedly, now is not the best time for college graduates either, because of the international economic crisis. However, once they get a job, money have-nots make would not be even close to one that haves could make.

It is a well-know fact that the world has been going through economic crisis and this resulted in far fewer opportunities for students to get a job. In addition, students are suffering from all the pressure from parents, and relatives continuously torturing by asking a bunch of emotionally attacking questions about their future. Then, after years of working at a company and high school graduates find out about the salary they make and others with a graduation certificate make and finally have-nots are likely to feel left behind. Over the long period of time, colleges have been clearly considered overly valued and I agree to a great extent. However, considering three main points mentioned above, we find it very inevitable for students to powerlessly follow the mainstream.

         Nowadays, FTA(Free Trade Agreement) is hot topic when it come to related with political scandal. Each party, Hannara and Minju party, is conflicting seriously because it will be very influence to next election. Hannara party want to pass the law quickly and opposite block it by all the reaction they can do. Personally, I didn’t deny FTA’s necessity. But as a politician, who represents our civilian profit and has a social responsibility, they are not doing well their job. FTA need to be readjusted because this is not equal agreement and our civilian doesn’t wants it and it’s not profitable.

         In the animal kingdom, there is rank between them. For example, tiger is very high rank in the food chain and they eat deer or other animal. But in human society, this is a little bit different. We can be exceptional by talented talking at the negotiation. Language is so wonderful creation we human made that it sometimes change from groom situation to shining future. There is an words in our country, “By one words, you can pay back all your owing”. That means how much the word is important and can do. It shows us how we can go through our future block. When we apply this to our society, we can negotiate with powerful America equally. But this FTA treatment is very unfair in the several provisions. For example, ISD(Investor-State Disment) provision is very unequal in that we cannot have right to suit about infringement of our company’s profit by their government. Nation means that they have their own right to negotiate and make a decision by themselves. We cannot call ourselves as a nation because we don’t have right.

            In above paragraph, we talked about unfairness in the negotiation. But our civilians actually don’t want to make a deal with America. In the international society, we need to broaden our range in the variety field. But government misses the target. Negotiation need to be targeting China, not America. American is very big and powerful country. They are also the leading nation in the international society. But we are so relied to America so if America crushed down, we might also crushed more severely than America because we are smaller country. So we need to divide our reliance to several countries and it was not an America.

         Finally it’s not beneficial to our economy. There is timing when we do act policy or even behavior. We plan to act so many things before we have a talks. For example, at four-river policy we spend 14 trillion won. This money is tremendous blood by taxing on our civilian. Our country has to concentrate to finish the four-river policy and other thing we already set in the business. In domestic economy chaos, we don’t have any vigor to avert our eyes on FTA without sorting our inner problem. We cannot act like octopus.

        It’s impossible to make perfect government because each individual has different aspect. But, we are witnessing so many crushing-down nations in the international world. And they, Korean Republican, are acting like ‘Timing is now’ and propagate us to act for their profit, not ordinary people. Everybody knows they are corrupted but we are not foolish at all. They have to know that if they still act like swine in the mud, next country which goes bankrupt will be us.