In Korea, one of the biggest holidays of the year is Chuseok. While it is commonly called “Korean Thanksgiving”, the holidays don’t have anything in common; both origin and celebration are significantly different. Chuseok is a mid-autumn harvest festival period that aligns on a full moon day. To celebrate a good harvest, it is tradition to visit ancestral hometowns and feast on traditional Korean food such as yakgwa, Korean pear, and rice wine. While not as common now, Korean people wear traditional Korean clothing called hanbok. The two biggest events during Chuseok are to do ancestor memorial services at home and to visit the ancestral graves where family members will clean up their family’s graves. At the graves, meals are placed as offerings to the ancestors. For Chuseok many places close, including schools, banks, post offices, government buildings, stores, and some restaurants.
For Chuseok, I spent 4 days with some of my family members and relaxed. The family I spent time with doesn’t do the ancestor traditions due to the fact that it takes a lot of time and is not very fun, especially for kids. One day I learned how to make a traditional Korean bean paste dessert; that was fun and relaxing. Honestly, they do not taste all that great, but they are super cute decorations.
It has been around a month since I arrived at Korea University (KU). So I have decided to share my experience thus far. The aspects of KU I have chosen to reflect on are the campus, classes, cafeteria, and dorm. I chose these 5 topics because there are significant cultural differences and similarities that I find interesting.
Campus
The campus is very pretty and holds lots of history, especially during the Japanese occupation. There are buildings and statues around campus that have bullet holes, not only from the Japanese occupation but also from the Korean War.
Firstly, compared to the University of Denver (DU), KU has a significantly bigger campus. To walk from one end of DU to the other takes 30 minutes. At KU it takes 2 hours. All of the on-campus dorms are on one side of campus, on top of a hill. Convenience stores are scattered around campus for easy access to snacks and drinks. Because I am used to a small campus, I do hate walking to class. From my dorm to class, it takes about 45 minutes. At DU my walk from dorm to class was under 10 minutes. Because Korea’s biome is forest, everywhere is steep hills. This truly adds to the walk-to-class experience. At KU the STEM buildings are across a major street. So if you decide to take STEM classes at KU, be prepared for the long walk.
Overall the classrooms are pretty typical. For the classes I am taking, the average number of students is 50. Which for a university with about 40,000 students is a pretty good size class. I find the professors to be fairly nice and understanding. Of course there are still some rude and strict professors.
The most frustrating aspect of classes for me was class registration. To simplify the registration process, there are 3 chances to get classes. The 1st chance is creating a preferred course list. Then the system will randomly select students to go into their desired classes. For some students, they get all the classes they want. For me and other students, you get no classes. 2nd chance is more cut and competitive. At 10am everyone registers at the same time. if possible, your preferred course list can be used to quickly register. If you are too slow and it fills up then you have to find other classes. The worst part of change 2 is that even if spots are available in the class, you can’t register because your category is full. for example, if you are an exchange student then the available spots for a class will have 2-4 spots available for exchange students only. Even if the class allows 30 students and the count is at 20, then you won’t be able to register because the cap for exchange students was made. On the 3rd change, it is the most stressful because that is when the category caps are removed. Meaning that if a class allows 30 students then anyone from any category can fight to fill the last remaining 10 spots.
On the 3rd change, I was able to register for all of the class I wished to have, which was 3 business classes approved by DU for credits and a Korean language class. This overly stressful registration makes me thankful for DU’s registration processes. It seems fair to me to slowly register by most credit students to least credit students.
Compared to the US, the cafe room is pretty good. KU has 5 cafeterias around campus, but many students just go to the on-campus or local restaurants for lunch. One downside to the KU cafeterias and restaurants is the lack of customization. So if you have diet restrictions due to personal or religious reasons then it is up to you to find food that you can eat. Korean food culture isn’t keen to do removals or substitutions.
My favorite aspect of the KU cafeteria by my dorm is the self-service ramen station. For the price of 5,000 won. you can make and customize your own ramen. There is a variety of ramen to choose from, like shin ramen, jja-pa-ge-ti, sesame seed ramen, and much more. next is to choose your unlimited toppings. You can choose from rice cakes, eggs, green onion, cheese, and kimchi.
At DU I was previously an RA, so seeing how Korean dorms function is interesting. My dorm, Anam International, has 5 floors, with the laundry in the basement, and the communal kitchen on the first floor. All dorms are doubles, each with their own private bathroom.
The rooms are quite spacious. Each roommate gets their own wardrobe, bookshelf, and desk with chair. Because I am a part of TEAN, I got bedding for free. Like any college, it is important to get along with your roommate. Here at KU, they do not do room switches. They Highly encourage you to get along with your roommate; unless there are extreme circumstances.
At DU they hire 3rd party security, but at KU, they hire their own security. The security have their own desk at the front of the building. The security guards also do other tasks such as distributing resources and organizing mail. The RAs at KU are much more hidden and unknown. When I moved in, I didn’t know we had an RA until the 3rd week of living here. The RAs will sit at the entrance of the building next to the security desk, every day from 7pm-10pm only. This is drastically different from DU which is a Desk Assistant and/or RA who will be at the front desk from 6am-12am.
The aspect I hate most about the dorm is the communal kitchen. Some of these residents don’t know how to cook or clean up after themselves. If smoke is detected in the kitchen then the entire building turns on its fire alarms. It has been about a month of me living in the dorm. At least once a week the fire alarm goes off cause people are starting fires in the kitchen. Another reason I have the communal kitchen is the shared fridge/freezer. Not only is it fully packed all of the time, but it smells terrible all of the time because people are horrible at keeping track of their food.
DU Abroad 