Jillian TS #15

Date/Time: June 9, 2017; 9:00-10:00 A.M.
Location: Home via Skype (Jacksonville/Seoul)
Topic: North versus South Korea/Speaking and listening
Feedback: We had to clear up the difference between using "much things" and "many things." It was just a simple word choice snafu.

For this session, we talked about the difference between English usage in North and South Korea. In South Korea, words borrowed from the English language are kept pretty true to the original form. So computer is written 컴퓨터 (keompyuteo). In North Korea, however, words are kept traditionally Korean. Soyoung could not tell me the North Korean word for computer, but she knew that they do not use the English word for it. English is so accepted in South Korea that Soyoung mentioned how some Korean words are purposely written to sound English. So it is still in Hangul, but the word sounds English when pronounced. South Koreans consider English to be cool. If you're good at English, you are thought of as rich. It costs money to be proficient in English and American admiration makes a lot of Koreans more likely to learn English.

I also learned a little fun fact about the border between South and North Korea. South Korea plays music and news on the border. It is blasted into North Korea as an attempt to lower North Korean morale. They mostly play SNSD--a girl group in South Korea.