Life in Korea
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What I look forward to about leaving Korea
A week ago I booked my flight home, so now it’s official. I’m leaving Korea at the end of next month just 5 days shy of my second anniversary of living in Korea. Living in Korea for two years has been a crazy rollercoaster ride and so are my feelings about leaving. While I still…
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How to text in Korean like a pro
Texting, preferably done through the chatting app, KakaoTalk, is a crucial part of living in Korea. Even though you may be used to sending and receiving text messages in English or any other language, Koreans have a very special style when it comes to texting, which can be very confusing and sometimes impossible to understand.…
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What I’ll miss when I leave Korea
I’m moving back to Denmark at the end of July and while I’m mentally starting to get ready to leave Korea, I’m becoming increasingly aware of all the things that I’m sure I’ll miss the moment I’m no longer on Korean soil. You may wonder why I’ll write a “things I’ll miss” list when there…
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Korean buzzwords: Gapjil
Korean media have been reporting heavily on gapjil (갑질) over the past few weeks. The word is a fairly newly coined term consisting of the word 갑 (甲) literally meaning the “first party in a contract” and 질 which refers to demonstrating a certain behavior. Put together as a colloquial expression it means the arrogant or…
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Well-intentioned(?) Korean racism
Disclaimer: This blog post is not intended as a criticism of Korean society, nor am I in any way implying that Koreans are racist in general. It’s merely a compilation of racially biased experiences that I have had while living in Korea. Having gone from being an ethnic majority in Denmark to definitely being a…
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Advanced Korean writing patterns
I’m currently auditing a class at Sogang called 읽기와 쓰기 or, in plain English, Reading and Writing. More than trying to pass for an undercover student (even though I own and proudly wear a Sogang 과잠 university jacket) I’m exposing myself to this ordeal because I desperately want to improve my Korean writing. When I…
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The Korean gender war
While the eyes of the world may be on Korea for an entirely different war, the current internal situation on the peninsula is boiling. It’s the guys against the girls and the girls against the guys, the gloves are off, and the F-word in this heated debate is… Feminism. While mainly used as an empowering…
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Back to school (…again)
This semester I thought I’d take advantage of having access to unlimited learning since I’m working at a university, so I decided to contact one of the teachers responsible for the compulsory course 읽기와 쓰기 (Reading and Writing) for all the freshmen at Sogang. I wrote an email to her asking if I could be…
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Korean soldiers
When you live in South Korea you can sometimes feel like you live on an army base. There are soldiers everywhere and although I never felt unsafe living on the Korean peninsula, the soldiers are a constant reminder that South Korea’s military remains among the toughest in the world. A necessity given our northern neighbor,…
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Does being a native speaker make you unqualified to teach?
I’ve recently had several encounters where I’ve tried to teach some basic Danish to Koreans. (A fun video should be up on YouTube in a few weeks, and I’ll be sure to link to it when it’s up.) Usually, their pronunciation is scaringly accurate, but I find that when they ask me questions about Danish…
Sofie to Korea 