Korean teaching tool

July 20th, 2012
10 comments

KOREA TIMES


^K-pop fans stage a flash mob performance in London’s Trafalgar Square, Tuesday. They are called “K-supporters,” who are giving life to the “All Eyes on Korea” promotion ahead of the Summer Olympic Games. / Yonhap
Super Junior, ‘Winter Sonata’ as new primers

By Jane Han

NEW YORK ― For learners of Korean in the U.S., it’s goodbye to rote memorization and dull drills; hello to Super Junior and Bae Yong-joon. A new curriculum is set to revamp the traditional teaching method of Korean, a much-needed update aimed at giving the language a more fun and practical appeal.

“It’s always been about grammar and vocabulary, just like the way Korean students approach English,’’ said Lee Hyo-sang, associate professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Indiana University.

“You can pile on all the grammar and vocabulary you want, but it’s worthless if you can’t speak the language,’’ he said. “What you know about the language isn’t important. What you can do with the language is.’’

To help Korean learners do more, Lee and members of the American Association of Teachers of Korean (AATK), a national group of Korean language educators in the U.S., are working on a new curriculum that moves away from textbooks and engages cultural elements instead.

“Many instructors have found existing textbooks to be very limited. Those are bound to be more and more outdated, and lack in authenticity and topical appeal for college students,’’ says Kim Hae-young, associate professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University and President of AATK.

Currently, approximately 70 middle and high schools, and 93 colleges and universities in the U.S. offer Korean classes.

Experts say there has been a sharp rise in the number of students who take Korean classes on US campuses largely driven by “hallyu,’’ or the Korean wave.

So then what better way to teach Korean than with Korean drama and music?

“K-pop and K-drama are primarily what drew these students to the language, so it will be a more enjoyable and effective learning process to integrate the elements they like,’’ says Lee.

For example, lyrics could be used to illustrate grammatical patterns and functions. In Super Junior’s “Beautiful Woman,’’ the lyrics show a repetition of phrases, such as “bolkka malkka’’ (should I look or not) and “bonchae manchae’’ (as if I saw it or not), which can make a complex structure easier to understand.

At AATK’s recent annual conference at Stanford University, Susan Strauss of Pennsylvania State University introduced comparison clips from the popular drama “Winter Sonata’’ and American hit series “Dawson’s Creek,’’ a lesson to guide students to explore similarities and differences of melodramatic depiction of romantic love and jealousy in each.

“We’re not looking for replacement of old textbooks with newer `textbooks,’’’ says Kim. “Printed books are not suitable forms for updating, revising and flexible adaptations, so different ways of making developed materials need to be tried.’’

The new curriculum is expected to take at least two to three years for completion. Once completed, it will become a national standard as outlined by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, a national advocacy group for language teachers.

News Clippings

Historic Restaurants Keep Whetting Palates Decades On

July 20th, 2012
34 comments

In one of the backstreets of Jongno in Seoul, near Jonggak subway station on line No. 1, is a restaurant in a one-story building called Imun Seolleongtang that often attracts celebrities. It has been crowded with customers for over a century since it opened in 1904.

The eatery’s famous seolleongtang, or clear broth of ox bones and meat, costs W7,000 (US$1=W1,141) a dish and is made from bones boiled for 17 hours. These days, 500 to 600 bowls are sold daily as the restaurant has become a favorite stop among Japanese tourists.

The Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries on Wednesday published a book in conjunction with the Korean Food Foundation introducing 100 Korean restaurants with histories of more than 50 years.

Most old restaurants mainly serve simple traditional dishes such as seolleongtang, gukbab (boiled rice served in soup), naengmyeon (buckwheat noodles in cold broth) or bibimbap (rice with assorted vegetables).

“Restaurants that serve food for ordinary people on tight budgets have managed to stay in business for a long time,” said a member of the foundation.

Of the 100 restaurants, the second-oldest after Imun Seolleongtang is Hayan Jip in Naju, South Jeolla Province, which opened in 1910, and is known for its specialties: gomtang (beef bone soup) and suyuk (boiled beef slices).

Naeho Naengmyeon in Busan, which opened in 1919, gained a reputation half a century ago for soothing the sorrows of people displaced during the 1950-53 Korean War. “A lot of displaced people visited our restaurant because we have stuck to the recipe of North Korean-style naengmyeon for three generations,” said owner Lee Chun-bok.

Another popular bibimbab restaurant in Ulsan called Hamyang Jip opened in 1924 and has become a family business, with the great grandson of the founder now running it.

By region, Seoul has the largest number of historic restaurants with 28 in the latest book. It is followed by South Jeolla Province with 12, Busan with 11, and South Gyeongsang Province with nine.

“You may think the Jeolla provincial region has the largest number of old restaurants, as it is famous for its delicious food. But there are fewer there than you would think due to the relatively poor business environment,” the foundation member said.

The book will go on sale soon, and will be available as an e-book on the Korean Food Foundation website at http://www.hansik.org.

englishnews@chosun.com / Jul. 12, 2012 10:08 KST

News Clippings

Tourists Flock to South Korea’s ‘German Village’

July 20th, 2012
55 comments

SPIEGEL ONLINE

By Manfred Ertel

Photo Gallery: South Korea's Miniature Germany

Photos
picture alliance/ Daniel Kalker

It has an Oktoberfest, German sausages and immaculate front gardens. South Korea’s “German Village” is home to Koreans who spent years as migrant workers in Germany and their German spouses. Today, thousands of tourists come to visit the quirky settlement — much to the annoyance of some residents.

Buim Ulmer’s latest meeting about the Oktoberfest ran longer than planned. It will be the third time that she and her neighbors host a local version of the notorious beer-swilling fest, and this time the party could exceed all of their expectations.

During their first Oktoberfest, she and her friends had 1,000 Bavarian weisswurst (white veal sausages) and all went smoothly. Then, last fall some 30,000 sausages were sold.”We never had imagined such crowds,” said the 65-year-old nurse. “We were stretched to our limits.” That is not surprising. It is hard to cater to the demand for Bavarian specialties when you are in a small village near the South Korean coast.

Buim is South Korean. She and her husband, Ulrich, 64, a German elementary school teacher from the city of Bielefeld, spend most of their time on Namhae, an island of tranquility not far from South Korea’s second largest city of Busan in the southern part of the country.

The Ulmers live in the “German Village.” And the place lives up to its name. It has whitewashed houses, red-tiled roofs, neat gardens and rows of shoes lined up outside the front doors. Between signs for “Heidi House” and “Hamburg House” stands a road sign limiting drivers to 30 kilometers per hour (19 mph).

The Ulmers’ neighbor, a butcher, stocks German smoked sausages and bratwurst. Near the entrance to the village there is the Café Bremen, named after Germany’s northern port city. The only things missing from this archetypal German village are the traditional garden gnomes — apparently they got stolen too often.

Of course, they also need to have an Oktoberfest for three days in the fall. This time they are expecting more than 10,000 vehicles to converge on their village for the event. South Koreans love beer and are particularly partial to German brews.

“Where can all the cars go?” asked Buim. Their village is nestled on a steep hillside with a network of narrow, winding streets.

Nurses and Miners

Buim and Ulrich Ulmer have lived in what the South Koreans call “Dogil Maeul” since 2006. The German Village was founded ten years ago. It was designed as a new home for South Korean nurses and miners who went to work in Germany in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and decided 40 years later to return to their roots. It was designed for people like Buim and Ulrich.

Buim came to Germany in 1970 when she was 23. She was one of 10,000 nurses from South Korea who were sent by their government as part of a pragmatic exchange: The young Koreans did their bit for the German economic miracle while, in return, Germany offered Seoul’s government cheap credit.

Nurses like Buim’s neighbor Wou Chon Ja were paid a monthly net wage of 570 German marks, which was 10 times what they would have earned at home. They also got free food and accommodations.

“I lived on 70 marks and sent 500 marks home every month,” said the 74-year-old. Some 40 years later, local authorities in South Korea thanked the former “guest workers” by offering them discounted plots of land on the slopes leading down to the Sea of Japan.

‘I Didn’t Want to Take My Homesickness to the Grave’

The village now has 35 houses, all inhabited by returnees from Germany and their families. Three German men have retired to the community with their South Korean wives. Six other German-South Korean couples spend about nine months on Namhae and travel to Germany during the winter.

Ulmer met his wife at a dance in 1971 and they married a year later. “With good things you have to move fast,” he said. They had two children and traveled a lot.

Ulmer worked as a teacher in Peru and Portugal, but their home base was always Germany. By 2006, the Ulmers were ready to move back to South Korea. “It was time to spend a few years here,” said Buim. “I didn’t want to take my homesickness to the grave.”

The residents have similar life stories and cite the same reasons for relocating to South Korea: A beautiful location by the sea, better air, a mild climate and the search for their roots. “But we didn’t get anything for free,” said Wilhelm Engelfried, 82.

They live a good life in South Korea, a good German life, but not everything is perfect. The neighborhood disputes, for example, are the same, the quarrels about cleanliness, law and order. Meanwhile, some want to have a German enclave on the South Korean coast, with German cultural values. Others reject such plans. “We cannot turn this into a German province,” Engelfried said.

The atmosphere is particularly tense during the summer. Traffic backs up the whole mountain and along their narrow streets, as tens of thousands of curious South Koreans descend on their settlement.

A Tourist Sensation

The “German Village” is a sensation in South Korea. Its inhabitants were featured in a documentary film, “Home from Home” (”Endstation der Sehnsüchte”), which premiered at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival. Locals are stared at, photographed, flooded with questions and their peace and quiet is disturbed.

Uninvited visitors trample through their front yards, walk onto their terraces, and sometimes even venture into their living rooms. “It’s like a museum village,” said Engelfried. He, unlike some of his neighbors, can still see the funny side of the intrusions.

Herr Willi, as everyone in the village calls him, had wanted to stay in the village for “at least five years, more like 10.” Now, those years are over and he still doesn’t want to go back to Germany.

“It would hurt me to leave here,” he said. His South Korean wife, on the other hand, would like to leave for Germany sooner rather than later. “What should I do here if he gets sick?” she asks. “How should I take care of him?”

‘We Have No Home’

The German Village is an upside-down world. Many struggle with the idea of “home.”

“My home is where my wife is,” said Ulrich Ulmer. But his wife sees things differently. “We have no home, there is always something missing,” she said.Now, 40 years after she left Germany, she is finally back where she grew up and has her roots — but it is still not her home. She speaks Korean, “as it was spoken 40 years ago,” she said. She doesn’t really feel right in her home country, she said.

“Fortunately,” said Buim, “I live in a ghetto.”

News Clippings