The Globalization of Seoul's Universities

Only fifty years ago, South Korea was the place where a war took place, but today it becamethe 12^th larger economy in the world. The globalization of its economy largely contributed to its actual success and the country is now paying attention to the education of the population who will become the future managers of the country. It is only since 2008 that Korea has been looking at a closer eye to its foreign students and teachers who contribute to the enlightenment to its universities on the worldwide stage. Those universities have been hiring an increasing number of foreign teachers to develop international programs and theyadmitted more than 100,000 foreign students in 2011 (70% of them were Chinese, followed by Japanese students and only 5% of international students) (Kim, 2012).

The issue that arises here is the adaptation problems that foreign teachers and students usually meet when they arrive in Korea. Of course it is a common issue that most universities with foreign students’ faces, but it is also something that needs to be considered seriously. A particular attention to international students has to be given. However in Korea, many international teachers and students decided to return home after a period of non adaptation to the country (Fouser, 2011).This is why more and more universities are now creating special courses and events to help their integration within the university life and to the country’s culture.Most of those problems were easy to solve for the universities as it was mainly housing, food, and social life difficulties. For example, the University of Dongguk in Seoul, organized events for foreign students in order for them to meet more people but also for Korean students to have the opportunity to interact with them. They put in place a service to help students who are facing problems in the country along with the distribution of a booklet to help them integrate the country during their first steps in Korea (Eun-hye, 2011).

Those simple events are essential to be developed by the Korean universities as foreign students contribute to the reputation of a university in term of international programs. However, some universities managed their international students as “cash-cow”. International students fees being higher, a few Korean universities admitted a big number of foreign students without considering if their academic level was suitable to the university courses and without paying attention to their adaptation in the university. This resulted in a very bad reputation and many English teachers wouldn’t work with those institutions as the level being too low, classes were not interesting for both students and professors. This year, South Korea's Ministry of Education, has named 11 institutions that will be banned from admitting foreign students, and another 19 institutions have been ordered to improve policies on their management of international students (Kim, 2012).

Actually, Korean universities are now reaching the criteria for the world universities ranking, as for example the Seoul National University has been on the 37th place this year and 5 others Korean universities are also present on the top 200 universities in the world. It confirms the step that the country is taking towards a more globalized education system, and it reflects the evolution of the Korean economy (Ince, 2013). A better ranking of Korean universities will attract more foreign teachers who can bring value-added to the teaching programs and thus it will attract more international students who bring diversity and an opportunity for Korean students to become internationally aware and ready to become future global manager.

Having studied myself in a Korean university for 3 months, I was able to see that international students’ management is still something new for Korea, and it was difficult to find campus events for international students, mainly because of the language barrier which is big in the country. However, efforts were made from the university staff and we had a constant help from a staff member. We also had the opportunity to discover the culture of the country through some classes and dinner along the program (Photo below: Dinner in a traditional Korean restaurant in Seoul). 

Most of Seoul Universities are integrating international students every year, and they are willing to give the best they can to facilitate their integration through special staff members and welcoming events. However efforts still need to be done for the integration of international students with the Korean students and the language barrier has to be overcame from both sides.

Ophélie Bourgeois

References:

Eun-hye, K. (2011, June 6). Program to help international students adapt to life at Dongguk.Récupéré sur The Dongguk Post: http://www.dgupost.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=1137

Fouser, R. J. (2011, April 11). University globalization and its limits. Récupéré sur The Korea Times: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2011/04/137_84986.html

Ince, M. (2013, May 22). Korean Universities in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2013. Retrieved from: Top Universities: http://www.topuniversities.com/where-to-study/asia/korea-south/korean-universities-qs-world-university-rankings-subject-2013

Kim, H.-S. (2012, January 4). SOUTH KOREA: Foreign student ban on 11 institutions. Récupéré sur University World News: http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20120104133043997

About the theme of this blog...

A lot of studies have been published on how immigrants adapt to a different culture and country. We’ve heard about the “segregation, integration, assimilation” concept, where segregation is the rejection of the local culture, integration is a mix between the local and native culture and assimilation is the adoption by the immigrant of local consumption habits, traditions and way of life.

This existing literature demonstrated several theories and conclusions about how people adapt to foreign cultures and countries. In this blog we would like to do research on the inverse topic: how worldwide cities adapt to foreigners? Instead of studying how a person adapts to a new environment we will focus on how an environment can adapt to people that are not used to it?

According to the NCSL’s (National Conference of States Legislatures) top 10 policy issue forecast published in 2008, integrate people with different cultures and backgrounds in a nation’s society represents a major concerns for Western countries.

Being exposed to a new environment (“unfamiliar economic, biological, physical, social and cultural conditions”) can cause tension or anxiety to some people (Luedicke, M.K. 2011). And even though tourists travel to discover new things and being confront to uncertainty; we think that expatriates, immigrants and/or exchange students won’t mind a little local help in their assimilation process.

References:

Luedicke, M. K. 2011, July 22^nd. Consumer acculturation theory: (crossing) conceptual boundaries.

NCSL. 2008. NCSL’s top 10 policy issue forecast: Heat is on state legislatures.

Public Transportation in Seoul

To further analyze Seoul’s cultural adaption to foreigners, we are now going to look at the city public transportation.

The most three used ways to move in Seoul are to take the subway, the bus or a taxi, that’s why we will only focus on those transportation modes in this article.

According to “About.com Geography”, Seoul’s subway is the third busiest metro in the World (after Tokyo’s and Moscow’s). Indeed, it completes an average of 2.04 billion annual passenger rides and receives 5.6 million daily riders (Schulz Richard, K., 2011). 

Language used in the subway facilities is Korean, English, Chinese and Japanese. All vending machines operate in those four languages.

Subway maps are also available in four different languages. Find below snapshots of Seoul subway map in English and in Korean.

Within the subway train, stations are announced in Korean, English and Chinese. Fortunately, in each station, the name of the station is written in Korean signs and using Roman alphabet because pronunciation can sometimes differ from what we read.

As you can see on the picture, each station is numbered as well as exits, which makes things easier for tourists and foreigners that are having trouble with Korean pronunciation.

Pictograms are also used to indicate toilets, elevator... so it can be understood from everyone.

Below is an example of signs present in subway stations. The first sign indicate the way out with the number of the exit and the second sign indicate the way to go to transfer to line 7 in Korean, English and Chinese.

Just by taking the subway in Seoul, you can have an insight of the Korean culture: how technology is present in everyone’s life, respect of the elderly, etc.

To learn more about it, please go watch the video hosted on the Official Site of Korea Tourism Organization page: http://www.visitkorea.or.kr/ena/TR/TR_EN_5_1_4.jsp (Korea Be Inspired, 2012).

Regarding buses in Seoul, four categories exist. Each category is designated by a color code: blue, yellow, red and green, according the type of road they use, the length of their travel, their circuit and the destination. Each bus is identified by a color and a number, which are universal elements of codification understood by everyone (given the fact that people are aware of what the color code means).

Unlike the subway, taking the bus can be confusing for strangers because of the large extent of the network. Indeed, according the website Korea4expats.com, there are approximately 400 bus circuits with 8,500 city buses.

Bus stops are easily recognizable, as you can see on the picture, they are grey with a bus pictogram at the top in the color of the category of the bus that is stopping at this station.

Circuits put up on bus stops are written in Korean, only few stops are written English (maybe 3 or 4 per circuits). That is why, without any previous preparation using the Internet (http://topis.seoul.go.kr/eng/) to look for which bus to take and where to stop, foreigners can not really make it.

QR codes can be found on most of bus stop in Seoul. Those QR codes can really be useful for tourists as they give information about the bus network in Korean, English, Chinese and Japanese. Moreover a helpline is available.

Taxis can be found really easily in Seoul’s streets. Even though an increase number of taxi drivers speak English, it is still advice to write, in Korean, on a piece of paper the name of the destination you want to go to. Indeed, foreigners’ Korean pronunciation is not well understood by local taxi drivers. In the middle of 2009, “International taxi” service has been created where taxi drivers can speak English or Japanese. Moreover those kinds of taxis can be paid with international credit cards: VISA, MASTER, AMEX, JCB (Korea Be Inspired, 2012). Reservations for international taxis can be made by English or Japanese speakers by calling an exclusive call center or on this website: www.intltaxi.co.kr.

The real strong point of Seoul’s public transportation is its unique method of payment whereas you are taking the subway, the bus or even a taxi. This method of payment is in the form of an electronic card, called the “T-money card”. It can be reloaded in department stores or thanks to vending machines present in each subway stations. To use the T-money card, a simple beep on card readers is needed. Taxi, buses and subway’s security gates are all equipped with card readers which make payments really easy to make.

For buses and subways a beep going in and another going out of the transportation facility is needed. Thanks to that system, final destination does not have to be known or specify by the user, the card itself withdraw the correct amount of money that is due.

This unique method of payment for public transportation is really useful for foreigners that can still not recognize the Korean different coins. It is easy, quick and practicable!

To conclude this article on public transportation, we can see that a real effort is done to make them accessible to tourist and foreigners. As we previously saw with food facilities and touristic spots, most signs are translated into English, Japanese and Chinese.

References

Korea 4 expats.com. 2011. By bus in Seoul.
Retrieved from: http://www.korea4expats.com/article-seoul-by-bus.html 

Korea Be Inspired. 2012, April. Public Transportation.
Retrieved from: http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/TR/TR_EN_5_1_1.jsp 

Schulz Richard, K. 2011, July 26th. The World's Busiest Subway Systems in Major Cities.
Retrieved from: http://geography.about.com/od/urbaneconomicgeography/a/Busiest-Subways.htm

Restaurants' adaptation to foreigners in Seoul

To start our research about the South Korea capital’s establishments and organizations and see how and in what way they adapt to foreign cultures, we decided to begin with an analysis of restaurants’ cultural adaptation.

Through this article, we are going to analyse how food facilities in Seoul are adapted to foreign cultures by looking at the layout and content of their menu. We won’t focus on the actual meals that are offered but on the way they are communicated to clients.

After investigating and experiencing several food facilities during our journey in Seoul, we decided to separate restaurants into four categories:

           - Worldwide known fast-food chain

           - Medium-standing Korean restaurant

           - Small Korean food facility

           - Street food stand

Not surprisingly, we noticed that worldwide known fast-food chains such as Mc Donald, KFC, Burger King... are the food facilities that adapt the most to foreign cultures. Indeed, looking at their menu we can see that the name of each set is written in Korean, English, Japanese and Chinese. A photo is displayed for each dish and prices are also written using Arabic numbers. You have to know that Korean language uses two different set of cardinal numbers: Korean native numbers and Sino-Korean numbers. Most of the time Arabic numbers are used to indicate prices but sometimes prices are written using Sino-Korean numbers (based on Chinese numbers).

About medium-standing Korean restaurants’ menu, as you can see on the picture below, photos are usually available. The Korean name of the meal is most of the time translated into English but not the description of it. The name of the dish can also sometimes be translated in Chinese.

In those cases it is up to us to give free rein to our imagination and guess which ingredients constitute the meal exactly.

If you want to feel what it is like to order a meal just relying on a picture, go visit School Food’s website (a quite famous Korean restaurant chain) and see for yourself: http://www.schoolfood.co.kr/menu

Regarding small Korean food facilities, no actual paper menu are available inside the restaurants, names and prices of meals offered are displayed on the walls and windows. No other language than Korean is used to describe the dishes offered in this kind of restaurant. To order a satisfying meal in those food facilities, luck will have to play a major role!

Street food stands do not offer menu, food available is displayed in front of customers. To place an order and know the price of what is bought, body language is required as the stand holder usually do not speak English.

The English speaking level of waiters and waitresses in food facilities in Seoul are diverse. Most of them have knowledge about the English language but advanced communication remains difficult.

Overall, restaurants in Seoul tend to translate minimum information into English, so it can be understand by most foreigners (assuming they speak English). Japanese and Chinese translations are also sometimes available. The choice of these three languages makes sense knowing that they are Korea’s top three international tourism markets. The graph below shows us that tourists from those three countries represent a high percentage of overall tourism revenues for South Korea (Visa, 2012): 

Visa. 2012, May. Tourism Outlook: South Korea.

If you ever went to South Korea or experienced similar situations in restaurants in a foreign country please leave comments, we would like to know your opinion. Do not hesitate to leave your impressions about this article as well!

References:

Visa. 2012, May. Tourism Outlook: South Korea.

Retrieved from: http://corporate.visa.com/_media/south-korea-tourism-outlook-english.pdf