Judging
by the inquisitive messages I have received since my last post, I've gathered it would
be valuable to explain how and why I came to Seoul. Before I start, though, I
just wanted to thank everyone for reading and giving me feedback. This is more
for y’all than it is for me, so suggestions, complaints, inquiries, or requests
are always welcome. Now, back to the show.
My journey to Seoul starts with my university. Northeastern operates an extensive job/internship
program called Co-op. Co-ops are typically 6 month long stretches where
university students work at professional companies and organizations ranging
from Goldman Sachs to Boston Public Schools to the International Criminal
Court. It’s a massive operation that serves as the focal point of the “Northeastern
experience”. Although it is possible to graduate without completing a Co-op,
most students participate in at least one and sometimes up to three of the placements.
You can imagine how unique the university must be to accommodate the constant
cycling of students between classes and Co-ops.
Last
semester, I took the appropriate measures to Co-op (yeah, it's also used as a
verb) for the first half of 2017. I hadn’t the slightest clue of what I wanted
to do or where I wanted to go. Though, I was certain about one thing: I wanted
to work outside the States. Living in Australia for 5 months the year before
had sparked a desire in me to see as much of the world as I could. To stay in
America would have left me with a sense of staleness. I mean, there’s so much
fascinating food, language, and culture out there, it would surely be a shame
to stay in the world I already knew. The Where of the situation did not matter so
much as it was away from what I was comfortable with.
To
help students arrange Co-ops, Northeastern has a massive database of vacancies that
organizations have suggested might be suitable for Co-op students. No one is
guaranteed a job anywhere; the process involves the same set of rigorous
applications and interviews that comprise any normal professional job search. Confined
by my demands of international experience, I found that few worthwhile positions
met my criteria, especially those of the paid
variety. My resoluteness in traveling meant considering a wide range of jobs
that I would never have normally given a second glance. I applied for a job at a
youth baseball league in India, an internship at a progressive (and I mean
progressive…) advocacy organization in Serbia, an English teaching position in
Ho Chi Minh City, and many more disparate opportunities. After a strenuous
series of late-night interviews, I took the plunge and decided to take an
internship in South Korea.
Here
in Seoul, I work for a nongovernmental organization that seeks to assist North
Korean defectors in Seoul and break down barriers prohibiting a Korean
reunification; many South Koreans still hold onto the idea that the Korean peninsula
could once again be a single, unified country. Our office is small with only
two full time employees – a North Korean defector owner and a South Korean
manager – and a splattering of international and Korean interns. Us interns
spend most of our time reading, writing, and researching for a variety of
projects relating to the organization’s goals. For example, my bosses are
spending this week in Geneva at a U.N. conference, so we have spent the past
few weeks focusing on preparing oral statements in English, finalizing
schedules and meetings, and producing a ten-minute documentary intended for the
convention.
The
team is small enough that responsibilities are given to anyone willing to take them.
Most of my own individual work has taken shape in the form of editing English
material. Whenever my boss or another non-native English speaker needs to write
something, it’s my job to make sure it’s up to snuff. Other tasks of mine have
included editing and narrating videos, creating presentations, and writing
speeches. I wouldn’t say I love the work. There are times when it feels like I am
actually being effectual – I have the opportunity talk with defectors and help
them with their English once a week – but a majority of the time the job feels
like I’m spinning my wheels, like I’m doing more to help the organization than
the people of North Korea.
Working
internationally, and especially in Korea, can be frustrating. Communication is
the backbone of any business, and lingual and cultural differences have an intensely
adversarial effect on communication. The Western interns in the office often
find it difficult to know what our boss wants or why it needs to be done in the
first place. It is a daily struggle between clashing working norms. Korean
culture is perhaps unique in how it approaches work life. Most Koreans work
long, ten to twelve hour days, where the focus is on how much they work rather
than how much work they actually complete. This is, of course, an over-generalization, but
I find the work ethic to be simultaneously diligent beyond believe and lazy to
no end. This echoes to a broader Korean cultural emphasis on presentation over
content. However, I don’t want to dive too deep or make too large of oversimplifications
about the culture. It is, without a doubt, a wholly different approach to getting
work done.
I’ll
conclude by stating that the job wasn’t my top consideration during my choice
to come to Seoul. Any qualms I have with the position are secondary to what
accompanies it, a chance to live in a foreign place. Certainly, it will be nice
to say in the future that I worked for a humanitarian non-profit in an East
Asian country, but the internship, in my eyes, was mostly an opportunity to
experience a new environment. That being said, I am grateful to be able to do
something beneficial while traveling to one of the world’s most unique societies,
even if it’s not the most rewarding period of my professional career.
Thanks
for reading everyone. It’s a decent time commitment to write these (and I’m
sure for y’all to read them), but I enjoy putting my thoughts on the
metaphorical page. If I can, I am going to post twice-weekly. I am
going to guess that most future blog posts will be more story driven. This
blog was explanatory in nature, so the clever jokes and descriptions were left
by the wayside. Please comment or message me if you want to know any more. I’m
sure I’ve neglected to write some important details.
-JCP
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