Full Immersion. We're talking 99% Korean input here and that's 100% scary. It's no joke - Americans are among the few countries that typically prefer an assisted-approach to language learning. Meaning we generally like to use L1 (our first language - English) to help explicitly learn L2 (the target language - in KC101's case - Korean). Most people who support this teaching model claim that the stress levels of the students are decidedly lower and that learning can take place in a comfortable L1-rich environment. Koreans are not the only ones who prefer full immersion (the exclusive use of L2 in the classroom) but since we are all students of Korean, let's focus on that for the moment being. However, I eagerly wait to hear from fellow... Show more

Kinship terms. It's kind of hard to translate the concept literally but these titles are used quite frequently in Korean. Actually, here's a great lesson on just that. English can be quite direct at times. Whether that is a good or bad thing, indirectness is more favored in Korean. In English, we like to use names to be polite whereas Koreans prefer the use of titles like 선생님. Certainly there are times when Korean can express some of the most direct concepts possible, but on the whole, Korean functions in an indirect manner most of the time. One such way to be indirect is the widespread use of kinship terms. Here's a brief breakdown of a few select terms based on gender: These four terms are used widely and are quite... Show more

Korean text input. Insanely logical. The Korean keyboard. Have you ever sat down and thought about how simplistic the setup is? We're talking about a keyboard that originally housed 26 English letters but now logistically houses 한굴. Not bad at all, really Not to mention that if I were to type in English a bunch of random letters such as "awfeiojawcneliawefiawn" the English keyboard doesn't discern between consonant and vowel - even though in English we actually do have rules about CV order. For example, a"normal" English word cannot have three vowels back-to-back (unless of course it has a French origin or other language whose rules are different). But in Korean, there are only nine possibilities for a syllable block. But keep... Show more

Electronics. Korea is pretty much the Mecca of electronics. Samsung is here. LG is here. Both Hewlett-Packard and Energizer have Korea-based facilities. Iriver and SK Telecom are domestic-based companies that do serious sales just within Korea itself. This is one hooked up company. So much so that Korea's cell phone companies still use proprietary frequencies and encoding. Meaning that fancy new phone you bought in Yongsan probably won't function in America. Japan had been the more notorious country with this problem for travelers but recently has started to integrate worldwide carriers. Even the best VoIP software available comes at a premium for users in Korea. Skype has a pay-to-use feature that allows Skype users to call any... Show more

Rice. Come on, you know Korea has some good rice. Tell me you know this and we can get along. Quick review! So we have "밥" as a rice but primarily as a meal (which could entail any type of food). There's also the rice itself, "쌀". Moving on, let's get a country bumpkin's perspective on rice, shall we? Growing up in central Texas meant that rice took on a bit of a different form that what is the norm in Korea. We're talking Tex-Mex rice - Spanish rice - the yellow-redish with tomato goodness that isn't quite Mexican but certainly not Texan. I also enjoyed (and still do) Dirty rice - a Cajun staple from our border-neighbor Louisiana (or as some Texans say "that one state to the right"). Now there was also two other kinds of rice... Show more