Struggles of Communicating with “Real” Koreans in the “Real” Korea
Another weekend and another train trip back to Seoul. Sitting at the bench on the platform of Chuncheon Station, waiting for the next train to the metropolis, I am becoming more and more anxious to whether these trips are becoming some sort of emotional escapist behaviors out of the real Korea that I was so excited to see and live within . Chuncheon, for me and as well as all students and teachers, has become a place we are forced to be during the weekends. To be perfectly honest, I, among all people, have been struggling to find my social place within the enclosed environment that is our camp . As Korean continues to entrench its position as the official language of the camp , those who are struggling with understanding of the language, whether it be the foreign teachers or some students who grew up outside Korea, have been feeling the continued spiral toward social isolation. And what the most irritating in the situation is just how little effort the Korean staff, who, supposedl