Relfection on My South Korea Experiential Learning

How has your impression on South Korea change in the last few days?

My impression has change because I did not know how advance is the technology in South Korea. After I have visited the Digital Pavilion, a place where they display the advance technology. They have started creating the use the 3D technology. This is due to their competitiveness against Japan, they wish to increase the economic growth by using the advance of technology. This shows how much Korea has grown and how much Singapore is lacking in terms of technology.

In your opinion, give 2 similarities and 2 differences between Singapore and South Korea

The 2 similarities are both countries are doing their part to be clean and green and both are facing ageing populations

Both countries is encouraging the citizen to be clean and green by recycling it, both countries have set up recycling bin around the country. In addition, Korean does not only encourage its citizen to recycle item, they off or dim most of the streets in order to reduce the usage of electricity.

Since both countries faces ageing population, the government has done set up old folk home to take care of elderly that have been abandoned by their family member. In addition, South Korea have use their advance in technology to build facilities to cope with the ageing population.

However South Korean and Singapore is different in terms of Education Systems and culture

In Korea, the things they learn in elementary, middle and high school is the same as Singapore in nursery, kindergarten 1 and 2, primary and secondary. However, in Korea, students do not need to go through national exam such as P.S.L.E, GCE “N” and “O” level. They will move on to the next level normally, however, students that are smarter than the rest, they are able to skip grade unlike Singapore. For example, student who is prodigy, they are able to skip middle and able to go straight to high. In Korea, they also focus on the students sports. Students, who are better than the rest, are given more priority than the rest.

In Korea, the Korean are very particular about punctuality, if you are late for even 1 minute, it show the sign of disrespect. Korean also will have to bow even when they say hello. Unlike Singapore, Singaporean is not so particular about bowing. This shows the Korean culture.

List and explain three of your most memorable experience.

One of my most memorable experiences is the visit to the POSCO high school. This show it is possible for us to communicate with students from other country by using a common language which is English.  This gives me the chance to know people from other country, allowing me to know about the different culture from different country.

Another memorable experience is the trip to Dengu safety theme park. This theme park is build to let people experience natural disaster and accident. Such examples are Earthquake and Fire accident in a train.  This is useful as it let people know what the procedures are when natural disasters and accidents happen.  This is to prevent the people from panicking and causing more people to be afraid

Lastly, the most memorable experience is the trip to the Andong Hahoe Folk Village.  This village shows the culture of the olden time of South Korea. It rare to find this type of village in Korea as now the world is becoming a Urban world, since we were given the chance to see, we should see as in the distance village it may be destroy and we will never be able to see it again.

List and Explain three things you have learnt about yourself and your life as a student?

I have learnt that the students in South Korea are more stressful and tired than the students in Singapore. After the interaction with the South Korean student, I found that they finish school at 11.20pm and have to report to school at 8am. This shows that they have less time to relax unlike us. We should be grateful that we do not have schooling until that late. We should appreciate what we have now and not abuse it.

I also feel that my behavior is not up to standard. There are times when impulsive. This will affect my adult life in the future. When people impulsive, they sometimes will tend to be violence and violence will led to unhappiness.

I feel that as a group leader I did not do a good job as I did not distribute the job properly to all my group member and end up doing most of the thing myself, as a group leader I should not be doing this, I should distribute evenly among my members.

By Chng Guo Wei
     Class 3N7