Seoraksan national park
Nature
Korea is mountainous and has a very cold winter, a rainy season in summer, and two seasons of pleasant weather: spring and Autumn. Most people live in the large cities around Seoul or in the South East, but the rest of Korea is quiet. Due to its terrain, hiking is a popular hobby, and in the winter there are many Ski and Snowboard resorts you can visit, in 2018 Korea will host the Winter Olympics.
Korea is mountainous and has a very cold winter, a rainy season in summer, and two seasons of pleasant weather: spring and Autumn. Most people live in the large cities around Seoul or in the South East, but the rest of Korea is quiet. Due to its terrain, hiking is a popular hobby, and in the winter there are many Ski and Snowboard resorts you can visit, in 2018 Korea will host the Winter Olympics.
Suwon fortress
History
Although much of Korea was destroyed during the Korean War, many historical buildings have been restored. They are usually not too crowded, and you can do lots of interactive activities like wearing Korean traditional clothes, practicing archery, or taking part in a demonstration Taekwondo lesson within Korea's historical palaces.
Although much of Korea was destroyed during the Korean War, many historical buildings have been restored. They are usually not too crowded, and you can do lots of interactive activities like wearing Korean traditional clothes, practicing archery, or taking part in a demonstration Taekwondo lesson within Korea's historical palaces.
Myeongdong shopping district
Nightlife
Korea is a 24 hour society, with many restaurants and convenience stores being open at all hours. In Dongdaemun Market you can go clothes shopping until 4 or 5 in the morning, and even in the suburbs there is plenty to do such as karaoke, games rooms, eating street food etc.
Korea is a 24 hour society, with many restaurants and convenience stores being open at all hours. In Dongdaemun Market you can go clothes shopping until 4 or 5 in the morning, and even in the suburbs there is plenty to do such as karaoke, games rooms, eating street food etc.
A short video about SEV and Korea
Watch this video by Grace, a former teacher at SEV. This was made over her last few months at SEV. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sDnwa9bmvzs
Study Korean
Korean is a difficult language to learn, it is hard to find study resources (especially outside of Korea) and hard for learners to practice, even within Korea itself. So to help you learn Korean, I have created this study program from my experience of learning Korean over the course of three years. Like most languages, if you know where to look you can learn the basics for a very low cost if you are disciplined enough and know where to look.
Alphabet
Learn the alphabet, its so easy. King Sejong is known to have said that it takes a genius one day to learn Hangul (the Korean alphabet), and an idiot can learn it in a month. Learn it before even learning ‘hello’ in Korean, once you can read the alphabet you can already understand all the place names and Konglish that are around in Korea, and it will help you put together the building blocks of the language and pronounce words correctly. A good way to practice is to go on the subway, look at the ‘next station’ board and try to read the Korean, when it turns into English you can see if you are correct.
Vocabulary
First off you need to learn some words. In my opinion, the WORST way you can try to learn Korean is to use a phrasebook at the very start. In fact, if you bought the lonely planet Korean phrasebook you should throw it in the trash right now, it doesn’t explain the language at all and its phrases completely mix the higher and lower forms of Korean so this will totally confuse beginners.
Best off, learn the building blocks first. Korean essentially made up of three languages mixed together: Pure Korean, Chinese Korean, and Konglish (a mix of English and Korean). If you can already speak English (obviously you can if you are reading this) or Chinese you can use this to your advantage to very quickly and simply grow your basic vocabulary. for example 버스 (Beo-suh) is bus in Korean, just based straight from the English word, and 중국 (Choong-gook) is China in Korean, made up of the Korean pronunciation of the Chinese characters 中 (middle) and 國 (country).
A great resource for learning basic vocabulary is ’2000 Essential Korean Words for Beginners’. The vocabulary in this book might seem strange at first, but these are the most common words that Koreans actually use. Korean vocabulary isn’t 100% compatible with English vocabulary and Korean cannot be directly translated into English, even simple words like ‘Brother’ don’t have a Korean equivalent. Try putting a paragraph of Korean into google translate and read the nonsense that will come out if you don’t believe me. Using a resource like the aforementioned book means that you will be speaking words regularly used by Koreans so you will be understood far more easily than if you try to learn words using an English-Korean dictionary. Another great way to learn words online for free is to use memrise.com. One of the vocabulary lists it has is the list from the aforementioned book, but to learn the absolute basics, choose one of the smaller beginners lists first.
Grammar
Korean grammar is much more difficult to learn than vocabulary. The word order is very different from English and constructing sentences with modal verbs (can, want, should etc.) is very different from how you would do so in English. There are lots of beginner books out there, but very few upper beginner / lower intermediate books. However, theActive Korean range is a good one for building up your grammar slowly. The best online resource I have found is ‘talk to me in Korean‘, it is free to use and has lots of lessons, so you can find the grammar lesson you need easily. Often things in Korean are said in a different way than they would be said in English, for example, instead of saying ‘Can you speak Korean?’ the Korean phrase ‘한국말 잘해요?’ which roughly translates to ‘Do you speak Korean well?’ is the most common way of expressing this concept. This highlights how vital grammar is in order to speak Korean well.
Alphabet
Learn the alphabet, its so easy. King Sejong is known to have said that it takes a genius one day to learn Hangul (the Korean alphabet), and an idiot can learn it in a month. Learn it before even learning ‘hello’ in Korean, once you can read the alphabet you can already understand all the place names and Konglish that are around in Korea, and it will help you put together the building blocks of the language and pronounce words correctly. A good way to practice is to go on the subway, look at the ‘next station’ board and try to read the Korean, when it turns into English you can see if you are correct.
Vocabulary
First off you need to learn some words. In my opinion, the WORST way you can try to learn Korean is to use a phrasebook at the very start. In fact, if you bought the lonely planet Korean phrasebook you should throw it in the trash right now, it doesn’t explain the language at all and its phrases completely mix the higher and lower forms of Korean so this will totally confuse beginners.
Best off, learn the building blocks first. Korean essentially made up of three languages mixed together: Pure Korean, Chinese Korean, and Konglish (a mix of English and Korean). If you can already speak English (obviously you can if you are reading this) or Chinese you can use this to your advantage to very quickly and simply grow your basic vocabulary. for example 버스 (Beo-suh) is bus in Korean, just based straight from the English word, and 중국 (Choong-gook) is China in Korean, made up of the Korean pronunciation of the Chinese characters 中 (middle) and 國 (country).
A great resource for learning basic vocabulary is ’2000 Essential Korean Words for Beginners’. The vocabulary in this book might seem strange at first, but these are the most common words that Koreans actually use. Korean vocabulary isn’t 100% compatible with English vocabulary and Korean cannot be directly translated into English, even simple words like ‘Brother’ don’t have a Korean equivalent. Try putting a paragraph of Korean into google translate and read the nonsense that will come out if you don’t believe me. Using a resource like the aforementioned book means that you will be speaking words regularly used by Koreans so you will be understood far more easily than if you try to learn words using an English-Korean dictionary. Another great way to learn words online for free is to use memrise.com. One of the vocabulary lists it has is the list from the aforementioned book, but to learn the absolute basics, choose one of the smaller beginners lists first.
Grammar
Korean grammar is much more difficult to learn than vocabulary. The word order is very different from English and constructing sentences with modal verbs (can, want, should etc.) is very different from how you would do so in English. There are lots of beginner books out there, but very few upper beginner / lower intermediate books. However, theActive Korean range is a good one for building up your grammar slowly. The best online resource I have found is ‘talk to me in Korean‘, it is free to use and has lots of lessons, so you can find the grammar lesson you need easily. Often things in Korean are said in a different way than they would be said in English, for example, instead of saying ‘Can you speak Korean?’ the Korean phrase ‘한국말 잘해요?’ which roughly translates to ‘Do you speak Korean well?’ is the most common way of expressing this concept. This highlights how vital grammar is in order to speak Korean well.