As Korea’s many universities continue to globalise, international students and professors are visiting Korea for short-term semester-break programs. Pretty well any university in Korea that you can name has a summer semester program. It’s a fantastic combination of a vacation with an intensive study session, as well as an opportunity to meet people from around the world.
Since I’m most familiar with Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU), here’s a closer look at this year’s International Summer Semester (ISS) program. The SKKU ISS started in 2008, making this the eighth year of the program. This year’s program had 842 foreign students and 825 Korean students. Students came from Singapore, Hong Kong, France, Indonesia, Brazil, the Netherlands, China, Mexico, Switzerland, the UK, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Croatia, the US, and many other countries.
And almost all of them showed up on Wednesday, September 25. Soon I found myself standing on stage in front of the SKKU ISS class of 2015.
Addressing over 1000 students people from all corners of the world, many of whom had just recently flown in, was quite an experience, but it was clear from the start that the students were here to get the most out of this brief stay.
To break the ice, we led the students through a “backdrumming” exercise in which everyone soothed the muscles of the people sitting to either side, and had a traditional Korean musical performance by the SKKU student music group Daedong Akhee. And then, because nobody is immune in Korea, we played them our video of “Sungkyun Style,” SKKU’s own parody of “Gangnam Style.”
Following that, we brought the students down to the 600-year-old campus of Sungkyunkwan, where we explained the long history of the university and took group photos in front of Myeongnyundang, Korea’s oldest lecture hall.
“The campus was very beautiful and the fusion of ancient and modern buildings made it a pleasure just to walk to class,” said Rob Dixon of the University of Sheffield.
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