Students and Foreign Exchange Students 1:1 Friendships
79 buddies in first semester, Global cultural communication
[March 6, 2008]
"Is it really necessary to spend a lot of time and money to go abroad? It helps a lot to learn a foreign language and culture by becoming friends with foreigners in Korea. I think the shortcut to globalization is to become friends."
Cho Jin-wook (25), a senior at Yeungnam University School of Material Science and Engineering, now has a buddy from Germany in the new semester. He has become buddies for one semester with exchange student Anja Busemann (22) from Saxion University in the Netherlands through the Buddy Program.
The Buddy Program is a so-called 'cultural communication' program that gives opportunities for students at Yeungnam University and exchange students to become buddies. By becoming the closest friend of a foreign student who is unfamiliar with life in Korea, they can easily learn each other's language and culture. Thus, unlike internationalized education that focus mainly on 'language education', it is an educational opportunity to become a true international and global person. In addition, there are no additional expenses and students can receive a work credit (1 credit unit), making it very popular among students.
These advantages could be seen by the fact that in just two days from announcing the buddy program at the university homepage in February, double the number of accepted students applied for it and 79 students were finally selected through screening of plans and individual interviews. They met their foreign exchange student buddies on the evening of the 4th. A total of 79 buddy couples were made including not only Anja Busemann and Cho Jin-wook, but also Park Se-hoon (26, Advanced Materials) and Stacey Pellegrin (22, State University of New York), Lee Yoo-kyeong (22, senior in international economics and business) and Fumiko Abe (23, Shizuoka University), etc.
Pellegrin, who said that she was a Korean-American adopted four months after birth, stated "I missed Korea all the time and I applied at the first chance I had for exchange students. Korea is still unfamiliar being gone from it for over 20 years and my Korean is bad, but I think I will do fine with Se-hoon helping me. I want to learn more Korean, meet more Koreans and eat a lot of Korean food during this opportunity so that I don't forget my roots as a Korean."
Park replied, "Though we have different citizenships, I think we can be friends forever that can depend on each other and talk about things with each other. I would like to invite her over to my home soon to help her feel the warmth and hospitality of Korean families."
Anja Busemann and Fujiko Abe said that they had difficulties with communication outside of campus, but that they feel a lot more assured because of their buddies. They also said that they wanted to learn and experience the Korean language and culture as much as they could before returning to their home countries.
Professor Lee Dong-joo (53, Mechanical Engineering), who supervises the Buddy Program states, "The number of times one visits foreign countries and their fluency in a foreign language does not mean that they are internationalized. The most practical way to become globalized is probably to expand their social network through exchange with foreigners in Korea, meet the world and have more opportunities to show the world about Korea."
Meanwhile, as of March 2008, there are 79 foreign exchange students and 561 international students paying their own tuition at Yeungnam University, as well as 290 studying in Korean classes for a total of 930 foreigners. This is an increase of approximately 250 students compared to the previous year, and thus, it reflects the fact that the Yeungnam University campus is becoming more and more globalized.
