Chapter 8: 나는 한국 연예인이 됐다고? (I’m A Celebrity In Korea? #totallynotclickbaithahaha)

I’m not even going to start off with my usual ramblings about this being a month after my last update blah blah blah, since I know I have peaked your interest with this title.

That’s right. I’m now famous in Korea.

If you happen to listen to 한민족하나로 (Hanminjok hanaro) radio station or skim over the literal hundreds of articles in 연합 뉴스 (Associated News) that come out everyday.

Okay, I’ll stop speaking in rhymes and get on with the good part of this update.

So for my internship at VANK (read my past few posts to read about what I’m doing there), I had the opportunity to go with the three other interns and participate in some interviews talking about our work and also just our experiences coming to Korea to study. I guess some people actually find that interesting to hear about? Anyways, apparently one reporter from Korea’s Associated News has done interviews with past VANK interns, and so contacted our boss to set up another one with us for this year. It was a very chill interview where we just got to talk about why we started learning Korean, what kind of work we’ve been doing and what articles we’ve been writing for our internship and just general talk about Korean culture and its importance and why we became interested in it. Honestly, I’ve had so much practice answering these kinds of questions just within the last 4 months, it’s like riding a bike at this point.

The most interesting thing to come out of this interview is that I now have a Korean name? Much like how a lot of people adopt “American/English” names when they come to the States, a lot of people just make up a Korean name or have someone make one for them when they come here for the sake of just having a name that’s easier to pronounce and recognize. I personally didn’t use one (until now I guess), because I didn’t think my name was that hard to pronounce? It’s all relative I guess.

But all of the other interns have Korean names, so the reporter was like “Why don’t you?” And usually my go-to answer is just, “I don’t know. I haven’t found one that suits me?” to which the other person usually replies telling me “Oh, we’ll think of one!” and then that never gets brought up again (I’m laughing really hard in my head right now after writing that sentence. I find myself hilarious). But this reporter. He was determined to not be like the rest, I tell you. Instead, he made it his mission for those next two minutes to come up with a name for me and low and behold, I guess I’m 강아린 (Kang Arin) now, and can’t really go back on it because it’s published in the news LOL. Nah, but I actually really like it. It sounds nice to me and it’s not a common name I guess, so that’s fun. I still have yet to actually use it in another situation, but I guess now I have something in my back pocket in case the need ever arises.

Here’s the article on the news site’s homepage! The title is “Undergrad VANK Interns Want to Let the World Know About Korea”

I’ll leave the link to the article here. It’s all in Korean but like…you can look at the pictures? (Read: I”m too lazy to translate)

반크 인턴 美대학생들 "한국, 세계에 제대로 알리고 싶어요" | 연합뉴스

Oh, also I wrote another article for VANK’s site about Korean language education in the US if you’re interested in reading! I’ll just stick that here as well…

Korean Language Education in the United States

We also did a virtual interview with a reporter from Voice of America in DC. The content was pretty much the same, but this reporter actually asked a few harder questions that I honestly wasn’t prepared for? And to make matters worse, we didn’t know we were doing the interview until the day of and weren’t given any materials, like a question sheet or something, to prepare. Need I remind you, I’m still not that great at Korean, so like, going pretty much blind into a kind of official interview (despite there not being that many people who actually follow this news site, I don’t know) was stress-inducing. Also, our boss kind of gave us some (a lot) of wrong information about the nature of the interview, so that didn’t really help either. He told us it would be around two minutes per person over the phone on a live radio show, and that we could “use easy Korean” because it would be short.

Well…

• The interview lasted about an hour
• It was a group interview over Microsoft Teams (Thank god. Phone calls give me anxiety)
• It was not live (thank god again) but it was recorded to be posted later
• There was HARD Korean that needed to be used and THINKING that needed to be done. Not my biggest strengths
• It happened at 10:30 PM because of the time difference. Need I remind you that my bedtime is now like 9:30, so my brain wasn’t at a fully functioning state, making my speaking skills just…horrendous

So yeah. Not the best interview it could have been, but oh well. I tried. I did my best given the circumstances and lack of preparation and general anxiety, so I’m proud of myself.

This article is also in Korean, but there’s also audio clips that go along with what we said. So if you’re curious to hear how I sound in Korean (don’t get your hopes up) you can go in and see (hear?) for yourself.

[뉴스 풍경] 한국 문화 역사 배우고 알리는 미 대학생들

Okay. Now for the main event of this post which is…

We got to do a radio interview on one of KBS’ (Korean Broadcasting Station) shows! Granted, I doubt it’s a very well-known show, but still! We got to go to the KBS broadcasting building where they film the news and other radio shows and then got to sit in an actual official-looking recording studio and do our interview. And this time they gave us the script a few days in advance, so I had lots of time to prepare. The questions were along the same lines, so nothing too terribly difficult. Also, we each get like $50 for doing the interview, so that’s cool. That can buy me like 16 rolls of tuna kimbap.

The radio host was also super nice and has been doing radio for like 40 years now, so he knew how to interact with us and keep the conversation flowing when we got tied up in our words. It was nerve-wracking for sure, but it was a really good and exciting experience. Definitely got me out of my comfort zone, I can say that for certain.

Our official visitor passes that you had to scan to get into the building. I could pretend I was a celebrity on important business for those 2 seconds haha

All the professional equipment. The soundproof(ish) room. The big red light that said “On Air”. Terrifying. But also so cool.

BTS was on the 9 o’clock news last year and left this nice large signed poster for people to take pictures with. I took full advantage of this opportunity.

So now I can officially say that I’ve been on the radio and been interviewed for the newspaper. And the fact that I managed to pull it off in Korean is just an added something to be proud of. It wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t terrible so I’ll count that as a win.

I’m going to leave the audio file for the interview here. Again, it’s all in Korean, but if you want to hear how I sound then knock yourself out and give it a listen!

2000 한민족하나로 (21-11-21 일).mp3

That’s going to be it for this update. I’ve done other fun things outside of my internship, don’t worry. I’ll be writing another update with all of that soon. Maybe even within the next few days (Now it’s in writing, so I have to do it).

Also, not sure if I’ve written this in another post, but if you ever want to contact me, feel free to send me a message over Facebook (Meta???) or leave a comment here! I’ll do my best to get back to you, but honestly now that I’m practically a celebrity here, it’ll be hard to find the time…

Just kidding. I’m cringing just rereading that. I’m off to go study haha.

Until next time!