Woke up to this on my phone and stopped breathing, thought it was North Korean missiles; turns out it was just an extreme heat warning. Photo: Arca

Radio can be a supreme piece of theatre at times.

We’re going to Gyeongbokgung Palace and then we’re heading up the mountain to get a load of Namsan tower, where lovers live. Or rather, where good taste goes to die. Afterwards, we plan on rolling back down into an air-conditioned space where we can eat and recover.

Koreascape host and my ever-ready soju partner, Kurt, decides it would be a great experience were we to don traditional Korean clothing (called a hanbok) when we go to the palace. Those wearing a hanbok get in free. The catch is, one must wear the appropriate clothing for one’s gender, otherwise they must PAY… money to get in.

Kristi is excited about this, I’m a little mortified at the prospect of wearing a dress. The producers suggest I wear the men’s outfit - somehow this fills me with more anxiety as I imagine myself being chastised at the palace gates for being some sort of freakish crossdressing infidel.

Biting back my penchant for catastrophising everything, I agree to wear the men’s outfit. Kristi and Sharon are both dressed by the time I arrive at the little shop across the street from the palace. I’m immediately pulled inside by a woman who will be dressing me. I put on some extravagant navy piece with a huge golden dragon embroidered on the front. I’m told I look handsome by the women in the store and as they crowd around me to take pictures and fuss, I want to disappear into the floor.

*

Getting into the palace is no big deal. I’m wearing sunglasses and a neutral face. It also helps that I’m hiding behind Kristi and Sharon as they're waved inside by the guards. Once free to walk the palace grounds, I feel the tension lift a little.

It’s a mercilessly hot day and the sun beats down on us no matter where we stand. Even posing beneath some pretty trees, taking each other’s pictures, feels torturous.

“I want the cute dappled light!” I say to Kristi, who tries her best to take a photo of me standing under a gorgeous tree at the moat’s bank. Even in this shade, the sunlight seems to crash through the leaves and burn pinholes into my back and shoulders.

It’s wonderful to walk through the grounds though, despite the heat and the scratching of my stiff robes.

Here I am looking uncomfortable, whilst a woman appears to commune with the tree spirit behind me. Photo: Kristi Cheng

The warm air smells like fermented fruit and aged wood and it makes me stupidly giddy when I see a hundred squashed and rotting apricots all over the Emperor’s garden. I think about how fun it would be to roll around on them. I express this desire to Kristi and she tells me I need to drink some water.

As we realise that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to breathe in our restrictive clothing, we decide to return to the hanbok rental store before one of us passes out ... or I hurl myself into the apricot graveyard ... or the black pond.

*

After 2 Gatorades and a change of clothing, we’re on a bus heading up towards the Namsan tower. Kristi and Sharon are talking into the recorder and I’ve got my face pressed against the window's cool glass, thoroughly enjoying my forehead smashing against it with each bump in the road because I am a complete freak.

Korean buses are the best. I love them, they’re not just a mode of transport, they’re an experience. Not only do the drivers have no care at all for your welfare as they break hard and without warning, accelerate before you’re all the way onboard and fling open the doors before the bus even stops: but you can control your own air conditioning above your seat! You can even open windows!

Well accustomed to the psychotic jerking of Seoul buses, I stand up to turn my air conditioning off and open a window, much to the chagrin of everyone in my immediate vicinity. I can see their irritation as a blast of incredible heat pins them back to their seats. Kristi glares at me and then laughs.

Korean transit cards are adorable, why aren’t Opal cards as cute? Sydney transport doesn’t believe in fun. Photo: Arca

The scenery is something to behold. Seoul’s architecture makes no sense to me. It’s a Frankenstein skyline wherever you look, and I can’t decide whether I like it or not, but I seem to enjoy staring at it constantly - perhaps because it’s so foreign.

We get off the bus at the wrong place and proceed to hike 1.3 kilometres up a mountain at a 45-degree angle in heat so overwhelming and so suffocating that it feels like cotton balls are being stuffed down my throat, into my lungs, crowding up into my head and filling my eye sockets.

It’s unpleasant. It’s glorious.

At the top of the mountain it’s much cooler, less humid and I feel a wild accomplishment in my veins as I suck down the remainder of my warm water. Kristi and Sharon both agree that the air is amazing up here. We take deep breaths. I can smell dirt and trees and running water. It’s revitalising and a welcome change from the near-constant stench of alcohol and sewage permeating the air and curling into my nostrils at street level.

*

Namsan tower is interesting. It appears to be some sort of romantic mecca. There’s a fence with thousands of love locks on them and there are brochures that talk about romance. On the patio outside at the base of the tower, there’s a garish plastic love seat that curves down in the centre, forcing the people sitting on either end of it to slide inevitably into the middle, where I presume they will fuse in a mess of cringe and sweat.

The sign above the seat says: “Is your date awkward? Break the ice by sitting on this love-seat, it will bring you closer together!”

It seems this is where you go with your lover, to be screwballs together as you watch the sun go down over Seoul’s confounding skyline. Afterwards, you can go inside and buy overpriced souvenirs.

As we descend the mountain, Kirsti and Sharon walk ahead of me, chatting breathlessly. I stay quiet and reflect on love. I mean, we'd just visited a literally enormous symbol of love, a place of love, a commodified kinda love but love nonetheless!

Next stop is the Gwangjang market for some real romance.

We’re gonna eat something that’s still moving.

It's 38 degrees celsius and a much higher level of modesty than Sydney pride events.
Here's the start of the march. Photo: Arca

There were thousands upon thousands of anti-gay protesters at the Pride festival. Their parade route clashed with ours. The main part of the festival encampment was surrounded by a 6-foot-tall plexiglass wall to protect the people inside. Despite the crackling tension - there was a positivity in the air counteracting it.

An admittedly poor view of the main stage. Photo: Arca

A fan given out to Pride revellers by the Australian Embassy .Photo: Arca

Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to cover any of the Pride festival on TBS for what I imagine are political reasons. I got some strong pushback from the news show, although Alex from Line 6, said he'd be down for a media package. I had other ideas for Line 6, so I begrudgingly abandoned the Pride stuff, satisfied that the drag interviews went ahead, as well as the anti-gay interview.

So I had that going for me, which was nice.

Hongdae at night. Photo: Arca

The only way these could be better is if they were 33cm long.Photo: Arca

Walks like this were necessary though. As tempting as it was to merely return home after work or to stick to the same nearby places out of tiredness or perpetual heat exhaustion, it was good to take the unknown road and untwist a little.

Terminally sweaty at a late night food market, being stared at disapprovingly by the rice wine vendor in pink behind me. Photo: Arca

Here I am with the other interns, Kristi & Aaron, eating some traditional grub out of enormous baskets.Photo: Arca

After the initial dazzle wore off, Hongdae revealed itself almost languidly. The city flows and oozes. There's not much sense to its organisation. It's like buildings have just sprung up accidentally. Signs are piled atop each other so hilariously high that you'd need binoculars to read them.

The impracticality of a lot of things became more and more apparent the more I'd ramble through the neighbourhood. It seems things weren't cleared away to make space: new stuff was just piled onto old stuff.

The endless parade of slick neon signage that would slowly come to life as night fell was wondrous at first, but quickly betrayed an emptiness I was disappointed to discover. Walking through the cramped and circuitous Hongdae streets offered the same options night after night: generic music exploded from outdoor speakers on every shopfront; rain-soaked red carpets rolled out into the streets to lure customers into cookie-cutter nightclubs. While I appreciated and adored the 24-hour nature of it all, the homogeneity became tedious after a while.

Also, maddeningly, there were no bins! Finding one on the streets of Seoul is like finding a free parking space in Sydney. Impossible. Ridiculous. Instead, there would be mounds of garbage looming over street corners tall enough to cast shadows. The smell in the heat was unbearable at first, but over time I began to curiously enjoy it. I don't know what that says about me. I asked some producers at TBS about the lack of bins. I was told it had something to do with security. Bombs in bins or such. I thought about this as I deposited my empty strawberry milk carton into a cardboard box outside of a cafe one afternoon. The box was put there as a makeshift bin. It was of course, perilously balanced on several other boxes overflowing with barbecue detritus and soju bottles.

Dotted throughout Hongdae are tourist centres - mercifully air-conditioned and full of maps, brochures and coupons. I would occasionally duck into these oases after hours of walking in extreme heat and just brainlessly look at everything without really seeing it. I picked up a "tourist welcome pack" and took it back to my room.

The pack contained a map, which I threw away with a snort, and a bunch of coupons. There was also a fan, which I loved and… a 20% off voucher for plastic surgery! Neato, I thought to myself. Fellow USyd intern Kristi had mentioned the medical tourism industry here. I'd forgotten about it until the other USyd intern Aaron and I spotted a pair of women wearing bandages and sporting hideously bloated faces casually shopping next to us.

Aaron had to remind me not to stare, but I couldn't help it. I was mesmerised. I even dropped a bit of delicious fatty chicken off my skewer, which broke my heart, but still, I couldn't tear my eyes away until they finally moved out of sight.

"Have you seen that before? Did you see that?" I asked Aaron, who remained poised and unruffled by the sight of what looked like a pair of swollen mummies.

"Yeah," he said. "That's not a big deal here."

It blew my mind. I felt silly for only half listening to Kristi's earnest speech about medical tourism and thought perhaps I'd been dismissive.

I turned the little voucher over and over in my hands, wondering. Korea has been flattened, no, almost annihilated not just once but twice. That's gotta hurt. In rebuilding both their infrastructure and trying to salvage their national identity - made vulnerable after wars and invasions - the inescapable tendrils of western culture managed to wrap themselves around the roots of modern Korean identity and have bloomed what appears to be a regressively shallow and materialistic set of standards nobody can actually achieve.

Something like 1 in 5 women here have had a cosmetic procedure. Appearance is everything. I won't go further into this here, because a lot of it will just be me speculating - but I realised that I had been inspecting this place superficially and judgmentally and that wasn't the way to go.

They had a harder time figuring out what to do with me, so eventually it was decided I would flit from program to program, like a choosy bee.

Here I am [right], looking sweaty next to the morning show host. [Arca]

I told the Koreascape producers that I thought it would be totally rad to interview a bunch of drag queens, for the LGBTQ Pride festival. The producers thought it was a fabulous idea - but the catch was that the interview might either be heavily censored or not allowed on the air at all.

So, the government-owned station was a little touchy about having a bunch of queens mouthing off about the mangled human rights of LGBTQ people living in South Korea.

But there are ways....

A rather delicious counterpoint was raised - why don't we also interview the head of the anti-gay movement in Seoul? That way the station can't be accused of taking a position, and we get to stir things a little.

After all, a frighteningly large counter-protest is scheduled to run alongside the Pride parade. It's a big deal, the anti-gay movement is vicious here and has a disheartening level of support. On the bright side, it was useful for pitching the drag queen interview.

We're interviewing queer-identifying people! Also, we're interviewing demented bigots! I mean, the head of the big anti-gay group!

Dichotomous, simplified, easy to push.

The anti-gay interview wasn't to my taste, so I had nothing to do with it.

I preoccupied myself with more important things, like steeling myself for Pride weekend and wondering what to wear.

A smart cookie (on the streets of Insadong). Photo: Kristi Cheng

Observing Kurt these past weeks, I have been inspired by his ability to hold engaging conversations, cover any topic and interview anyone, and be quick on his feet even after staying overnight at a jimjilbang (Korean bath house). Linda, the producer, edits skilfully and with ease, and Jamie the associate producer has an easygoing but assertive manner when calling potential talent and asking them to come on the show.

Last day. Photo: Viola

This internship has convinced me that working in journalism has to be part of my life, however hard it may be to get into the industry. The opportunity to tell the stories of a range of people and experiences is unparalleled.

Over the past four weeks I have learnt many aspects of making a cultural program – from selecting the story, what to ask during interviews, what not to say, and what to edit out or keep in. Importantly, I have learnt to not stress over small details, developing what I’d describe as a measured carefree attitude towards each part of the production process. I would like to thank the Australia-Korea foundation and the MECO department for this opportunity.

Night in Hongdae. Photo: Kristi Cheng

When I landed in Sydney, a border security guard at the quarantine area unexpectedly burst into Korean phrases upon seeing the origin country on my declaration card.

“An-nyeong hasae-o!” (“Hello!”)

“Eum-shik isseo-yo?” (“Do you have food?”) “Kimchi isseo-yo?” (“Do you have kimchi?”)

“BTS! EXO! SNSD! Big Bang! Super Junior!” (he literally sent me off with a list of k-pop idol group names, bless.)

I didn’t bring back any food, but I knew it wasn’t going to be my last time having Korean food in Korea. Thinking about it now, I’m even starting to miss raw octopus.

So farewell, but only for now! 이따 봐요, 서울! (See you later, Seoul!)

Incheon airport terminal 1. Photo: Kristi Cheng

It’s not a prerequisite to be an expert on Korea affairs in order to find good stories, but it helps to stay updated on the latest societal-cultural developments and trends. Being a non-Korean-speaking reporter on an English-language newspaper means many good pitches can be non-feasible because of a struggle to find leads who speak a proficient level of English. But I learned to work with that challenge. The internship is an opportunity to work creatively by developing ingenious alternative methods.

Press pass from the dessert fair. Photo: Aaron Yip

To the interns who come after me to Seoul, I say please prepare your taste buds for spicy food. This is especially pertinent if you plan to eat out most of the time. Most options range from slight spicy tinge to spice that will cause an insane amount of sweating and lip swelling. It’s difficult to avoid; I once bought a packet of sausages from a convenience store, and despite its innocuous packaging, it was of a challenging spicy level .

Korean BBQ, best way to enjoy Seoul (Aaron Yip)

Kakao Talk is the preferred app for communication in Korea, so install it to ensure a smooth integration to Korean working and social life. Beyond the messaging app, the Korean app eco-system is very different to Australia’s. Google Map doesn’t work well in Seoul. Instead, locals use Naver Map . Similarly, Google Translate doesn’t translate Korean to English or the reverse with high fidelity, so people turn to a programme called Papago (recommended by my supervisor at the Herald). Lastly, when you find yourself in a foreign part of town with no public transport, taxi is a perfect option but requires perseverance and persuasion. For those who don’t want to wave your arm like a mad person for 20 minutes, an app called Kakao Taxi, offers the same functions as Uber.

Night view of Itaewon (Aaron Yip)

This internship has been an unforgettable experience - a rewarding process of professional development and personal growth. Given my lack of industry experience, I was tentative to apply because I thought I was unqualified. Looking back, simply having the courage to apply for the fellowship was one of the best decisions I have ever made.

I want to thank The Korea Herald, University of Sydney , and The Australia-Korea Foundation for this amazing month.

This is all from me. Bye.

Paul Kerry (chief copy editor and my supervisor) and I

Last week wearing my staff tag. It's going to feel weird without it. (Aaron Yip)

My last week will be hectic finishing all the features I've been working on. I am really proud of one about an English-teaching volunteering event. English proficiency is an important skill for getting into good universities and upward social mobility in Korea. As a result, there’s a strong private tuition culture. However, many underprivileged children can’t afford private tutors which puts them at a disadvantage.

I came across the group “Beyond the English Divide” when researching another feature on a Facebook group for foreign teachers in Korea. They recruit foreigners to be volunteer teachers and offer free English classes to disadvantaged children every fortnight. The organisation is less than one year old, and they hadn’t received any media publicity. Their work is noble and noteworthy, and I hope that my article can help their organisation.

The video cover for my coverage on the 2018 Seoul Dessert Fair (Kayla Lim)

However, I do leave with regret. I leave behind an incomplete investigative project on some cosmetic stores engaging in suspicious activities. This is my magnum opus. I have been working on this case since the first week, and over the course of my internship, I would have paid four separate visits to the store. It is a highly-convoluted scenario, with many players involved (I don’t want to share too much information, because I have passed the case on to my colleague). I wish them the best of luck in exposing the shops’ secrets.

This is the hottest summer on record, which goes back to 1907 when official recording first began (Yonhap)

Although the temperature only hovers in the low 30s, which back in Sydney would be the ideal beach weather, the combination of high humidity and high population density means that the same 30-degree day in Seoul feels significantly sweatier than in Sydney.

The consolation is that rather than gaining weight from eating-out every meal and the lack of exercise, I have instead been maintaining, if not losing, weight from excessive sweating.

Alright, enough ranting about the weather and back to this week's interviews.

I conducted 3 interviews and featured as a video news presenter on Friday and Saturday. On Friday morning, I interviewed a private English tutor from the United States. It took place in Jamsil, a neighbourhood 50 minutes subway ride from the Herald office on the southern side of the Han River adjacent to Gangnam. I then had to rush to Yongsan, which is near my office, for a feature on a volunteering activity at a local disability centre. Saturday’s schedule was even more hectic. A group interview in the morning took me to the northern outskirt of Seoul in Gangbuk. I then dashed to the south side of Han River to do a video on the 2018 Seoul Dessert Fair.

Map of the interview locations (red markers) and office (blue marker) (Google Map)

As a foreigner with limited knowledge of the local language, it had been difficult to report on the affairs of local Koreans. But seeing and even participating in the two volunteering activities – English-teaching for underprivileged kids and cooking class with the local people with disability – really expanded my horizon.

There were moments of difficulty. The kids and the disabled residents have only basic conversational English ability, so letting them understand my intention to interview was more difficult than I imagined. In addition, I ended up simplifying many of the questions I prepared beforehand. The improvisation often involved removing the ‘why’ part of the question.

Beyond the English Divide, the English-teaching volunteering group I covered on Saturday (Aaron Yip)

Ethical consideration was another important issue. Privacy, for example, was paramount such as not using photos which show the faces of the residents of the disability centre. Another area is fair quotation. Since many could only answer in broken English, I had to be considerate in the transcriptions as to avoid an unfair portrayal.

That’s it for another week. I need to rush back and start writing. There are deadlines to meet. See you later!

My last day, with Sharon in studio. Photo: Linda Jeon

In studio. Photo: Linda Jeon

As I wrapped up the piece in studio with Kurt, I realised I needed to be less ambitious about how much analysis, nuance, and new grounds could be covered in a segment. I had been inspired by ABC’s War on Waste and my original pitch was to explore:

* living a zero-waste lifestyle in Korea,
* people’s attitudes towards waste reduction,
* how recycling is sorted in Korea (it was also sent overseas before China’s ban on recycling imports),
* the incongruence between laws on household recycling (a fine if items weren’t sorted properly)
* recycling behaviour in many public recycling bins,
* other “green” laws in Korea, e.g. limiting air conditioning temperatures to 26-degrees in government-owned buildings versus what else they could be doing, e.g. encourage less meat-eating and regulations on disposable packaging.

I realise how ridiculous it was to want to cover so much. It wouldn’t have been possible even if I had two hours to dedicate to this topic: the zero-waste Korean I wanted to interview about the lifestyle only spoke Korean, the vox pops section on people’s attitudes was canned because our resident reporter only had time to go out the evening before the broadcast, we were rejected by all the recycling centres for an interview, and we couldn’t find any English-speaking professors who could discuss the social aspects of recycling and Koreans’ relationship with waste. Nonetheless, I was quite happy with the final product.

Link to the segment: http://www.podbbang.com/ch/10121?e=22667929

The last time in this studio. Photo: Kristi Cheng

Fuzzy thoughts. Photo: Kurt Achin

I am so grateful to be interning at a radio station, particularly in such a dynamic and tightly-knit team working to produce each week’s program. The hardest part isn’t finding the story; it’s finding talent – especially talent that speaks English. I'm not left alone to take care of every part of the segment, which relieves a lot of pressure, and I don't have to worry about needing people to translate for me.

At an ice cream shop. Photo: Linda Jeon

However, it can be difficult to find talent with broadcast-worthy English. I almost had my pitch on recycling and waste-free living in Korea canned because it was so hard to find English speakers in this area. Because of this, the viability of my pitches depends on finding talent.

Beekeeping class. Photo: Kristi Cheng

At the end of this week, producer Linda and I headed to a beekeeping class, another field assignment from one of my pitches. At the back of a classroom, we listened to all sorts of bee facts the teacher taught to children and did further Googling ourselves. (Did you know worker bees are all female, and only live for 45 days, when the queen bee can live for years? And that when the queen bee loses her virility, the worker bees crowd around and cause her to die by overheating? Talk about a fall from grace!). However, interviewing the teacher, the parents, and the children, had to be in Korean, which Linda did after we discussed the questions. I’m particularly thankful to her for coming with me on the weekend so that I could cover the story I wanted to.

Linda to the rescue. Photo: Kristi Cheng

Another field assignment, another sauna suit. Photo: Linda Jeon

An illustration on a key difference between workplaces in the West and the East (Yang Liu)

This dynamic couldn't be more different in Australia. Knowing that I am used to a more egalitarian and relaxed work environment, my aunt pointed out all the little things that would ensure a smooth transition into a Korean office: never be late to work or meeting (well, this should be practiced universally), don’t be the first person of your rank to leave the office, always greet the boss and supervisor with a little bow or head nod, and don’t assume you are on a first-name basis with any older colleagues after a short time.

Luckily, the workplace culture at the Korea Herald is a fusion of East and West, where people display the famous Korean work efficiency while being chill and welcoming. During work, the office is dominated by the sound of people typing furiously on keyboards. Everyone exhibits amazing endurance and concentration. Amidst their workload, my superiors would still patiently point out the writing style errors in my draft articles (remember that 150-page style guide that I mentioned two weeks ago? I am still trying to master it; the learning curve is steep). I am very indebted to their attention, patience, and guidance.

Beyond finding leads and writing drafts, a highlight of every workday is the socializing which occurs during breaks and lunch. I didn’t know this before my visit, but in Korea, seniors (in school and at work) see it as a duty to look after the juniors. And one way to display care is paying for the junior’s meals. As a result, I have been a grateful recipient of numerous free coffees and lunch – like Bibimbap, pork bone soup, and Naengmyeon, a cold buckwheat noodle which is perfect in the humid summer heat. The expectation is that when the junior one day becomes the senior, they would then reciprocate the care and good will onto their juniors.

Korea Herald's staff canteen, where many conversations and acquaintances are made (Aaron Yip)

I am also getting acquainted with the other foreign interns at the Herald. While relationships with senior colleagues remain professional in nature, it is easier to relate to the other interns since they are also studying at universities. There are three foreign interns, all from the United States. Two of them are from Stanford while the other Harvard (slight tangent, he is also called Aaron, with family from China/Hong Kong. What is the chance!?). Working alongside people from such illustrious institutions shows the prestige of the Herald’s internship programme.

The other interns and I testing out the games at Sports Monster before producing an article on them (Aaron Yip)

Me at the hanbok (Korean traditional dress) rental place. Photo: Jamie Lee

Many hanbok rental places are scattered around the Palace Quarter. Entry to the palaces is free when dressed in a hanbok, so this is a popular tourist activity. At 11am, the place we visited was already chock full of tourists, each picking out their piece over the K-pop music playing in the store.

Feeling queenly. Photo: Sharon Tak

Dressed in hanbok with our hair up, our first stop was Gyeongbokgung, the biggest palace in the Quarter. Although we had planned to spend the most time there, the size of the palace and the temptation to take photos at every photo-worthy spot meant that three hours passed quickly. We grabbed lunch and got out of our hanbok, not keen to stay in a sauna suit for the rest of the day.

Next stop was the Namsan tower. In the 30+ degree heat, we hiked up 1.3km of unrelenting slope. The trail was empty except for us, so other people must have booked tour buses. Lesson learnt for future reference. I am still impressed we made it and did not die from heat stroke.

After stopping at a traditional archery place in the Namsan park (which we discovered was not for tourists), we finished off at the Gwangjang market. In a magazine for expats, a local was quoted as saying “I think Korea was more attractive when it was poor.” It struck a chord with the author, and I think it did with me, too. Gwangjang is a traditional market selling fabrics, dried food, vintage clothes, and a huge food section selling hot food. It was exactly the type of local, raw, unrefined scene I look for when I visit any new country. By the time we reached the market, I – and our audio recorder – were out of batteries. In our state of exhaustion, we ordered sliced raw octopus but forgot to record while we were eating. Alas, there would be no record of our reaction to eating still-squirming octopus tentacles - though it was very delicious.

The network map of Seoul Metro (Aaron Yip)

Six minutes to spare. Perfect timing.

This is it. The office of The Korea Herald. (Aaron Yip)

The English edition team is based on the ground floor. There are four small clusters of desks – each occupied by staff of a different section of the paper – in an open plan office space bathed in a clinical, white light. My supervisor, Paul Kerry – the chief copyeditor, soon appeared from the start-of-week editors meeting. Quick greetings and pleasantries were exchanged and then real work began.

There was no time to waste. I presented the news pitches that Paul had asked me to prepare beforehand. A sense of unease swept over me as he sat silently listening. This fellowship is my first experience working for a professional publication. But the overthinking and worry about quality were unjustified, because replicating the style of pitches I did in MECO courses such as Advanced Media Writing and Online Media were sufficient for him to get a fair judgement of whether to go ahead.

Comments from my supervisor on the pitches (Aaron Yip)

Three pitches out of ten were approved. The remaining stories weren’t necessarily bad, but I underestimated the language barrier – whether it be finding interview subjects who speak proficient English or accessing materials that often don’t have English translations. I naively and incorrectly assumed that English is well-circulated in the city given its international status and strong emphasis on learning English in the country’s education system (there are English tuition advertisements everywhere).

The rest of the working week flew by quickly. I was either researching and formulating more pitches or contacting interview candidates for the accepted news stories (I discovered KakaoTalk is the preferred communication app in Korea. Colleagues in the office use it for internal communication and you get much quicker replies using this app than with email - a lesson I learnt after waiting two days in growing despair, willing emails to appear in my inbox).

I signed off the first week with the publication of my first story! It was a preview of an upcoming musical film festival. The piece was relatively straightforward, but it still brought immense sense of achievement and joy (my mum asked for a copy of that day’s paper. I kept two copies for her). The adrenaline of seeing my own work being published will fuel my appetite to produce more quality stories.

First of many more articles to come (Aaron Yip)

For those who are worried that working at The Korea Herald is basically just hunching over a laptop - there’s also another side – conversation with the amazing staff who have incredible stories to tell, exploring restaurants in the nearby neighbourhood, and so much more.

But let’s leave stories from that part of work for next week, because teahouses in Insadong and buskers in Yeouido Hangang Park are waiting for me.

So long for now. Till next week.

The glass "wave" is built behind the Japanese city hall building as a form of fighting back using architectural symbolism

The first of such guest recordings I got to observe was with a UNHCR (UN refugee agency) spokesperson for a segment on the situation in Jeju island. The issue arose when more than 500 Yemeni refugees arrived on the resort island after realising they did not need a visa. With no laws in place to address such a situation, the Korean government quickly patched legal loopholes and banned the refugees from travelling to the South Korean mainland. It was interesting to see how Koreascape handled the issue; Koreascape is an English-language program with expats making up a significant percentage of its listeners, meaning they likely have different values to the everyday Korean. TBS, however, is a government station and has been described as conservative by my colleagues. Seeing how a liberal-leaning program functions in a conservative-leaning station, and the dynamics and careful balance it brings, was quite fascinating.

On Thursday, the three of us headed to the Australian embassy for our meeting with the Ambassador, James Choi. The meeting allowed us to ask the questions we were most curious about regarding the Korean-Australian relationship and about Korea. We learnt how Australia is trying to brand itself in the international market; important historical sites in Korea; the symbolic architectural atrocities the Japanese committed during its occupation of Korea; and how Korea rebuilt itself and made use of architectural symbolism in turn (as in above photo). An anecdote he told us reflecting the hierarchical nature of Korean workplaces stood out: Busan Bank, wanting to expand overseas, decided they needed a name more suited for an international audience. Without much consultation, the chairman came up with an acronym: BS Bank. Due to their hierarchical relationship, the vice chairman could not bear to tell his boss how this might be perceived by an international audience Thus, Busan bank's attempt to expand under “BS Bank” met limited success.