After hearing that I got accepted to do my exchange in South Korea, I was beyond excited. I had never traveled to Asia before so I was excited to explore the new country and culture. I studied at Konkuk University in Seoul. Konkuk University is one of the leading private universities in South Korea. My studies consisted of business courses as well as Korean language and culture courses. Konkuk has a great selection of courses in English, especially for business students. However, managing to get into these courses is hard and stressful. All the courses fill up in seconds and only lucky ones manage to get into courses they want. I was lucky enough to get into couple of the courses that I wanted.
Student life in South Korea differs quite a lot from Finnish student life, especially studying. Konkuk University as well as the dorm had study rooms that were always full of students when the exam week neared. Many students would spend hours and hours studying for exams. Overall studying at Konkuk University was really different from studying at TAMK. Much more effort had to put in to studies and attendance was stricter. Studying in your own time was required because it wasn’t enough to just listen at the lectures to pass exams. Studies consisted of more individual work rather than group work which I was used to at TAMK.
My spare time consisted of exploring around the city and eating lot of delicious food. Seoul is a mixture of new and old so there is lot of historical places to visit alongside of modern shops and cafes. Seoul has lot of different coffee shops and restaurants where you can spend time when you are not exploring sights. Seoul had so many beautiful places to visit so I was never bored.
In the beginning Seoul seemed very overwhelming but nearing the end it felt like home. I definitely recommend Seoul as exchange destination for anyone who is interested in studying and exploring Asia.
Seoul is definitely my favorite city that I’ve ever been to.
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