Have you ever wondered why people think that k-pop is all that make’s up Korea? I mean I was one of those people that when I thought about Korea I would only think about K-pop or North Korea, I wouldn’t really think about the culture or the food or the people. My first ever experience with the Korean culture was when I was in third grade and my parents enrolled me and my sister into a Taekwondo class, I don’t really remember much of it but I do remember that it was a different experience for me because I come from a whole different culture (El Salvador) and we don’t really have anything like that in our culture.
My second time I came across something Korean was in the beginning of my sophomore year I was watching a video called Youtuber’s react to K-pop and the first video that they showed was BTS DOPE music video, and then they showed about two more videos but the video that caught my attention was BTS’s but I didn’t really pay as much attention to it at the time, but it was kind of always in my head. A couple of weeks or so passed I and my friends would talk about k-pop a lot and how much they liked this one group which was BTS, and this one day for 8th period our teacher wasn’t there and we were able to use the laptops and my best friend Wendy was telling me about how she loved this one guy called Jin from the group BTS and she just kept talking about them to me, that she ended up showing me a song from them called Butterfly which I believe was the song that made get into BTS because after the song I asked her more about them and she googled them for me and she just started to name them all and she even made me pick my favorite (which is Jeon Jungkook), so BTS was the first ever k-pop group that I ever liked and was the group that go me more into k-pop itself, and I guess more into the culture.
That is how I got hooked on K-pop and K-dramas because a friend recommended me to watch a drama called playful kisses and after that drama it was a drama after another, after another, and so on but my favorite drama would have to be one called Age of Youth, and my favorite actor would have to be Kim Woo-Bin because he is very talented and a very good looking man.
When I found out that Roosevelt was going to have Korean as a language I was actually really excited, and my first thoughts were “oh now I can learn Korean so that won’t have to watch with subtitles and I’ll know what BTS are saying” but then I thought to myself that Korean isn’t only about k-pop or k-dramas, there’s the language, the culture, the food, the people and I told myself I should take the opportunity to learn to learn something new. I am now taking Korean as a language and I joined K-Club at school and I think that was a good choice that I made because I am now able to read in Korean which I thought was going to be really hard but it turned out not to be and I’m proud of myself that I’m able to read in another language aside from English and Spanish, also I know more about the culture, and I am happy because I got the opportunity to go to the Korus Festival that they had in Virginia that’s was surrounded with the culture. I feel lucky because Eleanor Roosevelt is the first public school in Maryland to have Korean as a language.
I am actually really happy that I got into the culture because I got to make new friends because everyone that is taking Korean class at school we are all so close that to me to feels like a family in a way because we all get along in class and our teacher Mr. Huh is such a good teacher and he truly wants us to learn the language because I know that he puts his effort into trying to make class fun for all of us, so in a way I thank Mr. Huh because he’s teaching me more of the language and more of the culture. I also want to thank BTS even though it sounds cliché in a way but if it wasn’t for them being a group I don’t think I would’ve got into k-pop because they are the group that let me experience a whole different culture and a different type of music and they make me happy and they make me want to learn more, so in general I’m just really thankful, and hopefully one day either by myself or with my class before I graduate I will be able to visit South Korea one day.
