News from 3.f in Seoul

We land excited in Seoul after 12 hours flying at 10.000 meters height. We don’t know what we are walking into and we are buzzing with excitement and expectations when we arrive in the Korean capital. Here in Seoul 10 mio. people lives side by side in neutrally coloured skyscrapers. 

You expect 10 mio people to make some kind of noise, but in Seoul it is quiet. When 27 noisy, laughing and not Korean-looking high school students come to visit it doesn’t go unnoticed. When we arrive at our partnerschool, Sangam High School, the quiet is over. The moment we step in, the students break out in spontaneous cheers. When we get to the lunchbreak the girls' screams cuts though the air when they get their picture taken with one of the boys, who, according to them, all look like Leonardo DiCaprio. You have to watch yourself not to get diva-like, when people start to cry just because you wave or smile at them. That is going to be the hardest part about going home to Denmark. We are going to miss the constant swarm of cheers and compliments that follows us around the school halls. 

Korean school is undoubtedly very different from the Danish. In Arts & Crafts we are painting our own traditional fan and before we start the teacher seriously says "If you make mistake on fan - you fail”. But change is lurking under the surface. The young people wants a different life than the one in store for them at the moment. They are fighting a rigid schoolsystem which doesn’t leave room in the calendar for political engagement. Their parents are conservative and even though they want what is best for them, they have trouble understanding the young people's need for change. Many of the youngsters we speak with have other dreams than university and one even told us she got a new dream: Instead of studying to be a engineer she want to move to Denmark and open a karaoke-bar.

If her dream come true, you will be sure to find us there in the future to help our post South Korea blues Gangnam Style.

Hugs 3.f