UPI Students Join Exchange Program In South Korea

Since 2011, UPI has been cooperating with Youngsan University, Korea. Both of the university offers an opportunity for their students to have an exchange program for one semester or more. This year, Youngsan university offers an exchange program called Youngsan University Winter Program. Four students participated in this program. This program is designed to encourage students to be more open-minded, creative, innovative, and build leadership skills. 

This program was held for three weeks only. From 6th January 2020 to 17th January 2020. The program was held at Youngsan University Busan, Korea. There are more than 50 participants from Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. 

In this program, students are required to respect every perspective that comes from other participants. There are not only UPI students who joined this program, but also students from the University of Malaya, University of Multimedia Malaysia, Nanyang Technological University Singapore, and many others. Every student was set in a group that has a multinational member. Each group must have a representative from every country that joined the program which was Korean, Malaysian, Indonesian, and Singaporean. 

Students were given some topics to choose from, such as beauty standards, education, environment, marriage, food waste, gender equality, etc. From the topics, each group should pick one and discuss it. Meanwhile, at the end of the section, each group should present their works in front of the professor and other participants. Besides, working on their final presentation, students also have a lot of activities during the program.

First, there are K-Culture, where students have a class from 1 pm to 3 pm. In the class, they learned the historical background of Korea, the language, culture, philosophy of Korea, and also some fun part where students play traditional games of Korea and paint the Korean flag, and making Korean souvenirs. 

Second is K-Food which students learned the traditional cuisine and technique of cooking Korean cuisine. The class was set in the big kitchen where students are required to cook in pairs and tried to cook Korean food with traditional recipes. Before the cooking begins, the professor would demonstrate how to cook the food in the right way. In the first week, students cooked Bulgogi, the second week they cooked Teobbokki, and the last week they cooked barbeque with special traditional recipes from Korea. 

At the end of the program, all the participants gave their presentations based on the topic they were already given before. After all the group had presented their topic in front of the room, it marked as the end of the program. Before the program officially closed by the head of the university, all the participants received the certificate and merchandise from the university. (Agis)