A total of three international exchanges were held with NTCC students in Taiwan. We met at zoom and divided each group and interacted with about 6 students.
In the first meeting, each of us introduced ourselves. I let my Taiwanese friends
know who I am. It wasn’t easy to let my friends from different cultures and languages know what kind of person I am, but it was nice to have a different experience. And we learned about each other’s culture simply by teaching each other’s language.
In the second meeting, we had time to talk about each other’s future hopes. Because each culture is different, the job they hoped for was also different, and they talked about jobs that were unfamiliar in Korea. For those of us who have always talked about careers and careers only in our country, the opportunity to hear the stories of Taiwanese friends was very unfamiliar and amazing.
In the last exchange, one topic that is the most important issue in each country’s society was selected and discussed. We discussed the topic of gender inequality. I came to know that Taiwan and Korea are quite similar while dealing with social structural discrimination and reverse discrimination that still exist even though it is said to be a gender-equal society.
And through the process of finding out similar but different cases of gender inequality in two countries and discussing solutions to them, it was good to be able to think about what I had discussed with my Korean friends in class so far with my Taiwanese friends.
We were able to learn a lot while conducting an international exchange project with these friends in Taiwan, a country that is close and has a lot in common with Korea. And for those of us who don’t usually have the opportunity to meet friends from other countries, meeting Taiwanese friends was a very unfamiliar yet good opportunity.
