Internship Week 1

I finished my first week at my internship in Seoul. This summer, I was fortunate enough to find an opportunity to learn more about the Korean business environment through working at a Korean company for three weeks. The company is the place where Uncle Josh (the Byeons uncle, now my Korean uncle) works.

The companys name is STL Solutions. It is a security technology company that makes security DVR's and surveillance cameras. This past week, I worked in the manufacturing department making DVR's. I tested memory chips for the DVR's and packed them with their accessories for shipments.

While working during the week, I stayed with Josh's family. His home is closer to the workplace so it was more convenient. This meant that I had a full week of work and playing with his two children Jinyoung and Eujin. I haven't had a chance to see them since Seonyoungs birthday, so it was nice to spend a lot of time with them.

Everyday after work, I would play hide and seek with Eujin and American card games with Jinyoung. Hide and seek with Eujin is played a little differently than you traditional hide and seek: you must wait until he is ready for you to look for him. He always hides in the same place, but you must act like you can't find him. After yelling "I can't find Eujin" he would jump out squealing "Right here!" If you don't conform to Eujins rules, he will refuse to play with you and sulk for an hour. One evening we went to the park to play and had to play games by Eujins rules, meaning that he must always win. Oh Eujin.....I just hope he will realize that refusing to play by the rules will not be acceptable as he grows older. Being the baby of the family, both immediate and extended, he will have a lot of growing up to do. Jinyoung's final exams are next week, so she was very stressed this past week. However, we did have time to play some card games and to watch Kpop music videos. She is a very sweet 11 year old who has grown up so much since I met her last August. Her English had improved considerably and she is more self spoken.

Ok...enough about my Korean cousins, back to the internship...

The workdays were long, nine hours of working and 45 minutes commute. Finishing classes just five days before, it was quite a change! I went from studying to working long hours everyday. I suppose that's the benefit of internships: It gives you a glimpse of what life will be like when you graduate. I don't think I'm quite ready for that stage of my life, but I still have two years to reach that point.

We would reach the office around 9am and leave around 6pm. Every two hours, there was either a work break or lunch break. Everyone at the company were very welcoming of this foreign student who could barely converse with them. This week has taught me just how much vocabulary you need to know in order to be conversational. I definitely have my work cut out for me! They were very understanding when I would mess up my sentence structure and say something completely off the wall. They would smile and correct my sentence.

The work was tedious, but it was interesting. I have never been in this kind of work environment before, working an assembly line. It wasn't exactly a stereotypical assembly line, but it was still a series of jobs that would progressively create a product. Never though I would learn how to test DVR memory chips, but it is a new skill for me! Every afternoon I would have lunch with different coworkers. Despite my lack of Korean, they wanted to get to know me and we would talk in a mix of English and Korean.

I will try to discuss some other details of the week along with some of the things I noticed that were unique to the way Koreans conduct business in a future post. Next week I begin my work in the Marketing area of the company, which will be interesting to be sure! Adjacent to the marketing division is the R&D department so I will be sure to check it out as well.