Aalto University
TRAVEL REPORT 2014
FALL,YONSEI UNIVERSITY
[Type the document subtitle]
Estola Iiro, 360892
1/20/2015
2
Applying
In the end of February 2014 I received really good news from my home university, I was accepted
to student exchange in Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea. I had applied (if I remember
correctly) to University of Southern California as my first option, but was rather sure that my points
aren’t enough for the school and I’d have to settle for the second option.
My previous travel history already included North America, most of the Europe (via InterRail) and
some random countries from Africa and Asia. Second choice came down to New Zealand and South
Korea. There was no trouble choosing the country, because Korean culture has always been very
interesting to me. It is the first place in the world to show electronic sports in television, K-POP
(everyone knows PSY at least) and I was wondering what a country looks like where people
consume more alcohol per capita than in Finland. I also had a friend starting the exchange in the
same school when I had to apply, and his feedback was only positive. We had three options for the
school when I applied: Yonsei University, Seoul National University and Korea University. There
was no real information about the difference of the schools and I ended up choosing Yonsei just by
having a look at the Seoul in Google maps, the location of the school was perfect.
After results
The first thing to do after receiving the results is to accept the exchange place. That was easy to do,
only filling out two different papers and returning them to the return box near International Student
Services in School of Business main building. Just do it as soon as possible because there’s always
the risk of forgetting the whole thing. After that I received the information from my exchange
school on the procedure. The list of stuff to send to Yonsei University in hardcopies included:
application form, original acceptance letter, photocopy of passport, proof of language competency
(from Aalto), official transcript of records, statement of purpose and a proof that you have enough
money to survive your exchange (proof of student welfare form Kela or screenshot of your bank
account).
The important thing to notice is that Yonsei wanted all of these as hardcopies (it’s 2014, wow). As
usual, things weren’t as simple as I thought. I realized the hardcopy part way too late when there
were only eight days till the deadline and on top of that my passport had expired just a month
earlier! Finnish Posti guaranteed a delivery to Seoul in 10 days, FedEx would carry out the letters in
two to three days, but would cost around 200 euros. The choices were both bad, but luckily I had
the friend studying in Yonsei who promised to deliver my documents if I just scan them and send to
3
him. I had to get new passport with express speed (slightly more expensive, but ready in 24 hours)
to make it in time. My friend delivered the documents right before deadline (thanks Konsta!) and I
just had to hope they accept scanned papers without original stamp from Aalto.
Confirmation from Yonsei came in late May and I couldn’t have been happier, the exchange was
only few months away! Only thing left to do was to apply for dormitory via internet, register for the
courses, get the student visa (D-2) which only took like four days and book the flight tickets. I
managed to get a place from International House which is located right next to SK Global House in
Yonsei University campus. It was the cheapest option, but meant that I have to sleep in same room
with someone else and use the public toilets and showers in the floors. Having served the military
service in Finland this was no big deal for me just for four months. Finnair flies straight to Seoul
and I went with them just because it’s a known company with decent customer service just to avoid
any problems during the travel.
I also managed to meet one other Finnish student before leaving Finland. Even though he studied in
Mikkeli, Finland we had some common friends who knew that both of us are going to same place
and brought us together. I ended up spending a lot of time with him in Seoul because we came
along very well and had the same kind of mindset or game plan so to say for our exchange.
Arriving to Seoul
I am very open-minded person and expected the arrival to the other side of the world to be quite
smooth and easy. Even to my surprise I hardly faced any problems or “culture shock” at all. People
were helpful even at the airport where I was instantly helped to use the subway ticket machines by
an airport staff member. The trip from Incheon airport to Sinchon station (closest one to school)
took around an hour which was actually nice because I got to sit down for a moment and observe
the Korean people and atmosphere for the first time. Let me tell you, the Koreans are really busy
and therefore often tired people. I ended up to a conclusion in the subway that 50% of the
passengers sleep and I’m quite sure one of the girls slept the whole subway ride and most likely
missed her stop. I didn’t feel like waking her up since I wasn’t sure about the local customs. Rest of
the people played games with their smartphones and tablets. Just as an interesting fact the most
popular game seemed to be Clash of Clans (yay Finland!). I also spotted many Supercell ads
already on the first subway ride.
I spent the first day with a Finnish girl, an American-Mongolian girl, a German girl and a German
guy who I had met at the campus. We walked around the campus and had our first meal. We ended
4
up eating Vietnamese food because it was the closest restaurant we found and we were already
really hungry.
Starting the studies
As I said earlier, first course registration was in June, before arriving to Seoul. It started at 4am
Finnish time. My friend had told me to be fast because courses fill out quickly. I managed to only
get one course out of the five required, even though I logged in 4am sharp and was clicking like a
mad man. The second registration during the first week in Seoul wasn’t any better, the website
basically jammed and I couldn’t register to any additional courses. This is probably the worst thing
about Yonsei as a school, South Korea is really technologically advanced country with the highest
internet speed in the world, but one of the biggest/best schools don’t have working course
registration system!
My troubles with the registration meant that I had to go speak with the professors whose classes I
wanted to take just to get their signature for “post-registration paper”. Luckily they were aware of
the problems that especially exchange students meet year after year and were ready to sign the
papers on the first class if there just was still room for additional students. I won’t go into detail
about my thought process of choosing the courses other than I wanted to take Korean language
course which was filled up already during the first registration and on the first lecture there were
thirtysomething unregistered students wanting to take the class. Needless to say I wasn’t accepted to
the course and hardly learnt any Korean during my exchange.
I met my roommate on the first day after he had finished the studies for the day. He had put post-it
notes all over the room letting me know what items I can use and where to find everything in the
building. He was a Chinese guy, two years younger than me who only studied Korean language in
Yonsei and had arrived two months before me. We came along well even though we didn’t really
bond too much, both of us just took care of their own business and didn’t disturb one another.
Courses
The course selection was decent in my opinion. I found five courses easily that I liked and my home
school approved of. Courses in Yonsei are offered either in Korean or English so you have to pay
attention to the legend of course syllabuses. I know some students who found themselves from
classes in Korean and had to quickly find another class which made the weekly schedules a pain.
Yonsei doesn’t really care what classes you choose, but just make sure the choices are OK for your
home university. The courses usually have two exams (mid-term, and final), some homework,
5
mandatory attendance on lectures (at least 80%) and group work with presentations. Here’s my
course selection and brief summary of the contents and some general thoughts:
-Practices in Journalism (COM3131-01-00), Undergraduate, 3credits, 30% mid-term exam, 25%
final assignment, 15% presentations, 15% assignments.
By far the most demanding course of the five. Coincidentally it was the only class where I got A+
(the best grade possible). As the name suggests focuses on writing and understanding news. Our
professor had to hold Skype lectures for the first half of the semester because she had been in a back
surgery. Deadlines for this class were extremely demanding, for example we received assignment
on Thursday afternoon and the deadline was Saturday morning at 10am. So if I wanted to go out on
Friday evening I’d have to do the assignment on Thursday evening or on Friday. We had many
presentations which in my opinion is a really good thing, there are way too few presentations in
Finnish schools.
Guest lecturers on this course were interesting: North Korean defector, Pulitzer winning journalist,
Media man of the year and so on. Assignments were study journals about the guest lectures or just
writing news stories about the aforementioned persons. I’d recommend this course, but I know most
of the other students wouldn’t.
-Management Science (BIZ2122-01-00), Undergraduate, 3credits, 30% mid-term exam, 30% final
exam, 15% homework, 20% case study + presentation, 5% attendance.
Course where excel is the main tool for everything. Some students found this course challenging
because they had no previous experience using excel, but for me it wasn’t too hard. Things to study
include linear programming, network optimization models and binary integer programming to name
a few. Professor on this course was positive and helpful, but it is a popular course with many
different professors so you might not be so lucky!
-International Business Environment (IEE3177-01-00), Undergraduate, 3credits, 30% mid-term
exam, 30% individual presentation, 40% group presentation.
This one was the least challenging course. The professor spoke bad English and spent most of the
lectures telling stories from his career in business world. The actual studying was left for the
students. Seemed to have favorite students in the class who all received A+ (maybe they actually
6
did well, I don’t know). Anyway, the content of the course was rather interesting, but the professor
kind of ruined the course at least for me. Luckily it was his last semester as a lecturer and he retired
in the end of 2014. Course contents included: trade regulations, business in global environment
versus local and political risk management for example.
-Critical Reasoning (UIC2101-01), Undergraduate, 3credits, 30% mid-term exam, 30% final
exam, 30% assignments, 10% attendance.
“This course aims at improving students` ability of critical reasoning. We will try to achieve this by
systematically studying arguments, which can be defined as a group of statements consisting of one
conclusion and one or more premises. We will learn how to discern different types of arguments,
and how to evaluate them.”
Description of the course was so good in the syllabus that I copied the first paragraph straight from
there. For me this was the most interesting course. I guess one could classify this course under
philosophy, it’s mostly reasoning and students need good logical skills to do well. For this course
there were only ten students in the class which made a good atmosphere and professor could bond
with the students and take more questions.
-Organizational behavior (BIZ1102-02), Undergraduate, 3credits, 30% assignmens, 40% review
exam, 30% group projects + presentation.
Management course that aims at making the students understand cultural differences, organizational
changes and behavior in groups (organizations). Why people behave like they do and how to
improve effectiveness in different situations. We had two different individual case studies and two
group case studies. The second one discussing the famous Columbia shuttles final mission and the
concept of groupthink. Professor was friendly, but the feedback during course was nonexistent. I
still don’t know the grades for any of my assignments, exam or group work. Second lecture of the
week was replaced with an “online lecture” meaning that we were supposed to watch a video where
professor went through the previous lectures slides again and explaining things that didn’t fit on the
normal lecture’s schedule.
7
Seoul
For those of you don’t know, Seoul is the second largest metropolis in the world, measured by
population, right after Tokyo. This basically means that there is an endless amount of things to do at
any time of the day and any day of the week. Area of the Seoul Special city is 605,21m2, I know
that Singapore is one of the most popular exchange locations and the whole country of Singapore is
just slightly bigger than Seoul. A city this big needs proper public transportation and the Koreans
have done it exceptionally well. Seoul subway consists of around ten different lines and they cover
the whole city. On top of this there are many bus lines in case you manage to find a place without
subway station nearby. I only used bus once just because subway was so convenient and cheap to
use. Taxi is the best option to move nighttime when you’re moving in a bigger group. 45 minute
taxi ride from Sinchon to Gangnam station costs only ~16k₩ (~12€).
Quality of air seems to always be one of the topics brought up when traveling to big Asian cities.
During my stay there were no problems whatsoever, but from what I heard things might be different
during the spring when winds bring pollution from China.
Living in Seoul is really easy even from Finnish person’s point of view. Transportation works, the
city is filled with convenience stores that are open 24/7, restaurants are cheap and open late, people
are friendly, credit card can be used to pay almost everywhere, shopping options are endless…
During my four month stay the biggest annoyance I faced was that Koreans like to save
environment and therefore there’s no hand dryers and/or paper to dry your hands with in toilets.
That tells quite a bit about how easy it was for me and the people I got to know to live in Seoul.
Safety is another good thing about Seoul. I’d go as far as to say that Seoul is safer than Helsinki for
example. I myself had no troubles during my stay and I didn’t hear or see anyone else being in
trouble either.
The other annoyance was that many locals didn’t speak good English if they spoke English at all.
The older people most likely know only few words, younger people are a bit better, but still shy and
small talk can be surprisingly difficult. University students usually speak pretty well, but even they
are shy because they are not used to using anything else in daily life than Korean or in some cases
Chinese.
8
I’ve compiled a short list that you should take care of when you’ve arrived to Seoul:
-Apply for Alien Registration Card at Immigration office. It’s required if you stay over three
months in South Korea, even if you have Visa. Try to go early in the morning, office opens at 8am,
staff has lunch break from 12pm to 1am and it’s going to be really crowded after that.
-Get your local SIM-card from Olleh store. SIM costs ~30€, calls/messages ~10€ and 500mb of
data/month ~10€.
-Charge your student ID with T-Money at subway station, it can be used to pay in some stores, but
it’s mostly for subway.
-Check the seasonal events and sightseeing places online. www.visitkorea.or.kr helps with this.
-Download KakaoTalk app for your smartphone, Koreans don’t use WhatsApp at all and even
Facebook is quite rare. Kakao is better than the competitors in most aspects anyway and you’ll get
used to it quickly.
-Enjoy!
Free time
Student organization in Yonsei organized some activities during the first weeks in Seoul, mostly
focusing on local sightseeing like War Memorial of Korea, traditional villages and N Seoul Tower.
I took part for the first two city tours and I can only recommend them, they are worth the 30
something euros just because you don’t have to worry about getting around and you get to meet the
other students in the tours. If you’re into sports, dancing or whatever else, you can most likely find
a student club focusing on your favorite activity. Just understand that Korean students take their
studies extremely seriously and spend most of their time in library or in classes. The student clubs
aren’t really active and parties are held basically only on special occasions (compared to Finland
where student parties are almost like a weekly routine) like Halloween or after mid-termand final
exams.
Getting to know other students is on students own responsibility as usual, but if you happen to live
on campus it’s really easy to get to know people. Explore Korea on Facebook is one of the channels
where you get information about exchange student parties and get-togethers if you struggle to find
information otherwise. Socializing and networking is the most important aspect of exchange in my
opinion and everyone should do it as much as possible. If you don’t enjoy parties you can connect
with people through study groups or clubs.
9
I got to know tens of people well during the four month period, we had really good atmosphere
between exchange students and had dinner together almost every evening. Fridays and Saturdays
were obviously the usual nights to go out, but if you have free time in your schedule city like Seoul
has a place to go any day of the week.
If you for some reason get bored of Seoul there are cheap tickets to China, Japan and all the other
nearby countries. I ended up visiting Japan and travelling inside Korea with a group of other people.
Some interesting locations inside Korea include Jeju Island, Busan (second largest city in Korea)
and Daegu. I also visited city of Andong where they held annual Maskdance festival in late
September.
Hiking is one of the more popular sport activities in Korea. Mountains can be found in the northern
part of the country including Seoul. Bukhansan (Bukhan Mountain) can be reached with Seoul
subway and depending on your condition climb to the peak takes somewhere between two to five
hours.
My bucket list when leaving Finland was to: 1)Visit K-POP concert, 2)Attend E-Sports event,
3)See live sports, 4)Try as many different restaurants/foods as possible, 5)Travel to some other
country during the exchange and 6)To network with both the exchange students and local students.
I was able to fill out all the above mentionedthings and a lot more. I recommend exchange students
to think about things they want to see and do beforehand, so the scheduling is easier and you have
some kind of idea what can be done and where.
Closing thoughts
Exchange in Yonsei University was one of the most enjoyable time periods of my life. Living was
easy, quality of education was good and most importantly I got to meet many interesting people
around the world. Now that I think back in time, applying to a school in South Korea was the best
decision to make even though my first choice was University of Southern California. I find it hard
to believe that I’d have enjoyed my time more anywhere else in the world.
I recommend Yonsei University to everyone. It’s hard to find things to dislike about the school or
the country. Everyone who I talked to before leaving Seoul also agreed that the four months we
spent together were amazing and they had made the right decision to go to South Korea for
exchange.