How To Korea - Episode 11

Join us today on another episode of How to Korea, the best podcast in South Korea, where we tell you what it takes to live in South Korea. Disclaimer: In today's episode, we switch back and forth between Korean and English so our Korean and English viewers can watch and understand what's going on! Today, we finally put a face to a name - Mo! We've shouted him out a couple times in our past videos and he's always kept us in check, telling us when we were mistaken about certain things or helping us further explain certain things that we were unclear about. Naturally, we had to have him on the show so that we could thank him in person, and show our viewers who our Korean savior is! We begin the episode by talking a bit about Mo and his background, as he tells us a bit about his family and the stage in his life. It's interesting because Mo's birthday is literally one day away from James's birthday but they are both living such different lives! Mo is currently trying to obtain his certification for boiler maintenance, which is an upgrade on his current occupation. He works at STM which is a subsidiary of SDI (Samsung) and is a very hard worker, father and husband. We talk a bit about his personal life, and how he lives in a separate home from his wife. In Korea, "Weekend couples" or "주말부부" is very common, as the husband works in a different city based on his job, and the wife lives with her parents in another city as she raises the children with the help of her parents. Mo's situation is a bit different but is also common place in Korea. He has a place of his own during the weekdays so that he can get enough sleep in order to be fully rested for work, so he can continue making enough money to support his family, while his wife stays with her parents to raise the children, with the help of her parents. We conducted this interview during Korean Election Day, so naturally we had a lot of questions regarding election day, which Mo was more than happy to discuss with us. In this episode, we speak about why Koreans can vote before Election Day, and how that affects queues when lining up to vote. (There barely is a queue, voting in South Korea is very fast and efficient, as is almost any other governmental process in this country) We talk a bit about political parties in South Korea and their political platforms, and a bit about the history of Korean politics. Interestingly, the colors in South Korea are seemingly chosen at random, which was a huge surprise for James who's accustomed to red for Republicans and blue for Democrats, but wasn't such a surprise for Ian who's accustomed to different political parties having different colors in South Africa. We discuss why voting in South Korea is done so quickly and some controversies regarding the voting process, as is common in almost every other country in the world. We dive a bit into the difference between the political parties in South Korea as well as the a bit of South Korean political history. Naturally, we dive into trying to figure out which historical presidents South Koreans preferred, which apparently are wildly different based on their political preferences and party preferences, for a variety of reasons. Finally, we discuss a bit about the current state of affairs when it comes to South Korean people's opinions of USA, and then wrap up the episode talking about the presence or lack-there-of of beards and mustaches on Korean men. If you've liked this episode, please leave a comment and subscribe so that you can be notified when our next episode is live! We upload a new podcast every week on Sunday at 2 P.M. (Korean Time) and we post new How-To videos every Wednesday at 2 P.M. (Korean Time). If there is a guide that you want, feel free to reach us as follows: IG: @howtokorea1 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61553899179696 E-mail: [email protected] Youtube: @howtokorea1