Size Matters: Korean Community Meets Cultural Conflicts

San Angelo is quite different from any city in South Korea, but for many of ASU's international students, the people aren't too different.

Two years ago, Angelo State University signed an agreement with Sejong University that would allow South Korean Students to spend a year at their home university and then finish their next three here in San Angelo. ASU partners with 13 other universities in South Korea as well.

Of the 195 international students this semester, 135 of them are from South Korea. With the idea of coming to the United States in order to immerse themselves into American culture and develop their English speaking skills, some South Korean students are finding it to be more of a challenge than the had anticipated.

“The first reason I came was to learn English and also have a lot of experience with other cultures,” Jaehyun Chung said.

Ten other students from Chung's university have also come to study at ASU this semester.

Chung said, “In my case, I really don't want to hangout with Koreans here.”

Minkyung Kwak, another international student from South Korea has been in San Angelo since January.

“Korean students are tending to just hang out with other Korean students,” Kwak said of her peers.

Kwak said if there was anything she could change about ASU it would be to reduce the amount of Korean students.

“Actually, I think it's hard for international students to enter the American culture because here there are a lot of Korean students,” Jinhyun Sung, an international student, said.

Sung said he thinks there are good and bad points to having so many international students from the same country.

“For many Korean students it is hard for them to make American friends because they already have so many Korean friends with them. But on the good side they can better adjust easily in America because they have other Koreans that can tell them what to expect,” Sung said.

ASU is expecting the amount of South Korean international students to continue to increase in the future. The university will benefit from the growing enrollment and the students will continue to face the challenge of leaving their homeland only to find a similar ethic community enthralled by their culture.