@tomyduong1 Earlier this year, I competed in a Korean speech contest literally just for funsies, and a couple months later, I found out that I got invited to go to Korea with 250+ other contestants. 🙈 Honestly was kinda spontaneous + I had such a grand time bonding with total strangers over all things Korean. It was as if this trip was meant for me from the very beginning. 🥹 #korean #koreanlanguage #sejonghakdang ♬ girlsgeneration x majid jordan antewoo mashup – antéwoo 우앙테

Tomy Duong

Korean Language Program Student

PROFILE:

Tomy Duong started taking Korean classes with KCI in the summer of 2022. Most recently, he placed first in the King Sejong Institute’s Korean speaking contest and was invited to visit South Korea by the King Sejong Institute Foundation. Born and raised in Southern Mississippi, Tomy moved to the West Coast for college where he studied business finance at the University of Southern California. Currently, he works as a product designer at a tech company based in San Francisco. In his free time, you can find Tomy taking K-POP dance classes, studying Korean, thrifting, cooking, and exploring the city.

What made you first interested in learning Korean?

I became interested in Korean culture as a middle school student years ago but started to learn Korean more seriously during my last few semesters at USC. Several things fascinated me about the language: 1) Korean sounds incredibly soft and soothing to the ears, almost like music, 2) the alphabet is stunningly beautiful with both its simple but intricate strokes and block-spaced word construction, 3) Korean culture is “baked” into its language via honorific endings and phrases, and 4) there are literally so many ways to conjugate a verb, each with their own nuanced meaning and politeness. It’s genuinely a captivating language.

How did you learn about the Korean Center and our Korean Language Program?

When I moved to SF, I was searching for online Korean classes to continue my learning. In my search, I inevitably came across the Korean Center and the language program. I remember how disappointed I was when I saw that the registration for the language course was over, but this made me even more eager to enroll in the classes later on. 🙂 

What has been your experience learning Korean with KCI?

Learning Korean with KCI has been incredibly fun, engaging, and fulfilling! Class sizes are small, so you get more 1-1 engagement with the teacher. It’s also held once a week which is really accommodating for working professionals. My teacher makes class engaging through all of the speaking activities which helps reinforce a lot of the concepts. Overall, the difficulty is just perfect for someone who has other life commitments but also wants to genuinely improve their Korean. 

You won first place for the King Sejong Speaking Contest. Do you have any study tips for someone who wants to learn Korean?

Everyone has their own tips, but I find these to be very helpful:

1. Learning a new language is like performing theater. To speak fluently and naturally, you really have to step into the shoes of Korean people and understand the way they pronounce words, use certain phrases, conjugate verbs a certain way, etc. Native Korean speakers have known the language since they were very little, so it’s a giant leap to expect success so easily without being vulnerable and immersing yourself in the culture. Put yourself out there, make mistakes, and try to model your speech the way native Koreans would. 
2. Immersing yourself in Korean culture will expedite your learnings. By listening to Korean music or watching Korean entertainment, you can pick up on phrases that don’t have clear, direct translations in English. For example, 마음에 들어요 literally means “something to enter one’s heart” and is often used to express one’s heartfelt liking for something. You could translate it to “I really like it”, but it’s more nuanced than that. As I mentioned prior, you have to think like a Korean, so cultural immersion will help you with that. 
3. Put your learnings into action by practicing speaking with a native speaker. Of all the language learning elements like reading, writing, listening, and so forth, perhaps the most difficult are the more active ones such as listening and speaking. By practicing these two with native speakers, you can improve even more. There won’t be passages to read from or time to collect your thoughts down with a pen when it comes to speech – just you and your knowledge!  

After winning first place, you were invited to visit Korea by the King Sejong Institute Foundation. Have you visited Korea before? Could you tell me more about your time in Korea?

This was my second time visiting Korea. My first time was purely recreational, but this time was more culturally immersive. There were close to 200 of us all over the world, and we were all divided into groups, each with our own cultures and personalities. Some of the many highlights of my trip include visiting so many landmark cultural centers, going to a KPOP concert and seeing some of my favorite artists perform (STAYC, IVE), being apart of the annual K-Culture festival parade, bonding with foreigners who all share the same love for Korean culture as me, and, of course, eating all of my favorite Korean cuisine. Beyond that, seeing other attendees who are much more proficient in Korean really inspired me to go back home and continue learning the language. There’s a lot more, so check out this TikTok video I created about my trip! (Video on the left)

How did studying with KCI prepare you for your trip to Korea? 

KCI taught me a lot of concepts that I was able to use during my time in Korea in conversation with peers and even natives. I will say the Korean needed to understand the program’s chaperones and hosts, however, is high intermediate-advance, so when I couldn’t understand something, other participants helped translate for me. This motivates me to keep pursuing my Korean studies with KCI! 

How did visiting Korea impact your Korean studies? Do you feel like it improved your Korean? Do you feel more motivated to study more?

It was impressive to see that so many other participants were more fluent in Korean than I was, which helps me learn more, too. During the finals for the speech competition, for example, an American woman presented her speech so impressively and naturally that I covered my eyes to focus strictly on her voice – if you didn’t know she was American, you would’ve thought she was Korean because she sounded JUST LIKE a native Korean speaker. She eventually won first place, and she set an example for how fluent I could be if I keep learning. So yeah, I’m definitely motivated!

What was your favorite thing about Korea?

I loved many things about Korea but one thing that stood out to me was how friendly and respectful people inherently are. We attended an opera concert commemorating the Korean alphabet (how wholesome and pure is that?) at the National Museum of Korea with the Yonsei tower in the backdrop. The event was open to the public, and I watched in awe at the atmosphere: cute little kids hopping around, family members uniting to enjoy the occasion, teenagers going on cute coffee dates nearby, elders eagerly sitting and waiting to give flowers to some of the singers, and so forth. Before that, we intercepted hundreds of elementary and middle school kids on their field trip to the museum, and all of them waved and greeted us with so much genuine affection. In all, the Korean people’s energy I experienced in Korea was so pure, warm, and friendly. I loved that the most.