My interest in studying in Korea
I was confronted with all the implications of leaving my home and family after my father quit his job five days before my fifth birthday. I remember getting on the bus, taking out the camera my mother had given me, recording the sad faces of my relatives saying goodbye and then leaving. Before that, I had always thought that Chocó was the only place in the world, so being on that road on my way to the city of Medellín, Antioquia, was a shock to me. In a desperate attempt to make me not feel so out of place, my mother encouraged me to continue documenting with my little camera everything that seemed different to me. And so it was that my interest in minute details led me to read countless articles and books that explained the workings of media and audiovisual productions, and as I read them, my interest in working on proposals and producing content for audiovisual media grew stronger. As a child I heard a phrase that says "know what you have and create what you need", so I decided to join the children's missionary team when I entered school. There I was able to see first-hand many of the realities that people go through and thus become familiar with different social problems in my country. At the same time, I was able to dedicate myself as a missionary and carry out activities with young people from different parts of my country for the benefit of the most disadvantaged communities. Also, from this learning experience I had the opportunity, together with the Mayor's Office of Istmina, to be part of the youth cultural team, developing different videos and projects to promote cultural exchange in the cultural week that takes place once a year. My last project was related to the promotion of Korean culture, where together with my colleagues we set out to investigate the impact that Korean culture has had on the world, especially on young people. I was able to share Korean music, food and customs with some children and young people thanks to the help of one of the Colombian-Korean communities. It was a really rewarding experience as I had the opportunity to share my knowledge with them and at the same time I was able to acquire a brief knowledge about producing, directing and editing audiovisual material.
On the other hand, during my studies I attended different writing courses given by the institution, in them I had the opportunity to develop my skills through activities such as the production of academic writings where we exposed topics of social interest in order to convince the public with our point of view, thanks to this I got the skill to write and I had the opportunity to participate in a poetry contest at regional level for two consecutive years, these competitions were two of my greatest feats since I won them and my poems were published in the poetry book of the mayor of Medellin. I also had the opportunity to participate in the martial music band as a principal dancer and in the musical band as a pianist and singer, without forgetting that I stood out as a qualified athlete in the sports of athletics, basketball, football and chess, where I obtained a large number of medals, trophies and honourable mentions.
In the order of knowledge, this made me interested in cultural and social anthropology, writing, scriptwriting and oral communication. for this reason, the last two years I dedicated my internship hours to the faculty of journalism and social communication of the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, during which I was part of some projects of the students and I was also assistant to some professors of the career. Having participated in so many activities for my personal and academic development has allowed me to become a more creative, persistent, enthusiastic and open person, both personally and socially. And in the academic aspect, I acquired a critical and analytical character in the field of journalism and communication that has allowed me to develop a great interest in the media, which to this day is what motivates me to study it as a professional career.
As time went by, I realised how many opportunities and experiences I had, from being a child who lived through many difficulties to sharing with children going through a similar situation, it was thanks to this experience, that during the pandemic I did not stop my taste for learning new things, I took advantage of this time to focus on learning different languages among which are English, Portuguese and Korean, I also took the course of communication BA theory and practice to reinforce my knowledge about communication and obtain different learning which I want to apply once I enter the university. In addition, I started my own k-news project on social media, this has been an experience that has helped me to broaden my knowledge of Korean culture and language and has allowed me to bring this culture to many people in different countries around the world.
My interest in studying in Korea developed once I started learning Korean; before that, I was already interested in Korean culture and entertainment, but as I searched for opportunities to learn Korean, I became more and more familiar with Korean universities and was impressed by the high quality of education they offered. The media and communication degree programmes in Korea far exceed the standard of a quality undergraduate education, with fully equipped audiovisual and photographic studios and faculty conducting relevant research with publications in internationally recognised journals. Having been exposed for so many years to the development of my career, I can say with confidence that the advanced level of knowledge offered by Korean universities in cultural anthropology, writing and production during my media and communication degree is among the best in the world and I believe that studying in Korea through the GKS programme will allow me to benefit from a world-class education from which I know I can feed back to build opportunities for my people in Colombia.
