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Why Korea? And what am I doing here?

안녕하세요? [annjŏnghasejo] Hello!

Are you wandering how am I doing in South Korea? It's awesome. I love it here and I'm so happy to be here. And if you're asking why am I here, we have to go back to my past. So I will try to explain how I go to South Korea and what am I doing here.

While I was studying in Tomsk, by the way I started to write this blog there, for the first time in my life I started to think about doctoral studies. I learned so much from my professors at TPU in Tomsk and it isn't a well-known or famous school. Changing the environment is sometimes very important and I also knew that the I can't pursue the things which I'm interested in as an PhD student in the Czech Republic. First for my PhD studies I had my eyes on the USA, of course. But American culture isn't really interesting for me. But...

Kpop, kdrama, food etc.

...suddenly I was thrown into the world of Korean series (kdrama) by my sister, later I have found out about Korean pop (kpop) and that is just small step from Korean food and Korean culture in general.

사랑해요 Makychan!
So... how about going to South Korea? After all they lead in the statistics in terms of the number of medical devices per capita according to the World Health Organization, the development in medical physics is huge here (Hello my diploma thesis inspiration! [1, 2]) and hangul is not as complicated as kanji. Of course I had a lot more reasons, but these were probably the ones why I started to think more seriously about doing my PhD in South Korea. Well, but how to get there? What about tuition fees?

Global Korea Scholarship

I have found out pretty fast that there is a scholarhip from Korean government for foreigners who want to get their degree in South Korea. The selection procedure is quite complicated (I won't write about it here, but if someone is interested, I can write another article about this later on). You need to be preapared for lots of  paperwork and for one 15 minutes long interview at the Korean Embassy in Prague. Nowadays they will select two people from the Czech Republic. And by the time I was applying, I knew only hangul. Period. No TOPIK.

After all the hustle I managed to get in, even though I had to extend my master's degree for a horribly long time, I passed the interview and I got in the 2nd round. The NIIED takes all applications that passed the 1st round and sends some of them for the 3rd round which is done by universities of your choice. You can put three universities in to your application form. I wrote there KAIST, SNU and Kyung Hee University. I passed got through this round too and after a moment of hesitation, when I put all + and - on paper -> KAIST was the one! I hope so.


KAIST is located in Daejon, which is approximately 150 km from Seoul. So, why am I in Daegu right now?

Korean Language Program

There is one-year language course for all those students who can't speak Korean even a word (you need to have at least level 5 in TOPIK)! You donť get to choose the institution where you'll be studying Korean language, it is assigned to you by NIIED and you can't change it. So I was sent to Daegu University with other 50 students and now we are trying to learn Korean. They are quite strict about this language program, because if I will not obtain level 3 in TOPIK by August 2020, we have to drop out from the scholarship program.


But so far it looks that I will be able to get there, therefore I should move to Daejon for the next three years where I will be studying Bio and Brain Engineering.

Resources:[1] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1120/jacmp.v11i1.3081
Štítky:
Místo: Kjongsan, Severní Kjongsang, Korejská republika

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