Q: Touching down in South Korea, what was your first impression of the country and what things/experiences informed that impression?
“One habit I’ve recently acquired is reading signboards, in any new place I visit, for patterns. When I visited Cardiff, Wales, in 2016, it immediately became obvious that this was a bilingual town, with all the signs in Welsh and English. It’s the same with Korea, but this time, there are Korean, Chinese, and English signs. A guide told me that there used to be a lot of Japanese signs too, when there used to be many Japanese tourists in the country – and perhaps a holdover from when the Japanese colonized Korea. But today, it’s just Korean, English, and Chinese.
The impression from that, of course, is how important others have taken their language. The country is not really as multilingual as Nigeria. Korean is the national language, so every sign is in Korean. But occasionally, depending on which audience is being sought, there are Chinese and English subtitles. When you get out at Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos, there is no one sign that welcomes you in a Nigerian language.
That’s a shame. We could learn from that.”
Q: South Korea being a country that has tried to hold on to major aspects of its culture yet it seems to have developed all roundedly, what lessons do you think Ibadan can learn from the Koreans in order for there to be development?
“We need to put value in our own intelligence. All electronic appliances in Korea can be operated in Korean. I can’t say the same for Yorùbá. Also, it’s unlikely that you can export a product to Korea without having it translated into the language. Not just Ìbàdàn. Nigeria can learn from a lot from this. Something else I thought was important is their attention to history. There is a museum I visited in Busan which details the long and brutal history of Japanese colonialism in Korea, as a way to make sure that people never forget. In Nigeria today, there is not one place where you can get a good overview of British colonial history, both the good and the bad.”
Q: What ONE experience did you have in South Korea that you (would) never have had in Ibadan or in other parts of the world that you’ve been to?
“I’m working on a couple of blog posts about places and events I attended. One of them is about a Buddhist Temple we visited in Beomosa. But the most memorable experience of the trip was visiting the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), a military line between North Korea and South Korea. The weight of history and the huge potential for war and peace weighed heavily on us throughout that visit. The South hopes and looks forward to an eventual unification of both countries, but the stakes are high, especially with the world powers who have been pulling them both in opposite directions for all this while.”
[END]
