New cafe promotes intercultural exchanges, 2014

New cafe promotes intercultural exchanges

12/02/2019, 10(32 PM

New cafe promotes intercultural exchanges 2014-08-12 : 18:07

Customers line up in front of “You Are Here,” a new cafe near Hongik University in western Seoul, Saturday.

By Eileen Cahill Around 1,000 foreigners and Koreans gathered Saturday near Hongik University, western Seoul, for the opening of a new cafe set up to promote intercultural exchanges.

Silver balloons spelled out the venue’s name in the front garden: “You Are Here.”

Twelve people from two websites that have worldwide followings joined forces to establish the cafe.

Eight of the founders are associated with the language-learning site “Talk to Me in Korean,” which has around 100,000 followers.

The other four are from “Eat Your Kimchi” — a video-blogging site founded by Canadian English http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/common/printpreview.asp?categoryCode=177&newsIdx=162791

Page 1 of 2

New cafe promotes intercultural exchanges

12/02/2019, 10(32 PM

teachers Simon and Martina Stawski in 2008 that now has more than 570,000 subscribers to its YouTube channel. Many of the couple’s 1,046 videos have had tens of thousands of views.

The cafe has five full-time staff members and five part-timers. A Korean language classroom is located on the first floor.

A long line of the sites’ fans waited outside the door and along the street.

Rose Gambrel, 22, an intern at Eat Your Kimchi, talked about her love of the work she does and her admiration for Simon and Martina. The new space will promote community building and intercultural exchanges, she said.

Korean language-learning books and Eat Your Kimchi T-shirts were on sale near the counter.

Lynn Coppens, 22, and Elisabeth Braet, 21, both K-pop fans from Belgium, came to Korea for a vacation.

Fans of Eat Your Kimchi, they were eager to meet Simon and Martina in person.

“We’re leaving on Monday, so we’re lucky to be here,” said Coppens. “We saw it online, the opening, so we were ‘Yay! We can go!’”

Yonsei University student Gonzalo Reque, 23, attended the opening with his cousin, Hanyang University student Alison Roman, 22. Both are from Bolivia, and they are fans of both websites.

“I was really excited to come and finally be able to meet them,” said Reque, whose interest in the sites goes back four or five years.

“That’s what made me connect to Korea and be able to get a look inside,” he said. “I was able to find out a little bit about the Korean culture and kind of learn some Korean before I came here — survival Korean.”

He thinks the new cafe will help Koreans and foreigners learn more about each other.

“It will kind of open the borders, I guess,” he said.

Ozge Ozguldez, 21, a KAIST student from Turkey, was there with her sister Asel and their cousin Mina Gonul.

“Eat Your Kimchi, it’s really helpful for the foreigners in Korea, because they give a lot of helpful information,” she said. “And in Korea, sometimes some foreigners cannot adapt to society really easily.

So if you watch Eat Your Kimchi videos, you can find places where you can have fun.”

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/common/printpreview.asp?categoryCode=177&newsIdx=162791

Page 2 of 2