1999-2000Kate Spence-Ado

Kate Spence-Ado

ETA :: 1999-2000

Kwangdok Middle School

When I stepped onto an airplane bound for Seoul from Burlington, Vermont, via Cleveland and Los Angeles, it was the first time I had been on an airplane. Now I had traveled internationally, if I counted a car camping trip with family across nearby Quebec province; however, as a rural country girl who attended college at a slightly more suburban, small, liberal arts college in central Pennsylvania, I knew that embarking on a journey as part of the ETA Program would broaden my life experiences more than I could even imagine.

Initially, I applied to the ETA Program in Korea for practical reasons. I knew I wanted to teach and the ETA Program in Korea had no language prerequisite and it was someplace I felt safe traveling to as a single, white woman. I had no idea that I would fall in love with the country, the culture, and the people when I made this pragmatic choice. I also was unaware of how the short 13 months I spent in Korea would shape my personal and professional trajectories. The hot, humid days in Chuncheon, with afternoon excursions to taekwondo class brought an introduction to both the basics I would need to survive—language classes and learning to eat with chopsticks and to some of the cultural phenomenon I still miss most— ddakalbi and noraebang. My teaching assignment was at Kwangdok Middle School, an all boys middle school in Gwangju, Jeollanam-do, a part of the country renowned for its excellent food. My host mother was no exception to this rule and I soon looked forward to her cooking each night.

As someone who was at the start of a career in education, I was excited about the opportunity to experience another country’s school system first hand. I had earned my teaching certification in the U.S., but my first formal experiences at the head of a classroom came in Korea. At Kwangdok, I was inspired by the sharing of responsibilities amongst stakeholders within the school, from the basic, yet necessary functions of cleaning the school, to the more coveted responsibility of class captain, and I saw the benefits of students working together as a class for the entirety of a day. More broadly, my experiences at Kwangdok introduced me to the great value that Koreans place on education and allowed me to see how this type of cultural value can influence the functionality of an urban school. Personally, as a 6 foot tall miguk saram I quickly came to understand what it means to be a racial minority, though a respected one, when it was impossible to blend in anywhere I went. As a novice Korean speaker, I experienced what it was like to only minimally be able to communicate the complex thoughts I was having in my native language. All of these lessons have influenced the interactions I have had in my subsequent rural, suburban, and urban classrooms in the U.S. Since my time in Korea, I worked first as a middle and high school English teacher, and after earning a doctorate in education, I now am a college professor, preparing future teachers for their own classrooms.

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Kate and her fellow ETA classmates take a group photo during the 2000

Spring ETA Conference in Jeju

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Kate and some friends unwind at a noraebang in Chuncheon, Gangwon-do during the 1999 ETA Summer Orientation

Katrin Katz

ETA :: 2000-2001

Mokpo Girls’ High School

When I applied to the ETA Program as a senior in college, I had two largely personal goals: to get back to East Asia (I had spent a year living in Kyoto, Japan as a junior) and to live in a country I had not traveled to before. Regarding the latter goal, I was admittedly not in the most pragmatic mindset. While other seniors were gearing up for their first ‘real jobs’ out of school, I was driven primarily by an intense curiosity to see if I would ‘sink or swim’ in a country whose culture and language were a blank slate to me. As such, I was more interested in testing my limits personally at that time than in building my professional or academic credentials.

But a funny thing happened along the path of learning to survive as a young and clueless miguk saram in Korea: I developed a passion for the country so deep that it literally took the reins of charting my career path moving forward. I did not know exactly the type of work I was best suited to at that time—academia? government? business?—but I knew that I would feel a sense of fulfillment as long as my work enabled me to deepen my knowledge of this fascinating country.

What was it, precisely, about my experiences as an ETA, and later as the program’s first ETA coordinator, that gave me the “Korea bug?” Was it the opportunity to bond with other ETAs while we learned the Korean phrase for “please do not boil my underwear” during our summer language training sessions in the hills of Chuncheon? Was it the smiling faces of my students when some English phrase I was struggling to impart on them

finally ‘clicked’? Was it the humiliating-yet-hilarious opportunity to sing an off-key version of “How Deep is Your Love”—complete with hand gestures and backup singers—to an auditorium of 700 students and their families at the annual “Mon-yo-go” variety show? (It is a tribute to the depth of my affection for my students that they talked me into that one.) Or was it my homestay mother in Mokpo, who proudly proclaimed to anyone who entered our home that I was her “daughter”—not her homestay daughter, her real daughter—prompting intense levels of curiosity among Mokpo’s social circles?

In truth, the Korea bug bit me at several moments over the course of my time as an ETA. I was left with an overall impression of a country that faces great challenges (these were the post-IMF, early ‘Sunshine Policy’ days) with immense soul. Having the opportunity to learn more about Korean history and politics while I lived there, I was deeply inspired by the ability of this people, this culture, this economy, to thrive in the midst of great uncertainties in the security realm. It became clear to me that at the core of Korea’s ability to stake its bold claim in this world is the grit and determination of its people.

And so a combination of comical/personal and more serious/universal realizations about Korea instilled in me a passion for this peninsula—its people, its culture, and its security challenges. Since leaving Korea, I received a master’s degree in East Asian and International Security Studies, worked

for the U.S. government in Washington, DC—culminating in a one-year stint as the Director for Japan, Korea and Oceanic Affairs at the White House National Security Council—and, at present, am pursuing a PhD in Political Science with a focus on sovereignty issues in East Asia. Each of these phases of my career has involved work with Koreans on Korea-related issues. As such, I may have left Korea in 2002 but Korea has not left me. I credit the ETA Program with providing this focus—I entered the program with a fuzzy interest in adventure and left with a passion that continues to drive my life’s work.

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A summer taekwondo class during the 2000 - 2001 Summer Orientation and a group photo at the ETA Spring Conference in 2001