#3_ Multicultural Family_

 Last Monday, the first presenters gave a presentation on Multicultural Family. At first, they introduced who are they and where are they from. Then they talked about present conditions and what the problem they are actually suffering from is. In Korea, there are so many Multicultural Families. Most of them are international couples or foreigners couples living in Korea. However, in general, Multicultural Family doesn’t mean the people from developed countries like most of our ELS professors. So the term Multicultural Family really means one member of their family is from poor counties such as Africa or Southeast Asia. From the presenter said, the number of them is about 1,200,000 and it is getting higher. Therefore, it is very nice topic to share our ideas together, because they are also becoming some part of our society.

 The most important part for me was the difficulties they have had. Some people have got in trouble with discrimination and prejudice. And more serious difficulty is language problem and financial problem. Solution of that is simple. It is to support them with language education and money. According the presenters, some of province of Korea is already helping them that way. I totally agree their thought and policy. Like I said before, since they are also one part of our people, we can’t help supporting them.

 Another reason I totally agree that policy is I was in that kind of situation. To live other country is very hard, because there are some disadvantages such as tax, law. Therefore, we should support them regardless of ways, because no one wants to get unfairness.

#2_ Cohibitation Problems_

Last Monday, we talked about the cohabitation topic. It was very nice to share ideas together, especially for young students like us. These days, this problem is getting more serious all over world. It has been a kind of trend of the live style and some countries already made rules to protect their rights. At first two presenters introduced what is the cohabitation and problems caused. Cohabitation is to live together before they get married. The presenters explained the reason why some couples are doing. They said one of the main reasons was ‘media effect’ such as we just got married by MBC. They also mentioned some advantages of living together before getting married. That was we can save money and see deeply their mind. However, I want to think about several things a little bit differently.

At first, I do not think the opinion about media effect is true. If that is very strong reason to have brought about this problem, then how can we explain the previous things? That is we cannot understand the cohabitation of 19c, 20c. They should have provided exact resources about how much changed it were. Actually, I do not agree the cohabitation. So if the government makes some rules to protect them, it would encourage them. Then it may cause another serious problem.

In conclusion, I cannot say whether the cohabitation is good or not. However, as I mentioned earlier, I disagree that making laws to take care of them. Of course, we cannot know our partner well, before living together. Even though it is, I think that is much better than causing other social problems such as unexpected pregnancy and one-parent children.

#1_ Rising of oil price_

 At the early morning of Monday, April 04, Myung-soo and I gave a presentation about rising of oil price. We introduced a lot of recently issues and talked about this matters all together. We focused on the causes and effects by rising oil price and what will be happened in Korea as well. Myung-soo explained why we choose this topic and some terms that other students might not know and I gave a presentation about effects and solutions on this matter. After that, most of people asked about effects and solutions.

After question and answer, we discuss some controversial issues. For me, the most impressive information was why and how the economic inflation is happened? However, I think that the explanation of that part was not enough to let rest of student understand. Even though it was, some people’s ideas were very interesting. For example, about the question ‘In our daily life, how can we save the oil efficiently?’ Green team said, the government should encourage people to use bicycles instead of cars and also they should lent bicycles to people. Yellow team insists that the nuclear power is the best alternative energy, if the worst incident does not happen like Japanese case.

 In conclusion, this topic is very controversial and hot in all round the world. The reason why this topic is more important in Korea is we import 100% regarding to oil. Therefore, it has something to do with our lives very closely such as changing smaller car and what to eat today’s lunch as well. Finally, we cannot solve this matter without the big support of the government.