KOREA 40
Korean Wave: Globalization of South Korean Popular Culture
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Knowledge of Korean not required. Introduction to Korean popular culture and its relationship to transnational social and political contexts. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 5.0
Units: 5.0
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2021 - I may be biased because I found the subject topic to be interesting even before I took this class, but this is probably my favorite class I've ever taken at UCLA. Winter 2021 was the first time this class was offered as a Writing II class, but it honestly didn't feel as intensive as I thought a writing II class would be. There were three 3-paged essays you had to write throughout the quarter, one on Korean pop music, one on television, and one on movies, and then the final was an essay that combined all of them to discuss the successful globalization of South Korean pop culture. There were no midterms, tests, or quizzes. There were a lot of readings every week, and we would discuss these readings in class, but I found them to be very interesting and read them with no problem (you could definitely get away with some smart skimming, though). I'm not quite sure how the professor graded participation, but when I took the class, participation was worth 10% of your grade - as long as you contributed once a week in lecture, I think you would be okay. The discussion sections weren't really discussions, but the TA would just teach us how to improve on our writing and go over some of the readings more in-depth. Later on in the course we would also have peer-review sessions during the discussion sections, where we'd look over each other's essays, but I don't think these were very helpful. The essay prompts were a little bit confusing, but I believe that was only because this class is still in its beginning stages. Sometimes the TA would grade harshly, but if you struggle with writing, don't be afraid to seek help from them because the papers are basically the only things that determine your grade, and they are very helpful and clear on what they want. I loved this class because I learned so much not only about South Korean popular culture, but also because the professor was a great lecturer. She kept class engaging by constantly asking thought-provoking questions and showing media we discussed/read about in class (like movie trailers or television show scenes). I loved participating, but don't feel pressured to, a lot of people just typed things in the chat, and it was okay. I think they're gonna be changing the structure of this course a lot in the future years, but I would definitely recommend it to anyone seeking to take an easy Writing II class.
Winter 2021 - I may be biased because I found the subject topic to be interesting even before I took this class, but this is probably my favorite class I've ever taken at UCLA. Winter 2021 was the first time this class was offered as a Writing II class, but it honestly didn't feel as intensive as I thought a writing II class would be. There were three 3-paged essays you had to write throughout the quarter, one on Korean pop music, one on television, and one on movies, and then the final was an essay that combined all of them to discuss the successful globalization of South Korean pop culture. There were no midterms, tests, or quizzes. There were a lot of readings every week, and we would discuss these readings in class, but I found them to be very interesting and read them with no problem (you could definitely get away with some smart skimming, though). I'm not quite sure how the professor graded participation, but when I took the class, participation was worth 10% of your grade - as long as you contributed once a week in lecture, I think you would be okay. The discussion sections weren't really discussions, but the TA would just teach us how to improve on our writing and go over some of the readings more in-depth. Later on in the course we would also have peer-review sessions during the discussion sections, where we'd look over each other's essays, but I don't think these were very helpful. The essay prompts were a little bit confusing, but I believe that was only because this class is still in its beginning stages. Sometimes the TA would grade harshly, but if you struggle with writing, don't be afraid to seek help from them because the papers are basically the only things that determine your grade, and they are very helpful and clear on what they want. I loved this class because I learned so much not only about South Korean popular culture, but also because the professor was a great lecturer. She kept class engaging by constantly asking thought-provoking questions and showing media we discussed/read about in class (like movie trailers or television show scenes). I loved participating, but don't feel pressured to, a lot of people just typed things in the chat, and it was okay. I think they're gonna be changing the structure of this course a lot in the future years, but I would definitely recommend it to anyone seeking to take an easy Writing II class.
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Most Helpful Review
Summer 2019 - This was the worst lecturer I have ever dealt with at UCLA. The class content did not cover the globalization of Korean pop culture, and rather, Heejin didn’t seem to be knowledgeable on that topic at all. We learned about the dark secrets of Korea and problematic cultural norms, which I actually found to be interesting. However, what made this class so terrible was her whack citation rules. Each week, we had a short reflection to write that incorporated the articles we read. Somehow this class turned into a citation course, because if you made even the tiniest of errors in citing your sources, she would give you a zero, and say that you plagiarized the entire assignment. For the weekly assignments, we were allowed to revise it upon receiving a zero, to try and raise our score. Yet, she refused to inform us what the error(s) were, and refused to give us help. She made us take an Indiana University citation certification mini-course, so she claimed that should’ve taught us everything we needed to know. Many of us would constantly go to the writing center for help, and they’d say our citations looked perfect. Yet, Heejin would still give us zeros. One time she even gave me a low grade on my assignment, purely because she said the way I incorporated the quote from the article blocked the flow of the writing. So the grading has nothing to do with your mastery of the course content, just how well you can follow her non-existent citation rules, that don’t even follow proper citation guidelines. When it came to the final essay, she claimed that I plagiarized the whole entire thing, but refused to give me a reason as to how it was supposedly plagiarized. If you emailed her with a question, or for help, she refused to answer it, and made us come into her office hours, because she said it was somehow unfair to other students. But when I would go to her office hours, she still refused to answer my questions, because she said it was unfair to students who couldn’t make it to her office hours. Every time I would go into her office hours, she was so extremely rude, unfriendly, cold, and condescending. I ended up dropping this course on the very last day. I highly urge anyone who is interested in the title of this course to bypass it if Heejin is the one lecturing it.
Summer 2019 - This was the worst lecturer I have ever dealt with at UCLA. The class content did not cover the globalization of Korean pop culture, and rather, Heejin didn’t seem to be knowledgeable on that topic at all. We learned about the dark secrets of Korea and problematic cultural norms, which I actually found to be interesting. However, what made this class so terrible was her whack citation rules. Each week, we had a short reflection to write that incorporated the articles we read. Somehow this class turned into a citation course, because if you made even the tiniest of errors in citing your sources, she would give you a zero, and say that you plagiarized the entire assignment. For the weekly assignments, we were allowed to revise it upon receiving a zero, to try and raise our score. Yet, she refused to inform us what the error(s) were, and refused to give us help. She made us take an Indiana University citation certification mini-course, so she claimed that should’ve taught us everything we needed to know. Many of us would constantly go to the writing center for help, and they’d say our citations looked perfect. Yet, Heejin would still give us zeros. One time she even gave me a low grade on my assignment, purely because she said the way I incorporated the quote from the article blocked the flow of the writing. So the grading has nothing to do with your mastery of the course content, just how well you can follow her non-existent citation rules, that don’t even follow proper citation guidelines. When it came to the final essay, she claimed that I plagiarized the whole entire thing, but refused to give me a reason as to how it was supposedly plagiarized. If you emailed her with a question, or for help, she refused to answer it, and made us come into her office hours, because she said it was somehow unfair to other students. But when I would go to her office hours, she still refused to answer my questions, because she said it was unfair to students who couldn’t make it to her office hours. Every time I would go into her office hours, she was so extremely rude, unfriendly, cold, and condescending. I ended up dropping this course on the very last day. I highly urge anyone who is interested in the title of this course to bypass it if Heejin is the one lecturing it.
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