The 1st Gwangju Youth Network (GYN) was a type of dialogue conducted by the Gwangju International Center (GIC) in order to help international students around Gwangju particularly those who were form Chonnam National University (CNU) and Chosun University. As an international student, there is always bound to be problems living in another country that has a totally different culture. This network or dialogue was a place for international students to voice out their problems and difficulties that they face at the same time share they positive experience in South Korea as a whole.
   The problems that students’ face normally was regarding food, language barrier and culture. As a start, one was the complicated issue that was discussed was about the food. This is a big issue for students from countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei and Bangladesh. Since all four countries has majority of Muslims, they are only allowed to consume food that is halal. Halal means foods that are allowed to be eaten and haram means foods that are not allowed to be eaten. A food that is halal does not involve pork meat and also other meats such as chicken or beef that are not slaughtered in a proper religious manner. So, only fish, seafood, egg and vegetables are the foods that are halal. The problem arises when the cafeteria sometimes only serves meat all week without even considering the fact that there are some students who can’t have meat. Only sometimes there are foods such as egg or even fish served but most of the time it involves meat. When this happens, bread is the only other option to fill those hungry stomachs. That was the issue of food.
   Moving on to the issue of culture and religion. This issue arose during the alien card registration. The Muslims girls were told to remove their hijabs for immigration purposes. At first, they were only supposed to reveal their ears but later on they were told to remove their hijab. This was a very sensitive issue. I would like to put it clear that it is compulsory for a Muslim woman to always wear the hijab and they are not allowed to reveal any parts of their bodies to anyone at any time especially to the public. It is a rule in the religion of Islam. Besides that, wearing a hijab is not part of a culture but it is a religious responsibility and I think that it should be respected. I have also heard that the immigration in Seoul allows the Muslim girl to wear their hijab during the alien card registration. It should be the same in Gwangju. A religion must be respected in whatever circumstances. Even now the girls can’t reveal their alien cards to anyone because there are not wearing their hijab. So this issue was discussed during the GYN and I hope that a this matter will be looked into more seriously by both universities especially CNU when the exchange students for the next batch comes in.
   Finally there is the issue of language. As most of us know, the BTL Residence Hall at CNU has a majority number of international students. So when notices are put up, most of them are normally in Korean. Sometimes there would be English notices but most of the time it was always in Korea. People may argue that we are in Korea, so the students should learn Korean. It is true that we should learn the language but it is only the beginner’s level. Expectations are too high on us sometimes. Besides that, the CNU Portal is also in Korean. Only some parts of it are in English but most of them are in Korean. This is a difficult situation for the international students to access the portals for notes or information. This was also an issue that was discussed during G YN.
   Personally, I would like to thank Jeremy Azurin, an exchange student from our very own CNU for organizing this dialogue through the GIC. It was great that he was concern and aware of the problems that international students were facing. I hope that these problems that were discussed will be seriously handled by the university. The past is past and we should definitely look into the future and I hope that the upcoming exchange students will not face similar problems anymore.
 

By Aaron Denison, Exchange Student, University of Malaya