Conversation partner-part 6

This was the last meeting we have throughout out the semester. Looking back, I never thought about I can gain so much from the conversation. I realize that we can know a person’s personality from a deep conversation and know two people can have so many similarities from different countries. Life is as amazing as this.

    Today we started with North Korea. I was really reluctant to start this topic because I am not sure what do they think about this country, it can be very extreme, either don’t want to say anything bad or sympathetic about this country. Just like China and Taiwan. It will offend so many people if we say Taiwan is part of China.  As a result, I was really cautious when I mentioned about that. We began to talk about the president and the policy they have in North Korea.

  His friend said:” It is ridiculous what’s happening there.  Do you know the new president of North Korea has exactly the same name as me? Both first name and last. So I keep hearing my name appears in then news which bothers me a lot. Ok, and do you know that the president had a plastic surgery in order to look like his grandpa.  One thing I am really confused about is how can he be still this ignorant after he studied abroad in Europe. I thought people will get much more open-minded after studying abroad.”

   This was exactly what I was thinking about too. Such a weird president, studying abroad only makes him more close minded and to a very extreme. I am glad they think the same way because it would be awkward that if we have different opinions. But at that moment I could feel that we have the same attitudes towards the president and the country.

  Then she told me a serious story about the people in North Korea. She said when she was 12, the first year of Junior high school. One day, there was a girl showed up to the class who was from North Korea, she escaped from there and the government protected her.

  “ Wait, sorry for interrupting the story, but just curious, what do y’all think about the government from South Korea protecting the escaped people from North Korea?” I asked.

  “ I think it’s right!” My conversation partner said, and his friend agreed.

  “ So when she came to class, she began to stare at the people in the class, that annoyed some of the students in our class. We were so naïve that time, we think she is a bad girl because she is from North Korea as well as she stared at us. So our whole class bullied her using very bad language. So she transferred on the next day. I have never seen her since that. I still feel bad because I was part of it, if I stood up and did something to help her, maybe her life would be different, maybe the whole thing would change. Sometimes people are just too cruel to other people. “

  I was really sad after listening to this story. How many people do we hurt just because we were naïve and ignorant? Why do we even bully the people who need help? Instead, we should care about them, we should love them and help them.

  “ Hey, do you know the things happened in China earlier? A boy being crushed by a car and the car drove away. The boy was severely injured and laid down on the ground for 10 minutes, in the mean time, 18 people past by and no one stopped to help him.” My conversation partner asked.

  “ I have heard a little about it. But this is kind of common in China now. Since many people use this methods to let people help them and told the police is the person who helped her crushed them. So no one wants to help anyone. You can’t tell it’s true or not. It’s really pathetic. “ I said sadly.

  “ I see. Another thing is there are over 80% of Korean are Christians, but in my perspective, only 20% of them are real Christians. I don’t think I am a real Christians because I smoke and drink. There are so many people I know say there are Christians but they don’t act like Christians, that’s really bad for a country. Religion becomes unreal.” She said (The ideas are from my conversation partner but she translated for him).

  I told her that I feel the same way in America too. It’s actually not just in Korea. Religion in some country becomes a symbol, a symbol to be a normal person in this society. We don’t think this should be the reason that you believe in certain religion.

  We ended up this meeting with this topic. Maybe it’s a little bit intense but it let us think more about everything and about our lives. I really appreciate that we can get this opportunity to talk to people from different countries. It made me think so much and learn so much from them.