Educational Visit (Arirang), Ehwa Dong Mural Viillage

Hello!! Since I do not have anything to write about lately, guess it's time to continue my story back when I was in Korea!! Time sure does flies. It's already been a year and a half since then. 

19th Feb

Today, we were arranged to visit Arirang, a broadcasting station. Unlike KBS, who targets local audience, Arirang targets more towards foreign audience while spreading the uniqueness of Korean culture. The channel they broadcast speaks more in English and when they are speaking in Korean, there will be English or other languages' subtitles (depend on which channel you are watching).

For this visit, it was quite similar to what we had done in SM Town such as visiting studio. However, it is more in depth as they also gave explanation to the uses of the equipment they used. They made it seem like a visit for an educational purpose rather than for tourism purpose, which met the objectives of this exchange.

After they gave us a brief description about their company, we were immediately brought to a news studio.

A part of the news studio

The main part of the studio

It was the second smallest studio in Arirang, in which 5 teams would handle the whole studio, namely, the camera team, the lighting team, the sound team, set designer and props team and the producer and assistant director team for the programme.

The lighting team handles all these numbered lights. It is very important to ensure sufficient lighting. You want a pretty and handsome announcer giving you the news right?

Part of the lighting

The camera team handles the 5 cameras in the studio. Clear explanations were given for the prompter and the big brother - Jimmy jib. Ever wonder how the announcers could look handsomely at you while "remembering" their script? It's all thanks to the amazing prompter below. 

Prompter: Monitor below, mirror above
There's also a camera inside the mirror

The producer (PD) and assistant director (AD) will be sitting on the next room, where they will monitor and manage the shooting. The PD will give directions to the AD whether any adjustments need to be made and the AD will relay it to the people on set.

Then, we were brought to the Arirang Radio broadcasting studio. Unlike the studio set above, the radio set only records sound, which is why they do not need a big space.

Staff working on set

The biggest booth:

Is used when there's a big band or a few bands coming

Finally, we were brought to the biggest studio in Arirang:

For lunch, we went to this store where there are a lot of people - Baeknyeon Ok, literally means "Hundred years house". They served all sorts of jjigae (stew) and I ordered this boiled plain tofu residue with salted shrimp and rice.

It was probably the worst-looking dish. Puke as described by one of my friends, but it doesn't taste the worst. Its texture is like porridge. Pairing with the salted shrimp tastes the best. I would definitely recommend anyone to try this as you definitely could not try this kind of dish outside of Korea. In my opinion, this maybe a creation of a dish by the normal household to save on their food expense. A tofu reside is still a tofu, no? An authentic Korea experience, I would say.

Since there are a lot of tofu residue left, they even left some in front of their store for free to whoever who wants to take it home.

Since we had much time to spare, we decided to go to Ehwa Dong Mural Village, a tourist destination. In here, activities such as mural hunting, photo-takings, souvenir-hunting are the norms.

And the famous mural, including:

Apparently, you could also cosplay in a Korea old school uniforms in this place called Jalsalgi Kinyeomgwan (잘살기기념관).

Definitely take your time while eating some snacks to hang around this artsy place! Well, it's better to bring your friends or your special one as this place is filled with couples. Maybe quite awkward to walk alone, unless you don't mind being an observant.

After 2 months of not writing anything, I wasn't sure what I'm writing, but will definitely improve in the next one!