Thursday, our last day of official visits, finally came. Today’s agenda only consisted of the US Consulate in Busan and Pusan National University. The consulate felt more like a cultural visit; we learned about the history of Busan and its relation to the United States and also Japan. Many of us were curious about the tense relations between Korea and Japan, and a lot of it stems from the mistreatment during Japan’s occupation of Korea and the second world war. Apparently the Busan Consulate is the smallest in the world. Entering the office, there were pretty much only three main rooms. Something interesting that the Consul told us is that every so often there will be people outside of the Consulate with signs telling the US to get out of Korea and stop intervening with South Korea’s relationship with North Korea. This is the more progressive political view of the people whereas those who are conservative want to keep America in South Korea.

Next, we traveled to Pusan National University. Like the first university we visited, the campus was beautiful and felt very large, except this campus was far more hilly and had more trees, so it had more shade. The two universities also had similarities in their short programs for foreign students which sound interesting. Although PNU does have a strong school of engineering, they do not have anything bioengineering related. We were able to check out the work spaces of the engineering students. The rooms were warm and smelled of plastic and wood because there were 3D printers everywhere and a giant one in the center of one of the rooms that was supposedly very expensive. Looking around, many of us girls noticed that there were not many female engineering students; I could count two or three.

As he promised, Dr. Yun took some of us to enjoy a seaside delectable: live octopus. Whether I was creeped out by it or not did not matter; I just really wanted to try something new and different. We walked to a fish market where a lady came up to us with her menu, and when Dr. Yun mentioned what we were looking for, she stuck her hand into a tank and pulled out a full octopus, one that we would soon be eating. Seeing it squirm on the plate even after it had been chopped up was kind of cool; having it wriggle in your mouth it another thing. The octopus itself didn’t taste like anything, but the sauce it was in was good. It was weird to have the tentacles suction to your mouth when you’re trying to eat it, but overall I enjoyed it. Some people, not so much. I would not, however, eat anything that resembled an eyeball.