Today, we had plans to tour the entirety of the POSTECH campus and see more of the POSCO Steel Mills.

As I mentioned in my last blog, POSTECH is a very small school in terms of enrollment/current students, but has quite a large campus (supposedly about 3x as big as Pitt). We got a glimpse of that today, and got to know a bit more about campus life at POSTECH.

It’s pretty nice! I don’t think I’d enjoy school at POSTECH myself simply due to preferring city schools, but the research opportunities you have attending the school are high and wide, and I believe it would make a good location for students interested in partaking in research and getting to broaden their horizons. It seems to be very research oriented even within their school extra curriculars, and it sounded as though many students know exactly what they want to do upon graduation, which is neat. We had lunch at CHANGEUp Garden, where I had spicy pork with rice in a stone (I believe) pot. You take out the majority of the rice and put it on the side and fill the bowl with the leftover bit with a broth. It was good!

We then visited the POSCO museums—if I believed the SIM (Samsung Innovation Museum, as a reminder) was cool, I was blown away by the first museum at POSCO we visited. It discussed the future and present POSCO envisions for their future with steel, and they have so many fun and interesting creations they have using stainless steel and such. The second museum went over the history of the company, and wasn’t as cool, but was still a neat thing to see. The third and final stop was getting to see the actual steel plant!

The steel plant was large. To be honest, during the bus tour portion, I may or may not have fallen asleep (it’s been a long two weeks! Sue me), but I woke up in time for the steel mill walk, and that was SO. AWESOME. It reminded a couple of us of the scenes in Attack of the Clones, when they go to the robot factory. We got to see the main steel brick be pulled out, and I was under the assumption it’d be multiple small bricks—NO. It instead was a HUMONGOUS looking, bright orange/red slab of metal. The factory we saw is where they make what I believe are steel plates (I can’t remember the exact number; maybe 6mm?), and we got to see the metal go down, spin, and go through the flattening process. It was SO hot in that building, and I almost thought I’d get sunburnt from proximity, but it was such a cool thing to witness. Unfortunately, we couldn’t take photos due to the cooling process being a security risk (as the way they cool the metal determines the quality of said metal, and leaking such could be a business risk). But so cool!

At the end of the day, we stopped back at the market. I have been visiting that market so often—I feel like people would get sick of me if I lived here. We got some rice cakes (as usual) and I also picked some up for Dr. Yun upon request, and then we stopped by this one stall that was selling some fried street food. I ended up walking away and coming back because Rohit hadn’t yet finished eating, when I realized they were selling soondae (blood sausage), and I immediately took out my won to pay for some. I have been ITCHING to get my hands on street soondae, and the lady at the stand was very sweet. Due to the language barrier, it was a little hard to converse, and I may or may not have accidentally ended up paying for Rohit’s food along with mine, but it’s fine—my soondae was good and he liked his fried food and, frankly, I’m just glad I got my hands on the thing. Overall, a very good day!

Today’s title is named after HOT by Le Sserafim—an accurate description to how I felt pretty much all day in a sweater.