Today was another phenomenal day. After waking up to have breakfast, we returned to Postech, this time to get a student-led tour around campus. The whole of the 22 students was broken apart into four groups, with an adult with each team. My guide was an undergraduate junior who studied electrical engineering. Although he was Korean, he grew up in Vancouver, so he could speak English very well and with almost no accent. His experiences in the Western Hemisphere made it easy to connect with him about our music tastes, food preferences, and countless other topics. We were led through the ChangeUp building, where the new building was created to give students the space necessary to develop start-up companies. Postech gives each student thousands of dollars, which have stronger value in South Korea, to use on out-of-classroom experiences, such as creating start-ups or studying abroad.
At lunch, we went to the ChangeUp grounds, where we were served by robots. I was able to meet with David from yesterday, and it was great to see him again. I exchanged some American snacks for a pin from his guitar club, and I hope that he enjoys or shares some food that he would not find in South Korea.
After lunch we traveled to Posco, which is the steel company associated with Postech. Posco was a steel company created shortly after the Korean War, and it helped complete South Korea’s miraculous turnaround. After using reparation money from Japan, they first built the Pohang steel works, which I toured after visiting two history museums. At the steel works, we stayed in the coach bus because the facility was so large. The steel works is in a U-shape with a port in the middle of the U. The plant imports raw materials from Australia and Brazil into the left side of the U, and those materials traveled around after undergoing multiple blast furnaces for iron, steel, and finally different products. Those products include hot and cold rolled steel, plates, wires, stainless steel, and electrical steel.
We walked into one of the factories, seeing the process by which the steel was turned into plates. The facility was huge, loud, and hot. Pieces of steel were heated to extreme temperatures, so impurities rose to the surface. Then, those steel pieces underwent cooling by machines that sprayed a lot of water, which turned into steam on impact. The final machine rolled the steel into a really thin sheet, down to only six millimeters thick. I am super grateful that I was able to see this process, as I am now much more familiar with the steel-making process, which is a large part of Pittsburgh’s history.
After the tour, we returned to the hotel. I got some traditional sweet potato Korean pizza, which I did not really enjoy, but I am still glad that I tried it. I know that I will never get to try those ingredients in Pittsburgh, and I know that I will not always like everything that I try in South Korea.