Today we returned to POSTECH, given a guided tour by students. My group, led by Hyoeun, consisted of Emily, Ben, Madeline, Chris, Noah, and myself.
The first place we visited in the university was the library, which extended into a small exhibit which showcased the history of POSTECH. We found it interesting walking around and seeing all of the plaques and stories depicting POSTECH’s founding. In truth, we were kind of disappointed that Pitt, a university with a history over 5 (almost 6) times as long, didn’t have a similar feature. Walking around and seeing the founder’s personal achievements and all of POSTECH’s uniforms and graduation regalia throughout the years was interesting and felt like a good way to document both where they came from and where they were going.
After touring the library, we moved onto the student union. While there, we ate at one of the campus eateries, Change Up, which honestly had some of the best food I’ve had all trip. And it was served by little robots! The pork stone pot set was very tender, and whatever seasoning they used to flavor the pork was very rich, creating a really pleasing taste, even without the soy sauce.
When our meal was finished, Hyoeun took our group to the cafe to decompress and talk for a while over some coffee. We all spoke for about an hour, asking about the dorm experience, first years of classes, and similar things, comparing the experiences between schools.
We ended the tour with a quick pass by the gift shop, and once we returned to the group at large, we said our goodbyes to Hyoeun and set out for POSCO, the company that founded POSTECH.
Our time at POSCO began with a trip through the interactive history museum, where we were debriefed on the company’s ethos and design philosophy through a visual display. After the video ended, the wall opened up to reveal further exhibits for us to walk through, where a plain white model of the entire POSCO steel mill laid in wait.
As we continued into the room, the replica came to life as colors began to project over it in sync with the display behind it, coaching us through what each building in the mill did. When talking about the melt shop, the diorama would glow bright orange directly over the corresponding section of the model and then trace the shipping line from the melt shop to the slab manufacturing building. The way everything was presented was simply eye-catching and did a wonderful job of making the whole process simple to understand.
We were ushered into another theater where a video played describing the impacts of POSCO steel throughout Seoul’s economy and the entire world, emphasizing their work on automobiles and next-generation stainless steel.
After the history museum tour concluded, we toured the cold roll shop and watched a slab be pressed and rolled to shape in-person. Unfortunately, pictures weren’t allowed, but I can say with absolute confidence that I would recommend anybody to experience that at least once in their lifetime. There’s simply something so intriguing about watching a steel block, easily multiple yards in length, get flung about on conveyor belts and roughed out between countless rollers until it’s about 5 times as long and nigh unrecognizable. The machinery that goes into that entire process is beyond impressive, and I’m glad I got that experience.
As we returned to the hotel, a lot of us decided to hunker down and work on our final presentations, myself included. That is, I did until I got an invite to dinner and decided it would be a lot more productive than sitting around and waiting for the videos I needed to edit to finish transcoding in my video editor.
With that, our last full day in Pohang ended, and tomorrow we would head back to Seoul until we departed for America.