My trip to South Korea has been a great professional experience for me. I learned a lot about business during the site visits that I otherwise would not have experienced within the engineering school. This post is a reflection on some of the things that I took away from the trip that pertain to my…

Our journey home began with a 6 hour bus ride from Busan to the airport in Seoul. When we finally arrived, we said our goodbyes to the organizers from the Asia Institute, who helped run our trip. They were all very nice people and did a great job. Once we got through security, i sat…

Today we had a free day to do whatever we wanted, so the first thing I did was sleep in. We had been getting up relatively early (by a college student’s standard) the entire trip, so it was nice to get a bit of extra sleep, specially with the long travel day tomorrow. So, after…

Our first stop of the day was at the US Consulate in Busan. This was a bit different than the other visits we had, since it was not a business. However, I did learn a lot about US-Korea relations as well as Korea-Japan relations. We had a chance to talk with the US diplomat at…

Our day today started with a site visit to Trainor Korea. This is a smaller company that focuses on training and certifying laborers in South Korea. It is focused more on online training courses, so it was cool to see a company utilizing technology to better the world, being that their main purpose is to…

Our lone company visit today was to Hyundai Motor Company. This visit was great for me as an industrial engineer. We were given an extensive tour of one of their production lines, and got to see firsthand how the cars are made in such a large quantity. This appealed to me as an industrial engineer…

We left the hotel in Gyeongju in the morning and headed for the city of Ulsan. Before we went to the hotel, we went on two company visits. The first company we visited was Jinsan Marine Management. They are a provider for ships, dealing mostly in spare parts and equipment and food for those working…

We started our day long tour of Gyeongju by visiting one of the many tombs in the area. This one is this only one that has been opened and excavated so that the visitors could see what the inside of one of them looks like. The outside of the tombs is a huge mound of…

Today started off with what felt like a never ending drive. We left the hotel early in the morning to begin our approximately 5 hour drive to Gyeongju. The South Korean countryside was actually very cool to see, so it helped passed the time. Along the way, we stopped at a couple rest stops, where…

Day 6: Today was the last day in Seoul, which bummed me out a bit, but at the same time today was one of the days I was looking forward to the most: going to the DMZ. Unfortunately, the JSA was not open, so we were unable to go to the houses on the border…

Day 5: We started off the day with a company visit to Naver. Naver can best be described as the “Google of Korea”. It is the most popular search engine here, and also offers other services to its users like translation, shopping, news, etc. We had a chance to visit their headquarters, where we were…

Day 4: Our day started at 9 AM with a bus ride to our first company visit, Samsung BioLogics. As seen by the name, they are a part of the Samsung conglomerate here in South Korea.  Samsung is so large here that it makes up 25 percent of the total GDP of South Korea. The…

Day 3: We started off today with a trip to Hanyang University. It is a private university located in the city of Seoul, similar to how Pitt is inside Pittsburgh. It is the third ranked college in all of Korea, and is known for its great engineering program. Our visit began with us being given…

Today was our first full day in Korea, and it was a busy day. We spent the day going on cultural visits all around the city of Seoul. We started the day around 9 AM with a tour of the Gyeongbokgung Palace. It was originally built back in 1395, and housed the royalty of the…

My trip to Seoul began at 8 AM on Friday, when I left my house to drive to Pittsburgh. After arriving, the whole group went to a nice Korean restaurant for dinner, where many of us got our first experience with Korean food. After dinner, and a night full of little sleep and lots of…

Hello! My name is Chris Paladino, and I am a freshman in the Swanson School of Engineering here at the University of Pittsburgh. I was born and raised about 4 hours away in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where I live with my mom, dad, and younger brother. While growing up I was always involved in sports, which…