Black Hills State University International student Hye Jung Bang is from South Korea and has been in the United States for just one month. Bang says she is concerned about family and friends back home in light of the combative rhetoric coming from North Korea.
Bang is here in South Dakota studying English interpretation and translation – she left South Korea just weeks ago. She says the relationship between North and South Korea is complicated and confusing.
“The issues of North Korea is always there in South Korea so people are tired of thinking about this. And then they are very afraid, of course afraid, but it’s not don’t care about this,” says Bang.
Bang says students in South Korea are educated early on about a potential unification with North Korea.
“I think unification is needed, yeah, now, but the course of the unification between the South Korea and North Korea is to be clear and then to be fair, yeah, I think,” says Bang.
Bang says there are many people in South Korea who favor unification with the North, and there are also many people against it. She says there are many cultural differences between South and North Korea, even a language barrier.