Transcripts of Deaf Korean Graduate Student

Do you now, do you use a Blackberry, do you use mostly computers? Or what? 

Now mostly I use the internet and e-mail, or I use MSN, which is a chatting program online. I contact my friends in Korea just about every day, we try to communicate. and once a week, or sometimes twice a week my parents and I will touch base, and we'll use MSN, the MSN online program. 

Can you tell us a few more stories, about maybe your later schooling before you came over here to the United States to secondary school? And maybe some stories about that time. How you coped with increasingly sophisticated subject matter and more studies.  

At the time there was no support, such as an interpreter or a real-time captioner so I spent most of my time at the library. If I got one textbook out and I didn't understand I would find another book that would help explain. So I would always be sitting by myself at the library reading a lot of books. To comprehend the material. I didn't really understand everything, but I would try to read the books to get a better understanding. In graduate school, there was one student there who knew Sign Language, and that student helped me interpret, for free. Because the university had no money to support that interpreter. But I would buy them lunch or dinner, you know and I would buy their books, I'd give them that in return for their interpreting services. Now in Korean colleges they have interpreting services set up. But the government doesn't support that. Let me think... I think students who know Sign Language are the ones that help provide the services. They're not necessarily skilled interpreters, they're volunteer student interpreters So there's no national legislation like our ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act, that exists in Korea? Not yet. I think there is a disability discrimination law that was recently established, but that hasn't been widespread yet. You know one university...  Four or five years ago there was one college that was built for all students with disabilities. And so many students, many deaf students went to that university. They have interpreters there. Would you say that now, because when you talk about the earlier years, even through High School, you keep coming back to how much reading, extra reading you did, and it does seem that as start to talk about college, or yourself now, there's a lot more technology that's replacing reading. Even though of course, obviously reading e-mail is reading too. And reading the internet is reading, but it has... Am I right? In that there's been a change in the kind of focus, and how much reading of books and time in the library that you spend? In comparison now? Yes that's correct. 

Yeah, there's a lot of information on the internet. You know and there's movies or there's cartoons, that you could see. And there are fun stories like that, there's TV, things that are related to the television, actors, and things like that, that I'll read about. You know, because sometimes my studies can be boring, and so I'll read an article that's related to television or something that has pictures, something that's more visual. I'll spend a little bit more time with that now than I used to, and so that's had an impact on my life, it has lessened what I read for school. The amount of time that I spend... Oh yeah, that reminds me, I was going to ask you. So, growing up or at any point, in Korea, were there captions on the TV? Or did you not encounter... No there was no captioning. No the first time... Let me think. In 1999 was when captioning started, on some programs, there were some captioning. But I think now 45... 45 to 50 percent of the programs are captioned. But in the past, you know when... If there was a funny or fun program that was on TV, my friend and I would be playing. Ok, this is a fun story When I was in first grade, in Elementary School, my friend and I were playing. In Korean culture, you would play outside, so you know, with friends in the neighborhood, you would all play outside. But at 5 o'clock there was a fun TV program on, for kids, so all the kids would go home to watch that TV show, and then when I would come home, I couldn't hear the TV, so I would look at it and I would be asking, you know, "What are they doing? I don't understand." 

So then and that's when I would go and I would always read my books. So do you watch American TV, with captioning now? Yes. Yeah it's fun but, it's hard, at the same time. Some captioning I don't understand, sometimes it's too fast to follow. But movies that are on DVD, sometimes I'll borrow them from the library and I'll watch the captioning on those movies. That helps you know a lot with the captioning, how two people communicate. So I'm learning about American culture that way. Can, if you could talk to young deaf people in Korea, now, and tell them stories from your life or give them advice from your life, what would you say? What would you advise?  Could you, I'm sorry I forgot the question, could you repeat it please? If you were talking to, young deaf people in Korea, you have a lot of life experience in being deaf and in dealing with your deafness in a culture that wasn't always supportive. How would you, what stories would you tell them? Or what advice would you give them for being deaf in a culture that doesn't always support deafness and sometimes even discriminates. Just like our culture.  It depends on how old they are. If they were if they were a little bit older students, I would explain to them about deaf culture and Korea, and why you can't... I would explain to them about the Korean language. One moment. Hearing people use two senses, they hear and they can see. But deaf people use their sense of vision. So it's hard to do the same things as hearing people, but we can but it's hard. So I would explain to them what deaf culture means. You know I'd say: "You yourself are deaf, you should have pride in that." Explain how you can have pride in being a deaf person. I would explain to them, you know, if you want to sign you should learn how to sign, socialize with other deaf people. Whether you speak clearly or not is not important. Communication and communicating with other people is what's important, so continue to try that. And so you can learn a lot from people and how to live. You can learn about their lives, learn how to play, you know, through communication. So that's what I would want to tell them. 

Can you tell us a little bit about your research, your project, your work here, in graduate school? What kinds of things you find interesting or what you're working on and studying for your dissertation?  

My topic is math word problems, and how deaf students understand problem solving, and how they have problem solving skills. Because math word problems, I'm trying to find a math word problem... Some students in math are really good, there's addition, subtraction, adding, but when you apply that to a word problem, there's much more of a challenge in that. And so I'm studying in how to help students. In my undergrad, my undergrad degree was in, I was very skilled in math, and I would help with reading word problems, and reading comprehension. And so I'm relating math and reading comprehension to solving word problems in math, and helping students understand those. So it's a project that sort of combines math, but also literacy skills, reading skills, right? Yes, it combines those two. You know, word problems are what made me, word problems in math, are what made me an English teacher (chuckling). Because I could not understand them for anything, it was torture. And I couldn't do them so I could use your research, maybe it would make me better. Do they have, We haven't talked at all about some of the issues surrounding new technologies, like cochlear implants and other technologies that are controversial in deaf communities. Do you, can you talk about how cochlear implants might be seen in Korea? Or have you ever considered them? Or is that something that you've heard deaf students talking about who are your friends?  My deaf friends that are oral and that speak, and my deaf friends that sign... My deaf friends that sign, don't agree with a cochlear implant and don't want a cochlear implant themselves. But some of my, my deaf friends who are oral, who speak for themselves, want a cochlear implant. So this is what they've told me, and I've said that I don't want a cochlear implant. Before I thought I really wanted a cochlear implant, I really want to hear. 

But after I graduated college, and I was meeting different friends, and you know I developed my own deaf pride. I became proud and confident to be deaf, I was confident in myself. I realized that a cochlear implant wasn't important for me. Any other questions Brenda? No I don't have, we actually covered a lot of ground. I wonder if there's anything else that you want to say, again, particularly about technology or about reading or writing. Anything else that you think that you've left out that was important, in your life? About learning to read and write, not just learning, but continuing to read and write. And also about the use of technology? Or have we covered a lot of things?  Looking back on my life... Looking back on my life, there was a gap between me and others, and having access to other people and information...  When I was younger I would watch Korean movies that didn't have captioning. And I would bring... In American movies...   American movies, in Korea, have Korean language captioned. Because people in Korea, if they don't speak English couldn't understand the movies. So I would read those, and when I was in sixth grade, I started watching American movies, in Korea with captioning.   I feel more comfortable with American culture.  And I think having that captioning... In Korea you wouldn't often see captioning. And so when I was watching TV or a movie I would just be looking at the picture and I didn't know what was going on. But so I would only be watching American movies because that had the subtitles. And so American culture, I feel comfortable with. More than... You know, when I'm interacting with hearing people and I have communication, and there is less communication because there's a...  I would watch American movies, and I would see how other people live. And if there was a problem, how would they solve it? So I would be able to watch that and learn from that. And that has impacted my life. 

And sometimes you know, in American history, you know before, like the segregation between White and Black people in America. There was a problem there and there was a war, and so I learned about that, and learned from the movies. I want to say it's really funny that you say that, because I will say I recently told someone, they asked me :"How does a young girl who grew up in Western Kansas, how is it that I came to have such a global perspective on things?" And I said it may be because I grew up watching foreign films. Because American films weren't accessible but foreign films always had English captioning so I could read them. So I was on equal ground always watching foreign films. So I grew up largely not watching American TV or films. So the opposite of you. (Chuckling). Do you think that those captioned American films actually made you interested in coming to America? Did that influence your decision to come here to study? Yes, yeah I think it did. Movies, as well as the internet, influenced my decision to come here. That has helped make my life more independent. 

You have been an absolutely marvelous interview. We thank you so much, we're so grateful. And we know that people are going to be able to watch this and learn a great deal from what you have to say. And Emily is perfectly marvelous as well, even though she has to say this to herself (laughter). So thank you so much from all of us, we appreciate it. Thank you. It was good also because most of the time, you were facing us, and then you were to the side. It sort of made her the... Focus, yeah. Thank you, thank you very much.