Korean students visit their peers at St. Mary's Ryken High School

International studies emphasized

Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2008

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by JESSE YEATMAN Korean student Hyejin Deo and Matt Hane, a sophomore at St. Mary's Ryken High School, sit together during lunch outside Monday morning as part of the visit to the Leonardtown school by 152 students from South Korea. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story

While some of the underlying education factors are different – the South Korean students from the Gimhae Foreign Language High School live at the school and attend classes until night, for instance, in the end they are all teenagers and like things like listening to pop music.

The 152 students from the school located in the Gyeongsangnam Province of South Korea arrived in the country last week. They stopped in at St. Mary's Ryken on Monday morning during a college tour of the United States accompanied by 12 administrators and chaperones. The morning's activities included a welcome ceremony, cultural presentations from both the Korean and American students, lunch outdoors overlooking Breton Bay and time for conversation between the sophomore classes of both schools. 

The local Catholic high school was part of an itinerary for the Korean students that included a host of New England Ivy League colleges, including Harvard, MIT, Columbia and Princeton.

St. Mary's Ryken was the only high school to host the students, which was an honor in Principal Rick Wood's mind.

"Each student is paired up with another sophomore," Wood said.

There are 18 students from Korean descent who attend the Leonardtown school. Those students, along with 23 in the school's growing international program, especially looked forward to the visit.

"They're really interested to talk to students from another country," Wood said.

Jeong Seung Yun said the most obvious difference he has discovered between students at his school in Korea and American high school students is the amount of time they spend in school studying. "We study almost the whole day but they end at 2:30" in the afternoon, he said. He and his classmates, who live on the school campus in dormitories, study until 11 p.m., a few hours longer than other schools in his country, he said. "We don't have much free time," Hyejin Seo said. She said when they do have time to do things other than studying, their interests are similar to their American peers – listen to music, watch movies, read books.

She said exercise is incorporated into the students' daily routines. Throughout their high school years the Korean students practice a type of martial art and yoga.

"They are very smart, chosen students in Korea," said visit coordinator Chris Kim. Kim said that the students must pass a difficult entrance exam to enroll in the public high school and that they all would be expected to go on to study in college. Nearly all of St. Mary's Ryken graduates go on to college as well.

St. Mary's Ryken administrators hope the visit will be the first step in establishing an educational partnership and cultural exchange program that is part of the Maryland Sister States Program. The governors of Maryland and Gyeongsangnam Province signed a formal Sister State agreement in 1993. 

Patrick B. Murphy, a graduate of St. Mary's Ryken High School, is the current chair of the Maryland – Gyeongsangnam Sister State Executive Committee, whose members are collaborating with their counterparts in Korea on projects in the education, business and environmental arenas.

St. Mary's Ryken newly formed symphony band played several selections during a welcoming ceremony Monday morning, including national anthems from America and South Korea. Korean students performed a percussion piece that represented different elements of the natural world, such as clouds, thunder and rain.

jyeatman@somdnews.com