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Sophia at Lotte World in Seoul, Korea.

 

Sophia Harrison: A Life-Long Love for Korean

Majors: International Relations and Diplomacy & Korean
Minor: German
Class of 2019

By Ana Mitchell

Interests often come and go, but senior Sophia Harrison's admiration with Korean language and culture is far from fading. When asked what prompted her involvement with Korean language she responded, "Korean has been, over my whole life time, an interest."

As a kid, she took nine years of Taekwondo where she learned about ancient Korean history and philosophies. She became fascinated with Korean pop culture, such as TV shows and music. Helping even more were a few of Harrison’s friends who shared similar interests for East Asian culture. Once they attended Ohio State, a friend suggested to Harrison that they take a Korean course to learn basic communication skills. After that, Harrison couldn’t be stopped: “I took one, and then I took another one, and then a couple more.” Eventually, her advisor brought to her attention that she could add Korean as a double major in addition to her International Studies major and German minor.

Read more about Harrison's adventure's in Seoul here.

Note: This story originally appeared on Hagerty Happenings News & Event for 9/6-9/13.


 

Alina Kordesch (BA in Japanese, 2013) will be a research student at the Department of Language and Information Sciences graduate program, University of Tokyo, with a Japanese MEXT (Ministry of Education) fellowship.  She is the winner of the second prize at the Denman Undergraduate Research Forum last spring.  


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