Hi, my name is Dora, I’m 22 years old and I’m from Hungary. My major at university is international business, and as all students in their final year, I was also required to complete an internship program. Since my major is international business, I thought I could get the most valuable experience if I complete the program abroad. I decided to choose South Korea as my destination because I had been an exchange student at Korea University before and I had a very positive experience during my time here.

During my first few weeks at ACOPIA, I was overwhelmed with a lot of new information and I needed some time to get familiar with the operations of the organization, that all the other interns were already well aware of. Fortunately, I was able to quickly catch up to everyone and started to take part in different projects. I quickly had to learn how to cooperate with people from all around the world, but although it did come with challenges at a few times, it was also something that made the environment a lot more interesting and inspiring.

While working at ACOPIA, I was mostly busy with the promotion of various programs organized by ACOPIA and many other miscellaneous activities in connection to these programs. I have always been interested in marketing, and though I have learned about how international marketing has to be different from domestic or regional marketing strategies, until this time I hadn’t had the opportunity to use these concepts in practice. ACOPIA’s programs are quite popular at the Japanese market, but it was important to further expand its relations to other countries as well, since nowadays Kpop has gained global attention not just among Asian countries but also in the West. We had to make sure to portray and advertise ACOPIA in a way that shows how the programs are welcoming everyone from all around the world. In order to reach as many people as possible, finding new ways of promoting the programs were a key point of the activity and it was also very challenging a few times. However, it made my problem-solving skill improve significantly, as not only it was necessary, to grow our online presence, but also the deadlines were oftentimes relatively tight, meaning that coming up with new ideas and solving difficulties had to be done as soon as possible. Thanks to that, my time management skill has also improved greatly. I had to schedule my time appropriately for these deadlines to be met without exception.  Having high responsibility for the activities I had to carry out taught me how to do a thorough but efficient work at the same time.

Making friends with people from different countries and culture were one of the most interesting part of being part of ACOPIA. I was able to adapt to these cultural differences fairly quickly and I could successfully cooperate with my fellow interns during our various projects and activities. Though misunderstandings can and do occur at any work environment, I had to learn that rather than trying to avoid them, it is more efficient to clear things up and come to an agreement. It made me realize that concise and precise communication is a key element of successful cooperation and forced me to improve in this aspect as well, which is something that will always be a beneficial skill, even outside work environment.

Being and working in South Korea had helped me to gain such experience that I wouldn’t have been able to get if I had completed my internship somewhere else. Besides all the skills I was able to improve at work, I also had the opportunity to further explore South Korea as a country, to become familiar with its culture and people, and to try out as much delicious food as possible. Although my time in Korea is slowly coming to an end, I know for sure that I’d like to come back in the future as the country has so much to offer that I still hasn’t experienced yet, but I’m also grateful for the memories I made so far, the people I met and the activities I had the chance to try out during my time here.