Tallwood’s students are no strangers to diversity in their coursework, classrooms, and even in their extracurriculars. As the home of the Global Studies and World Languages Academy, there are a variety of culture clubs and honor societies, from Caribbean Culture Club to Filipino Culture Club, and Tallwood always seems to be accepting more and more. This year, Tallwood welcomes the new Korean Culture Club, started by senior Autumn Brown and juniors Leilani Pickett, Mackenna Morgan, and Noelani Stachurski.

The Roaring Gazette sat down with Brown, Pickett, and Morgan to get some insight on their ideas about the club, starting from the beginning. “K-pop introduced us to Korean culture and we always thought Korean culture was cool,” said Pickett regarding the creation of the club with Brown. “[We thought,] ‘there’s other culture clubs, so why not start a Korean Culture Club?’”

Pickett and Brown then teamed up with Morgan and Stachurski to finally begin the club with a common goal in mind. “I want people to understand that the culture of Korea isn’t just either North Korea or k-pop. It’s a whole lot more. There’s a whole lot more backstory and it’s very interesting,” said Morgan. “Just because there are people out there who fetishize the culture, doesn’t mean that’s what it is. We want people to understand the realness.”

So, how do the members plan on sharing the realer parts of Korean culture?

“We have culture lessons where we learn different parts of the culture. We’re planning on doing a lesson on Chuseok,” said Pickett. Morgan added, “It’s basically the Autumn Eve festival. It’s one of their many different cultural festivals and it plays a lot into their history. We’re planning on also doing a Lunar New Year celebration or lesson as well.”

On top of that, the team plans on doing mini language lessons (the first meeting began with learning self introductions) and potentially even bringing in guest speakers. “We’ve got some ideas planned for the farther future but anything in the near future will happen as it comes to us,” said Morgan.

Finally, the group gave a last message that they wanted to share with the rest of the school. Brown stated, “This is not a k-pop club! Everybody thinks it’s a k-pop club – that’s been going around – and it’s kind of disrespectful to us because we’re working very hard. That’s not what it is. It’s about the culture, not a little fan group.” Pickett and Morgan both agreed to this, emphasizing that Korea is much more than the pop culture that’s made its way to the West.

With such big objectives for their emerging club, Tallwood students can all look forward to some wonderful contributions to the school. If you’re interested in checking out or even joining the Korean Culture Club, meetings are every first and third Wednesday of the month in room A102!