By Elyssa Phan, Staff Writer and Photographer & Jennifer Trend, Staff Writer
Korean Culture Club (KCC) and Korean Club (KC) seem like the same thing at first glance, but how similar are they really?
Korean Culture Club (KCC):
Korean Culture Club, focusing mainly on the Korean entertainment industry, centers its meeting discussions around idol groups and fun pop songs. On the other hand, Korean Club (KC), bases its club around the holidays, traditions and language of the country. Both meeting on a Friday at lunch, KCC in room 301 and KC in room 213, it’s a rather tough choice to make when deciding which club to head to.
“What inspired me to make this club was that there is a lot of different diverse types of clubs where you have to volunteer in that kind of academic sense and there’s not a lot of clubs that have involvement in hobbies and things that students like themselves,” said junior Jasmine Nguyen, president of KCC. “And I thought ‘Hey why not create a club that I think that a majority of the students on campus like, such as Korean Pop (K-POP) and more of that.”
KCC is more based on the entertainment aspect of Korea, and its main intent is to focus on the members and the kinds of music or entertainment they enjoy. Compared to other clubs that are generally more based on volunteer work or on academics, KCC runs on what the members enjoy outside of the scholarly life, and they strive to become a family who can share their passions without judgement.
“My club offers opportunities that would mainly focus more on the members and not just academics and how it’s going to affect our college application,” said Nguyen.
Korean Club (KC):
“So recently we just celebrated what is kind of a Korean Thanksgiving. We plan on celebrating things like New Years and hopefully with the help of our advisor we can teach more about traditions and things like that,” said senior Madison Le, president of KC.
While the theme of “culture” is still deeply integrated into Korean Club, KC is definitely more focused on a different aspect of Korean culture: festivities, traditional customs, language and basically the country itself. KC discusses everything from the meaning of the Korea’s holidays to what they did in the past and what they do now.
With the particularly different takes on Korean culture, it’s no surprise KCC and KC also have deviating goals for their clubs.
“Our main goal at the end of the year is to attend this event called KCON, which is the biggest convention in LA that’s based on the Korean culture, and at the end of every convention there’s always a concert and I think that’s a great experience to go to because not a lot of K-POP [idols] attend concerts in this area, so I thought it would be a great opportunity that everyone at least got to see their idols,” said Nguyen.
Meanwhile, KC’s central goal is simply to familiarize its members with the diversity of Asian cultures around the school.
“[Our goal is to] expand the club and just have people express their love for other cultures and hopefully learn more about them,” said Le.
However, just because they have different visions, doesn’t mean they’re completely separate clubs. After all, both clubs share the same enthusiastic interest and passion for the country and culture of Korea. Because of this, the presidents have mutually agreed to collaborate on a number of events in the future.
“I talked to [Nguyen] and we agreed to do socials and combine fundraisers,” Le said.
“So [at] different of socials, maybe our club members could get together and talk. Because at the end of the day we all just like K-POP and we just want to celebrate it so there’s not much harm,” said Nguyen.
