A journey to the future, or students from AWL in Korea

Could you have observed the production process?

Yeah. Our hosts truly put themselves to it. For example: in addition to the people who guided us, peculiar plaques were provided in Polish, which were placed in each position – from cutting of the sheet metallic to investigating of the cannon-haubic after assembling them. The plaques explained what was happening in a given position.

You besides had the chance to visit the Korean equivalent of the Seoul Academy of Land Forces...

Yes, we spent the full day at Korea Military Academy – the main military college in that country. surely the teaching base is impressive. Above all, it is powerful, highly complex, of course it stands at the highest level erstwhile it comes to audiovisual equipment. However, my main focus was on the education system. The regulation is that for the first year of the year, people don't go out of school! Everything happens on site. For this reason, it is de facto specified a mini-city, with its own hospital, facilities specified as temples and others, you can say "civil" facilities.

What amazed you erstwhile it came to the training process?

Above all, considerable cultural differences are felt. Hierarchy, discipline is of large importance. I besides had a kind of faux pas erstwhile I reached out to 1 person, which is not a mostly accepted gesture. There he greets himself with prostrateness, which is an emphasis on the hierarchy and an expression of kindness. We besides saw this in the relation between lecturers and students. Academic teachers there communicate cognition in a very precise and transparent way, but a small European or Polish interaction is lacking. Korean students, for example, after the lecture, erstwhile there was time for questions, did not ask them at all. This is the cultural difference, this is simply a much clearer subordination of the hierarchy. And we were asking questions. For us, it was perfectly natural that there was specified an exchange with the lecturer. I besides noted the approach to additional classes, sections, etc. Korean students have many options to choose from, e.g. from more interesting ones – you can train conventional archery and there are archery ranges, while there, unlike the Wrocław AWL, each student has to choose additional classes and must change them all year.

Have you besides had the chance to meet your Korean colleagues from the military college there on a more private foot?

Of course. There were meetings little authoritative at a treat, large Korean cuisine. I might add that the cook served something different all day at a hotel in Seoul. There was something to choose from. I peculiarly liked the dish, which unfortunately I do not know, but it was a bacon with rice wrapped in a lettuce leaf, served with sauces. Delicious.

At Korea Military Academy, we met cadets who would visit our university in March, but we besides met people who were already in Poland. The question of why they chose our country, they replied that in our country they could learn the most, as Poland is the front country of the east flank of NATO. Everyone there was very kind to us and well-meaning to us.

So there was time to talk about the speciality of service in the Korean and Polish troops?

Sure. And that was a large experience, too. We asked our colleagues, among others, about how 1 lives in specified a militarized country, which is adjacent to a dictatorship equipped with atomic weapons. In South Korea, military service is compulsory. And it takes at least 18 months. This is simply a powerful army (500 1000 soldiers and 3 million in reserve – ed.). You could sense, not only from their stories, that this is simply a country truly very militarized. Sometimes we were asked – and we were uniformed – if we were soldiers from the draft. So we could see these alternatively crucial and noticeable organizational differences between our armies.

The typical association of Poles with places like South Korea with the capital in Seoul is that it is simply a state-of-the-art country with an even more modern capital. An exaggerated idea?

No, absolutely. Seoul has made a large impression on us, and it is actually a bit of a journey into the future. In a powerful city of 10 million, we felt highly safe. Everything is well organized, and indeed modern. It's adequate to say it was snowing after the arrival. So we expected that in the morning – erstwhile we were waiting for a further ride – there would be problems. Meanwhile, it turned out that despite intense rainfall the streets in Seoul were black in the morning. We found out they're... heated! I don't know how it works, but there was no sign of snow.

A weekly visit to Korea was the consequence of an agreement between AWL and the Hanwha Aerospace arms company. The Korean maker has already sponsored scholarships for subjects from the Academy of Land Forces and the exchange of audiovisual equipment in 2 audit rooms of the Wrocław University – the Hall of Marshal Pilsudski and Colonel Kukliński. The value of Hanwha's investment in cooperation with AWL is PLN 1.2 million.

The officers and AWL students besides visited the country's main military college – the Korean Military Academy, the local National Museum or the Korean War museum, as well as a demilitarized region on the border between South and North Korea. In March, Korean podchoracies will come to Wroclaw for exchange.