In Friday’s Herald, next to a 50th birthday notice, a small advertisement showed a young woman’s smiling face.
“Emily Beth Olson,” it said. The ad was explained in small print: “Good luck teaching in South Korea. You are an amazing young woman. We are proud of you and will miss you. Godspeed as you embark on your new adventure.”
In Monday’s Herald was a big, black headline: “N. Korea conducts nuke weapons test.” Troubling news for the world, it was especially so for Emily’s parents, Ed and Vera Olson.
Their 22-year-old daughter, a graduate of Everett High School and the University of Washington, left Friday on a flight from Sea-Tac to Seoul. From there, she traveled to Inchon, near South Korea’s northwest border with communist North Korea. There, she’ll work for a year as an English language teacher.
“I am nervous for her,” Vera Olson said. “She’s been planning this for at least a year. She knows Spanish, and I was teasing her that I wanted her to go someplace in South America.”
As Western experts speculated about the nature of the device North Korea claims it exploded in an underground test Sunday, Emily Olson was adjusting to her new surroundings.
“Yesterday I turned on CNN to hear that the test had occurred,” she said Monday via e-mail from Inchon. “It was pretty unsettling for me, since it was my first real day out of the house. I actually was walking to the bus around the time the test supposedly took place.”
During her first days in Inchon, a city of more than a million people, Olson said she discovered that “the locals do not speak of North Korea.” She said that while she was warmly welcomed by Korean teachers and students, an American is treated “as an outsider.”
Employed by the Prime English School, Olson learned of the job through a friend-of-a-friend connection. “My friend Kjersti Hall, from Everett, had a roommate whose brother was here,” Olson said. “I e-mailed him asking for advice, and he said there was an opening at his school.”
That new friend, Jacob Muhlbeier of Marysville, is now Olson’s co-worker in South Korea. Olson’s contract sets her salary at 2 million South Korean won per month, or about $2,076, plus one extra month’s severance pay. Housing is provided.
This isn’t her first experience out of the country. While majoring in anthropology at UW, Olson spent last winter quarter in Costa Rica in a study-abroad program.
She began college with thoughts of a medical career. “I saw myself walking around a hospital in a white coat, being called over the intercom – ‘Paging Dr. Olson’ – which is pretty superficial,” she said.
What she really wants is to “help a lot of people.” Her studies in Costa Rica fueled an interest in developing countries. Eventually, she’d like to be involved in a nonprofit organization helping with global development.
Olson traces her interest in South Korea to a student who joined her class at Immaculate Conception-Our Lady of Perpetual Help School in Everett.
“Kong Yoon came in seventh grade, with very limited English skills,” she said. “I was extremely interested in talking to him about his home and his family. He spoke so highly of Korea.
“I jokingly told him I had been to North Korea, which was the wrong thing to say. The fear on his face was unforgettable,” Olson recalled.
Now she brings her language skills to her former classmate’s world. Many people she’s met do speak some English. “Hopefully, I will be picking up a lot of Korean words from my students,” she said.
Her parents may visit their daughter at Christmastime. The U.S. State Department has issued travel warnings for Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and more than a dozen other nations, but not for South Korea.
As world leaders weigh possible responses to North Korea’s nuclear test, Vera Olson checks in with Emily about less lofty issues. The two talked Monday using Skype, software that allows free international calls over the Internet.
The mother’s laptop computer has a camera, but her daughter’s does not. “Em didn’t really like that idea,” Vera Olson said. “I asked her what she had in her refrigerator. I said, ‘See? If you had a camera, you could just show me.’”
In the midst of international turmoil, moms are still moms – the world over.
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
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