MONTEREY, Calif. – Students from the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center in Monterey, California made a big splash at the Korean annual video contest at their school on Oct. 4. They created their own version of “Oppan Gangnam Style” in Korean – about student life at DLIFLC, complete with students and Korean instructors dancing to the tunes of PSY’s video which has gone viral.
The video, called Homework Korean Style, was produced and edited by Air Force Maj. Marcos Baca, while the performers in the video are Baca’s classmates, instructors and even the school dean.
While it was initially planned as a depiction of how difficult life is as a Korean language student at the Institute, the work eventually turned out to be an entertainment video that won 3rd place in the contest, mainly owing to the factthe first two awards were given to those whose videos presented more language and less polished cinematic value.
“Initially we were going to make an exaggerated account about how miserable our lives at DLI were while we were learning Korean: no social life, no sleep, more homework than any mere mortal could ever accomplish in a given day,” explained Baca. “However, when the camera started rolling, we began to experience an unexplained increase in morale. We smiled for the first time in months, and we started actually looking forward to each day.”
The Korean language program at DLIFLC is 64 weeks long. Students are in class five days a week, six to seven hours per day, with two to three hours of homework each night. The lessons move at lightning speed, and the pressure is immense, with some equating the program to “intellectual Ranger School.” Baca stated, “it’s like running a marathon at a sprint pace.”
“As much fun as it was, don’t let the video fool you–we didn’t get to spend class time making this. All of our filming was done after hours and on weekends over the course of about a month. The time spent to film, edit, and record the audio for this mainly came out of our sleeping hours,” said Baca.
At the time of this writing, the video has thus far received nearly, 10,000 hits on YouTube and has been posted separately on the Pentagon Channel and the Defense Video and Imagery Distribution System (DVIDS). To view the video please click here or visit DLIFLC on Facebook.
