A five-story building, which is named as Haejungsa, is the only single on-campus dormitory of KDI School. With eight studio rooms and fifty-three general rooms, Haejungsa is an accommodation for 130 students including 12 Korean students during 2014 Spring Semester. In a room, two or three students are appointed to stay together.  Due to limited rooms available, Haejungsa is assigned mainly to international students who have no accommodations in Korea, and sorry for Korean students who have rarely been placed in that on-campus dormitory, told by Hyun-Ju Kim, Deputy Director of Student Affairs Division.

Different from other dormitories in many universities in Korea where male and female students are placed in different buildings, at Haejungsa, male and female students share the building, but are separated by floors. The first floor is dominated by female students, while the third and fourth floors are for male students. For the second floor, not special but unique, are shared by male and female students who stay in separated rooms. The common and special places are found at the lounge on the first floor, and at the kitchen room located on the fifth floor.

Haejungsa is like a small world at KDI School since students who are from around the globe come together and share different traditions and cultures. At the lounge on the first floor where is a meeting point, after a stressful day at school, sometime we can hear various languages from different continents while students are chatting and trying to share own languages with their international friends, and some other times we can see some students together do their school works there.

Different from the first floor, at the fifth floor, especially during lunchtime and dinnertime, we can smell of yummy foods, which is originally from different countries that students prepare for their meals. We are in Korea, but if we just go to the fifth floor of Haejungsa during that time, we can also taste special foods from different continents. Different from those activities, at another time, we can also see some students dress traditional clothes which people would never see it if they do not have a chance to go to that particular country, but we can see at Haejungsa.

Kyungnam Ryu (2014 MDP, Korea), who enjoys the life at this multi-cultural dormitory, said Haejungsa is a special place to stay since she can interact with students from many different countries. She can meet and talk to people from the United States, China, Japan at somewhere in Korea, but she rarely meets and talks to people who are from Malawi, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Cambodia and others, so Haejungsa is a right place to meet, share knowledge, experiences and even cook together. Some other times, she enjoys tasting food, which was cooked by international students after saying, “Yes” to the question “Do you want to try?” which is commonly asked at the fifth floor. The other good thing is that she can save twenty hours per week to commute from home to school.

Another socialized student,  Hacène Mendjour (2013 MPP, Algeria) said that on-campus dormitory is the place for him to learn various histories, cultures and traditions, which he has never known before. “Students are living here as families. I go to school, come back and meet them everyday as brothers and sisters. We meet not only for study, but also we enjoy private life together here in Korea”, he added. Thanks to KDI School that allows students from around the world to meet. Living at Haejungsa, Hacène learns how to be tolerant and treat people from different countries with different perspectives, and it is the way that people around the world should do to growth and develop together in this contemporary time and in the future.

Haejungsa is not just a place to sleep, but to share, learn, and enjoy. It will be a memory of life.

By Lesley Rubio Campos (2013 MDP, Guatemala)