#11. 발 -- Being terrible at something

It is infuriating when someone doesn't put their heart into the work they are tasked to do. Maybe your teammates are not pulling their weights in your group project, and the work that they do manage to do is so terrible that you can't even use it. Maybe one of the actors in your favourite K-drama is terrible at acting, and it's really grating on your nerves.

In one of these cases, consider the following retorts. The common key word is "발," meaning "foot."

너는 과제를 발로하니? (Are you doing the project with your foot?)

발로 연기를 해도 저 배우보다는 잘하겠다 (Even if I act with just my feet, I could do better than that actor.)

The reason for these kinds of remarks should be fairly obvious even for the non-Korean speakers; since feet are much less adroit than the hands, we are mocking the clumsiness of the receiver of the comments, since even my feet would accomplish better than what they have done.

English has a similar expression as well; namely, to have two left feet. However, compared to this English expression, the Korean version described above has a nuance that is much more vulgar. It conveys the annoyance of the speaker, if not anger, and I would not use this expression at all to a person older than me. Even for my peers, I'd have to be pretty annoyed to throw one of these retorts to them.

In some cases,  there's a slightly more humorous usage, when you are not directly insulting someone, but rather a third party. In this case, you can use the prefix "발-" to mock someone. For example, when you're mocking an actor (there's really no danger of offending the actor personally, since you probably don't even know him!) you could say

발연기 장난 아니더라 (His terrible acting was no joke.)

Similarly, you could be reading an English novel translated to Korean, and notice that the translation is terrible. In this case, you could refer to this translation as "발번역," and say things like "그 소설 읽지마. 발번역이 너무 심해" (Don't read the novel, there was too much terrible translation.") Here's a hilarious clip of "발 CG," or terrible quality computer graphics, from one of the Korean dramas "연개소문:"

You can pretty much tell that whoever did these special effects really didn't have much time, so you would be laughing hard with your friends, calling it "발 CG." So, again, the prefix "발-" has a different nuance from just using the word "발" in your sentences! The effect is rather humorous! (As an aside, the last scene is probably a bit puzzling. It depicts thousands of palace maidens throwing themselves to their death from a cliff, because the enemy had taken over the palace and they were in danger of getting caught and being sold as slaves, or worse. It's a fairly well-known bit of Korean history that I hope to write about in the near future!)


Finally, you can use the "발-" prefix to mock yourself, when you've made something of a questionable quality. You can preemptively declare it to be of terrible quality "발퀄리티" or "발퀄" for short, thus introducing some quick humour into the situation, and acknowledge that your product is not of the best quality. You will often see the hashtag #발퀄 on Instagram, for example, for terrible quality photos. This word is especially humorous, because of the two parts that make up this word. One is pure Korean, and the other is English. Since no real Korean word is made from two stems such as this, the combination of Korean and English usually has a humorous effect. You can even add the all-purpose prefix "개-" to make it "개발퀄," or "f-ing awful quality."

The prefix "발-" is not offensive, so you could use it to most people, although it is slang, and I would avoid it in formal company.