#22. 만렙 -- You're the best

I was an elementary school student in Korea in the late 90s and early 2000s, when Starcraft was just gaining its popularity. I was never a teen in Korea, and I was more interested in comic books and cute K-pop boy bands, so I never played Starcraft. Despite this, I heard about Starcraft daily from my classmates. If we were to form groups for some projects, our group name was invariably going to be Protoss or Terran, or some variation thereof (apparently, Zergs were too ugly to be considered a good name!) I listened to my classmates brag about their actions per minute, or the latest strategy, and none of this was strange to me. It was a bit of a shock to realize that the gamers were fairly rare in the Western world, when practically everyone in Korea could be considered a gamer.

Well, gamers naturally end up spending a ton of time on the internet, so when most of your population is a gamer, gamer lingo is sure to seep into your internet slang. Now that I reflect on it, I am surprised that I managed to avoid talking about the gamer slang for the majority of my posts so far. The only words coming from gamer language so far would be "항마력" and "용자."

But here is another word that clearly comes from the gaming culture.

When I was living in Korea, I had a friend who never got anything other than 100% on her math exams. Although this expression did not exist then, if I see her now, I'd want to tell her that:

넌 정말 수학에 있어서는 만렙이다. (As far as math is concerned, you are really the best.)

The slang here is the word "만렙." The word "렙" is a shortened form for "레벨," or "level (as in, the level of a game; the Koreans never use it like in the sentence 'level the ground.')" Koreans really like to shorten words, and this is just one instance of such contraction. So for example, in gaming language, if someone has just started playing and has pretty low stats, you could call them "0렙 (level 0)," "1렙 (level 1)," or "저렙 (low level; "저" is a Chinese letter meaning "low," as in "저지대 (low-lying area)," "저원 (low-lying field)," or "저퀄리티 (low quality)")." In contrast, someone who has high stats can be called "고렙 (high level; "고" is a Chinese letter meaning "high," as in "고지대," "고원," "고퀄리티," etc.)"

The word "만" comes from Chinese, and it means "full." The most common usage you see in Korea, of course, is how the Koreans count their age. When the Koreans want to talk about their age in the Western sense (where you age one year when you have lived out a full year), they will say:

제 나이는 만으로 스물 두 살이에요 (I have lived twenty-two years in full; I'm 22 in the Western sense.)

Putting the above two words together, "만렙" means that your stats are full; that is, there is no room to improve. So, if I were telling my friend that she is "만렙" in math, I'm telling her that no one is better than her in math, and that she pretty much has nowhere to improve. In short, I am giving her the highest compliment.

You can also use this word in the gaming setting (or any situation that reminds you of a gaming setting.) When someone achieves the highest level in a game, the correct way to use this slang is to use the verb "만렙을 찍다." For example, you can say:

너 어제 만렙 찍었다면서? (I heard that you got to the final level yesterday.)

Unfortunately, this word has such strong gamer origins that it is inappropriate to use in a formal setting (although no one would be offended by it, it would be pretty strange to use this to your grandparents, for example!) But it's a widespread word nonetheless, and given the affinity to video games in Korea, most people who use the internet will understand the word!