#6. 정주행 -- Binge-watching a show

Despite the fact that I left Korea more than fifteen years ago, and that I consider myself very much an anglophone, there are a few things in the Korean culture that I find to be irreplaceable by the anglophone culture.

One example that I always talk about is the manga and anime scene of Korea. In Korean, we call it "만화" for both. If you want to distinguish the two, you add the second words -영화 or -책, obtaining "만화영화" and "만화책." The Korean 만화책 scene in particular has no parallel in terms of creativity. The usage of the Korean humour by the 만화가, or "comic book artists," never fail at making me burst out laughing in the middle of my workdays. In the digital age, most comic book artists have switched to the internet as the medium, and you can get weekly installments of hundreds of comics for free through 네이버 만화 or 다음 웹툰 (now that these things are published online, Koreans have taken to calling them webtoons).

Since these fantastic creative works are released in weekly installments, readers quite often feel that they can't get enough of it. Thus, if you're a true fan, while you're waiting for the next installment, you would re-start the series by re-reading every episode from the very beginning (often, these webtoons go on for hundreds of installments, so this is no easy feat). To say that you are about to embark on this quest, Koreans will say, "이 만화 정주행해야지." This means "I will read every episode of this webtoon from the very beginning." Once you've done it, you can say "정주행 끝났다." You can use the same phrase for drama binging as well.

This neologism comes from a standard dictionary word (noun) "주행." Its verb form would be "주행하다." It usually refers to the movement of some mode of land transport that is not your legs. For example, if you wanted to describe a car driving down a road, you could say that "자동차가 도로를 지나간다." If you wanted to be fancy about it, you could say instead: "자동차가 도로를 주행한다." Similarly, you could describe the movement of a train (기차), a subway (지하철), or a motorcycle (오토바이) using the word "주행." The only exception is when you're walking. The fancy word for "walking" is "보행," not "주행."

Anyway, this word gave rise to the internet neologism 정주행. "정" means straight, or in the correct way. So, if we were describing the movements of a car, "정주행" would mean that the car is moving forward. In the context of webtoons, we're basically plowing through the series in a straight fashion, from the first episode to the last. While this word remains a slang, it is fairly well-accepted within the Korean community, and unless you're speaking to an elderly person (who might not understand the meaning if they're not into binge-watching), you can use this word without worrying about being rude. I still would avoid using this word in a formal report, however.

As an aside, if you were going to take my suggestion and try your hands at reading some of the webtoons, I would recommend Noblesse. It's about a vampire who was in hibernation for 700 years, and awoke to find himself more or less alone in our current-day world. He soon gets entangled in a battle against evil scientists to protect the humanity. It is iconic in the Korean internet culture. It is so popular that it has been going strong for ten years with one installment every week. Almost every Korean has heard of it, and you will actually see some people quoting it in random places on the Korean internet, and if you can understand the context, these comments are actually hilarious.