#9. 급식충 -- How to insult the low-teens of the internet

I have to admit, I was probably pretty annoying when I first discovered that I could be anonymous on the internet. I made a lot of comments on the internet that I thought were funny (in hindsight, they weren't at all) and annoyed a lot of people. They must have seen right through my supposed anonymity and known that I was a thirteen-year-old child who has just discovered the internet.

The Koreans would swear that the phenomenon is real. Apparently, the quality of the posts in Reddit-like websites take a hit at around 3-4pm (the time when the middle schoolers of age 13-15 are dismissed from school), and then again at around 5-6pm, when the high schoolers of age 16-18 are dismissed from school.

In Korea, where the internet occupies a larger part of life than it does in North America, there are some particular ways to insult the children of the internet. If the quality of a post is particularly terrible or immature, you will undoubtedly see comments appear such as:

급식이냐?

"급식" is the school-provided lunch. This word has Chinese as its origin. "급" means to distribute; for example, "배급" means to provide as well. "식" means a meal; the fancy vocabulary for breakfast, lunch, and dinner are "조식," "중식," and "석식."

A typical Korean 급식.

Most Korean students from elementary school to high school are given a "급식," a distributed meal, for lunch. They are given out on a metal tray, and they are usually Korean meals of rice, some soup, and 3-4 different kinds of 반찬, which are side menus. Sometimes Western-style meals such as pasta or hamburgers make appearances as well. (An interesting aside, a lot of westerners always eat out of these trays with the 반찬 closer to you and the rice away from you; 100% of the Koreans would do the opposite, where the rice is closer and 반찬 further, because that's how the Korean tables are set at home!)

This is how you would get your lunch served in a Korean school.

This is a unique feature of the Korean school life, as once you graduate from high school, you will never get 급식 again! Although some universities and some companies have a similar model for providing lunch, they are never called 급식, because the word 급식 has such a strong association to the Korean school system (and is seen as a thing for the schoolchildren.)

Therefore, by calling someone a "급식," you're calling them out for their immaturity. There are several ways to do it:

• 급식이냐? (are you a teen?)
• 급식충 보소 (look at that insect of a teen): "충" is a Chinese-rooted word for an "insect." There are many words that use this letter to insult people. "식충이" is someone who only eats and does nothing else, like an insect. "일베충" is someone who goes on ilbe a lot (ilbe is the Korean equivalent of 4chan), and just the fact that you go on it is enough to brand you as an insect to some Korean people.
• 급식 출몰 (another teen appears!)

Another commonly-used word is "중2병," or the "sickness of the second-year middle school (중학교 2학년) student." You are 14 when you're in second year of middle school; and Koreans believe that this is the age where people become the most obnoxious, generally in the form of 허세.

If you spot a 급식 being full of 허세, then you can call them out by saying things like:

• 중2병 보소 (look at that 2nd year middle school sickness)
• 중2병 말기 환자네 (he's in the terminal stages of his 2nd year middle school sickness)
• or simply just writing "중2병."

Although these words are very widespread on the net, I would not use these words unless you were speaking to very close friends, or you are entering a full-blown keyboard battle with someone on the internet! If you were actually speaking to a teenager in this way, they would probably find it quite insulting and degrading.