#3. 나 궁서체야 -- Can you say "I'm serious" without using the word "진지"?

There are certain fonts that are so well-known and timeless that it's almost a cultural reference. In English, Times New Roman for serious essays, and Comic Sans if you want to appear friendly (and fail).

Korean has one of these fonts too. It's called "궁서체", which is short for "궁중서체." This latter means font (서체) used in the palace (궁중). Korean wasn't used by the educated men back then, and only the women and the uneducated used Korean (the learned people used Chinese). Since calligraphy was the only way to get anything on paper, 궁서체 was born, by the 궁녀, the female servants of the palace. Below is the comparison between 궁서체 on the left and 고딕체 (gothic font) on the right, and you can really see the difference. Note the tapered ending of the strokes, meant to emulate how the calligraphy brush would have written out these letters!

Given the cultural background, 궁서체 got the reputation that it's old, outdated, and boring. This font was never popular as far as I remember; it was only used in trying to get across the feeling of antiquity. It's also hard to read when the font is small. Basically, no one used to like it. To make matters worse, back in the 90s when I was a student in Korea, the exams often used to be printed in 궁서체. North Korea is also a fan of this font, and they use it a lot more frequently, for example, for news headlines on TV. There are just so many different reasons not to like this font!

However, the internet recently gave it a new life. If you were writing an internet novel, and an old character was speaking, you could turn his dialogue into 궁서체 to give it a bit more of a character. Want to give the extra creeps at a particular passage in a horror novel? No problem, use the red-colored 궁서체, and it looks like it's written with a brush dipped in blood.

This means "annihilate (멸, Chinese origins) the communists (공, short for 공산당)". Red 궁서체 means they're dead serious.

Koreans are humorous people, especially on the internet. So the internet seized its chance. Nowadays, if you want to humorously say "I'm serious right now," instead of saying that "나 지금 진지해," you can say "나 지금 궁서체야." Of course, it rarely will have the desired effect, because you're clearly not actually being serious.

Maybe you're studying, and your friends are goofing off near you being pretty loud. You ask them to please be quiet "조용히 해," and they're not listening to you. So you tell them, "조용히 하라고. 나 지금 궁서체야" (I told you to be quiet, I am serious right now). They'll probably laugh at your joke, and carry right on being loud.

Your young and popular professor might be talking about the upcoming exam and how difficult it is. He might say, "공부 많이 하세요. 궁서체로 말하는 거에요." (Study hard; I'm speaking in earnest). Then you would probably get a small chuckle out of it, but also understand that the exam is probably going to be pretty hard and you should study.

If your professor is old? Forget it! This usage, like most slang, is only for the young people. You can use it in real life and on the internet, as long as they're relatively young, say up until their 30s or 40s.

Just a few more fun examples. If you see something written in 궁서체 and it doesn't have a historical context, you can tell that the author is trying to be funny. For example, the Korean girl group Crayon Pop wore a lot of T-shirts with their names written in 궁서체.

In the website 웃긴대학 (humour university in English), a Reddit-like Korean website, you have the option to add a serious tag. When you do that, it automatically converts the entirety of your text into 궁서체. Thanks to all of these revivals, some designers would intentionally use this font for certain kitsch items, and it goes really well with the context! (As an aside, the Korean subreddit also chose 궁서체! Were the mods being ironic when they made it? Or are they being super serious?)

Because Korean is only really used in Korea, there is so much cultural context in a lot of slang. I hope that this helps in understanding the internet culture a little bit more!