#31. Five slang words NOT to use if you want to appear cool

I decided to look around the internet for the English writings on the Korean slang today. And honestly, some of the posts that I found made me cringe. Not because they're incorrect, but because the slang that they introduced were so horribly outdated that even my parents wouldn't use them.

Korea is a very small country. There are very few major channels on TV, there are very few major TV series, and because the culture is reasonably homogeneous, everything spreads quickly. If a celebrity makes an appearance on TV and says something catchy, it could be the hot phrase the next day in all of Korea. Although some of these phrases and slang survive for years, some of them are very short-lived.

The following words are more or less dead. Unless you're trying to use them in an ironic way (for example, you are mocking someone for being old-fashioned), it is probably better to avoid the following words, as they are no longer in use.

• 당근: This word means "of course." In Korean, you would normally say "당연하지." Noticing that the first letter of "당연" and "당근" are the same, some people in the 2000s substituted "당근" and started saying "당근이지," or "당근" for "of course." This was very popular for a long time, but it slowly fell out of use, and is no longer used.
• 하이루: The Koreanization of the word "hi" would of course just be "하이." Back in the 90s, if someone greeted you with "하이," apparently you used to say "하이 too," which got shortened as "하이2 (2 = two = too phonetically)" and then "하이투." Sadly, the resolution wasn't the best back then, and the letters "투" and "루" looked very similar. Eventually "하이루" prevailed.
• 방가: This was often used in online chatting, if you wanted to say "nice to meet you," or "long time no see." The proper Korean would have been "반가워" or "반가워요," but since many Koreans pronounce these as "방가워" and "방가워요," this became popular in the 90s. When someone greeted you with "하이루," you always responded with "방가방가."
• 즐: "즐거운 하루 되세요" or "Have an enjoyable day" is a pretty standard formal goodbye. This gets used by salespeople, by automated machines, and also in games as you're logging out. In the mid-2000s, only the first letter of this word was used by the teens (usually in the chatrooms of online games) to wrap up a conversation. Eventually, it started getting used as "get lost," by dismissively typing out only the first letter of the formal goodbye.
• 안습: This word, also popular in the 2000s, is short for "안구에 습기차다." "안구" is a medical term for "eyeball," and "습기차다" means to "fog up" or "become humid." That is, this is a pretty fancy way of saying "I'm tearing up."

This of course makes Korean slang even trickier! The best way to stay on top of the slang game is to consume as much of the Korean culture as possible, so take some time to look around some of the largest internet communities of Korea, such as DC Inside, Today Humor, Ilbe (although this is politically charged and often shunned by many Koreans), Nate Pann, etc.