#76. 통수 맞다 -- Backstabbed

Even at the worst of times, there is always an unspoken code of honour that one must abide by. You may be so angry that you are seeing red in front of your eyes, but you just don't hit your opponent below the belt. If you do, your actions are ridiculed by the onlookers of being a "low blow."

You also don't attack someone without a fair warning if there is no provocation. In particular, you don't strike when they are not paying attention to you without a good reason. If you do, you are "backstabbing" someone.

Koreans also have this code of honour, but their expression is a bit peculiar.

The back of our heads is called "뒤통수" in Korean.  The etymology is not totally clear, although "뒤" is a Korean word for "back," and "수" is Chinese for "head." The letter "통" is a bit confusing, and no good explanation seems to exist. But "통" in Korean means "a container," and I guess that's what our heads are!

This is your 뒤통수.

The back of our heads is a pretty awkward thing to try to protect. There really aren't any good ways to do that. We also know that it's a pretty important part of our body, because if you fall backwards and hit your head, you're definitely looking at a lengthy recovery, assuming that it didn't kill you first!

If someone hit you in the back of your head, then

1. you were not expecting an attack like that at all, and
2. it really hurt.

So, when someone cruelly backstabs you in a way that you didn't expect at all, say your little brother decided to tattle on your mom about your secret stash of games that you were forbidden to play, then you might say:

어제 동생한테 뒤통수 맞았어 (My little brother hit me in the back of the head yesterday.)

And your little brother is probably telling his friends all about how he got you in trouble by saying:

어제 우리 형 뒤통수쳤어 ㅋㅋ (Yesterday I hit my older brother in the back of his head.)

This is a fairly common and accepted expression across all generations in Korea. Now, you can try to add a touch of vulgarity by changing the word "뒤통수." It's a three-letter word, which reminds us of a Korean name (for example, 권지용, Ji-Yong Kwon, is a typical Korean name, and it has three characters.) If you wanted to call this name in an informal, familiar name, then you omit the last name "권" (Kwon) and just call the person by their first name "지용."

You can do the same thing with the three-letter word "뒤통수." Just pretend that "뒤" is a last name, and "통수" is the first name. Instead of saying "뒤통수 맞다 (be hit in the back of the head)," you could try to say "통수 맞다," or "통수 치다." While the meaning is clear to everyone, now this becomes an expression that you want to use with your friends, and probably not with your boss.

This kind of construction has almost identical nuance as saying bro instead of brother, or 'rents instead of parents, although I'd say that the degree of vulgarity added by omitting a syllable is a bit harsher in Korean.