#125. 한국 vs. 독일 -- Korea vs. Germany

I hesitate a little to write this post, because Germany ranks at 7th place in the list of countries that visit my blog most frequently. So perhaps I will start this blog post with a disclaimer that I couldn't care less about the World Cup (really, I'm more of a Canadian than anything else!) and that the Germans beat Canada in Men's hockey in the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics... That one still hurts!

That's solid, Germany!

Previously, I had talked about the word "드립." It comes as the familiar form of the word "ad lib" ("애드립" in Korean; to make it a familiar form in slang, just take off the first letter to get "드립", just like how you would omit the last name of a Korean person to be more familiar with them!)

The word "드립" is a bit of a badge of honour, because it is given to hilarious and fresh jokes. If your friend Sooyoung is very good at making funny jokes (the slangy verb form is "드립을 치다"), you can slangily describe that as:

"수영이는 드립을 엄청 잘 쳐." (Sooyoung is very good at making unexpected jokes).

Koreans have never been a serious group of people. Humour of all forms are visible in our traditional culture and literature, and so Korean internet users make all sorts of effort to be hilarious, and they try to be unique in their jokes.

Not surprisingly, the shocking win of Korean soccer team over Germany (and 2:0 at that) provided a great opportunity for the Koreans to come up with new jokes ("드립"), and although I know nothing about soccer, I enjoyed very much reading the one-line witticisms of the Koreans. I thought that I would try to write a blog post before the World Cup fever is over about some of my favourite 드립s. See if you can understand them!

In direct translation, it says "Germany is indeed the country of beer. Even their goalpost is BEER, f*** ㅋㅋㅋ." Of course, "Beer" written in Korean pronunciation is "비어," which can mean "empty" and so, using this substitution, the second phrase becomes

"골대까지 비어있네" (Their goalpost is empty.)

So because Germany is the country of beer (or emptiness, in Korean), their goalpost was empty, which allowed the Koreans to score an extra goal on Germany, whose goalkeeper had joined in the last-ditch attempt to score a goal on Korea.

This tweet talks about 종특 of the Koreans, which I had talked about here. Although the word "종특" can be translated as a "stereotypical characteristic," there is an inherent vulgarity and humour in the word. This tweet says:

"오늘 경기에서 한국 종특 2개나 나옴" (There were two stereotypical characteristics of Koreans in today's match)

The first stereotype is "나만 좆될수 없지," which roughly translates as "I won't be the only one f***ed over." The word "좆" means "penis," although it is used in a wide variety of contexts, such as here and here. In this context, the phrase "좆되다" (become a penis, when translated directly) means "in trouble" or "f***ed up" -- I suppose you would be in a huge trouble if you suddenly became a penis!

For example, you can say:

"어제 여친한테 거짓말한거 들켰어. 나 완전 좆됐어" (I'm so f***ed, my gf found out that I was lying yesterday.)

or

"나 시험공부 하나도 안했는데. 나 좆된거 맞지?" (I didn't study at all for the exam. I'm f***ed, right?) 

In any case, Koreans tend to be fairly jealous of each other's successes (can you blame them, given that competition shapes most Koreans' careers?) and they freely acknowledge it. While it would be frowned upon to take steps to ensure someone else's failures (usually at a heavy cost to yourself), I imagine that you would get at least a few nods of reluctant understanding from some Koreans.

So, since the Koreans were destined to not advance in the World Cup, the next stereotypical thing for the Koreans to do is to make sure that someone else fails, and who is a better target than Germany? Somehow, this situation of "weakest student messing up the top student's chance" resonated with the Koreans, and they took the opportunity to revel in the victory and also laugh at themselves.

The second stereotype is "벼락치기" which literally means "lightening strike," and it is used to describe the cliché situation of cramming for an exam. For example, you can say:

"오늘 시험보는걸 잊어버렸어. 앞으로 30분이라도 벼락치기를 해야겠다." (I forgot that we have an exam today. I should cram for the next 30 minutes.)

or

"성우선배는 벼락치기를 해서 서울대를 간 전설의 인물이야." (Sungwoo sunbae is the legendary character who crammed his way to Seoul National University.)

Many Koreans stereotypically cram for exams, and given that the Koreans scored two goals last-minute, it also seemed like a very typical Korean thing to do.

This tweet translates as "Korea was 'death' in the 'group of death'."

In every World Cup, the Koreans like to identify "죽음의 조" (group of death), which is the group where the competition is the most fierce. More often than not, the group of death will be the group that includes Korea (and maybe one other group, when it's obvious that Korea is not in the group of death!). After all, the Koreans like to think that they fought a hard battle, regardless of the outcome!


In short, the Koreans were just as shocked as the rest of the world at having beaten Germany. They didn't really try to brag too much, though. They enjoyed the miracle and made fun of themselves, and it was really a fun party :)

And I should also update you on why I haven't been writing more posts -- summers are usually the busy months as I travel a lot. Between my travels and personal issues, I just haven't had too much time to write an article, and the background seems to take an increasing amount of time with each article! Come late August or September, I should be able to update more frequently. Thanks for sticking around, dear Korean-lovers!