#19. 강철멘탈, 유리멘탈 -- How much insult can you withstand?

I spent most of my formative years in Canada, and really consider myself a Canadian. And true to the Canadian stereotype, I love hockey.

If you have spent any amount of time watching hockey games, you would have heard of the "Green Men" of Vancouver, two men in green body suits who mock the opposing team players in the penalty box. Some take the insult better than the others, and undoubtedly, the performance given by the Green Men has some of the hockey players fuming as they leave the penalty box. This is what they do:

Apparently, it is not good enough to be just good at hockey to become the top player of the team nowadays; you have to have that unwavering determination and concentration, regardless of what is going on around you. If the Koreans saw this clip, they would say:

 와, 저사람들 정말 강철멘탈이네 (Wow, those people have nerves of steel.)

 The word "강철" means "steel," and "멘탈" comes from the English word "mental" (although "mentality" is perhaps a better translation), so quite literally "강철멘탈" means "nerves of steel." As usual, you can replace "강철" with any hard and durable object, such as "다이아몬드멘탈" (nerves of diamond.)

The opposite of "강철멘탈" is "유리멘탈," where "유리" means "glass." That is, they are so easy to rattle that their ego, their self-esteem, or whatever is holding them together at the moment (this is really the correct nuance for the word "멘탈") could shatter easily like glass. Once again, you can be creative, and use other easily shattered objects in place of "유리." Some of the most commonly used words include "두부멘탈" (mentality easily shattered like a tofu), "쿠크다스멘탈" (couque d'asse is a the name for a thin cookie you can get in any grocery stores in Korea, and it is notorious for almost never keeping shape because of its thinness,) "종이멘탈" (mentality like a paper.)

When these people of glass mentality have a meltdown, the Koreans call this "멘붕," which is short for "멘탈붕괴," or "destruction of mentality." As a verb, you can use various forms, such as "멘붕을 일으키다," "멘붕이 오다," or "멘붕하다." As it is a neologism, people seem fairly generous with what kind of conjugation you can use!

Some examples:

다연이는 너무 유리멘탈이라 교수님이 이름을 호명하자마자 한마디도 못하고 멘붕을 일으키더라. (Dayeon had the mentality of glass, so that as soon as the professor called on her, she seemed completely destroyed.)

파티가 끝난 후 어지러진 집을 보고 멘붕했다. (I went through a mental breakdown after seeing the messy house after the party.)

와, 그 스캔들은 정말 장난 아니더라. 진심 멘붕. (Wow, that scandal was no joke. Seriously, a total mental breakdown.)

 Although this is a neologism, it's been around for a while, at least a few years at this point. It seems that the mainstream media also picked up on this expression, so it is not that weird to use this in most context, except in formal writing.

Note that an English word (멘탈) is combined with Korean words (강철, 유리, or 붕괴) to form these neologisms, so when this word first came out, there was a strong undertone of intended humour. However, as this word is becoming more and more accepted in mainstream language, the nuance of humour is on the decline towards just a neutral word. Of course, all that depends on the context. If your friends are joking around and you use this word, clearly there will be some humour. If you talk to your boss about your last episode of 멘붕, there isn't a lot that is funny about it!

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#17. 사골 -- Beating a dead cow

A friend of mine took me out to a very nice fusion restaurant this past weekend. While looking through the menu, I was a bit grossed out by an item called "roasted bone marrow." Even though I'm Korean by birth, I have never been an adventurous eater, so I flat-out refused to try it.

I later talked to my mom on the phone about the strange things that people eat these days, and she looked at me strangely, and told me that one of my favourite Korean dishes is also made from ox bones (which made me instantly regret my decision to not get the roasted bone marrow.)

The dish in question, of course, is what the English speakers call "oxtail soup," or sometimes "ox bone soup." In Korean, it is called "사골국." You may be more familiar with similar dishes such as "설렁탕" or "곰탕" instead -- depending on the ratio of bones to meat that goes into this dish, they go by different names. "사골국" is mostly bones, and "곰탕" is mostly meat.

The way to make these hearty soups is very simple. You put ox bones (usually leg bones are used, this is why we call the soup "사골," or "four bones." "사" is "four," and "골" means "bones." For example, "해골" means "skull," and "골다공증" means "osteoporosis.") and some meat into a huge pot along with water, then you let simmer for several hours. Eventually, you are left with milky broth that is pure deliciousness. This process of slowly extracting broth is called "우려내다" in Korean, meaning "to simmer and extract flavour."

The really interesting feature of 사골국 is that when you're almost finished with the broth, you can pour more water into the pot, boil a while longer, and repeat the process several times to get a large quantity of delicious soup!

And this idea of using the same ingredient to make more and more of the soup gave rise to a new internet expression. Suppose that a comedy sketch keeps trying to get laughs out of the same joke for weeks, with just slight variations. At some point, you get fed up with their gimmicks, and you might exclaim in Korean,

 우려먹기가 너무 심한거 아냐? (Aren't you simmering for flavour far too much?)

농담으로 사골국 끓여먹냐? (Are you planning to make a 사골국 with that joke?)

Both of these expressions make comparison of the fact that a joke is used over and over again (just like the bones and meat in 사골국) to try to get laughter out of people (just like how we keep trying to get some flavour out of the bones and meat).

These expressions get used a lot in the evaluation of creative content, when the same topics keep coming up. They also get used when a broadcasting company keeps airing re-runs of the same episodes. When you're fed up with the same thing happening over and over again, these expressions are probably appropriate to try out.

Perhaps it is a bit of a 무리수 to say this, but I can't help but notice some similarities to an English expression, "beating a dead horse," in that there is a repetitive action being done to a dead animal (of course, I the context is different!) But it always amazes me to see any kinds of similarities between two completely unrelated cultures. It's as if the amount of understanding that humans share without needing the use of languages is actually quite a lot.

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#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.

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#5. 고구마, 사이다 -- When someone just doesn't get it... and when a hero saves the day!

Have you ever eaten a sweet potato? Although they are gaining grounds in North America in the form of sweet potato fries, they have been a staple in the Korean households for ages. Girls would survive weeks on sweet potatoes alone, because it's supposed to be a great diet food (but it's all carbs, you say. I agree. I don't really see the logic either, but my job is to report, not to argue!) In the winters, you see a lot of people selling sweet potatoes on the streets. They have big metal wood-fire ovens, where they stick in sweet potatoes directly into the fire. After a while, they come out looking and tasting absolutely fantastic. If you get the chance to be in Korea in the winter months, take my advice and try a 군고구마, you won't regret it.

As a quick Korean lesson, 군고구마 is made up of two parts. 군 + 고구마. "고구마" means "sweet potato," while "군" is a shortened form of "구운" (you'll see what I mean if you try saying it very quickly). "구운" means roasted.

One thing to be careful about, though, is that you don't want to eat them too quickly. They are pretty fibrous and dry, and eating them too quickly will make you feel like they have clung everywhere inside your body, from your throat to your chest. This feeling of stuck 고구마 in your digestive tract is pretty similar to how you feel in a frustrating situation.

Imagine that your professor is convinced that you cheated on your exam, when in reality, it was your friend who cheated off you. He calls you into his office and starts lecturing you on how you should never cheat. You try to defend yourself but he's not having it. Your friend then walks into the office, and presents the professor with all the evidence that he didn't cheat, and the professor completely believes him. Now the two of them are looking at you like the worst criminal in the world. Nothing that you say is going through and it's so frustrating.

If you wanted to describe this situation to someone (including your mother or your boss), you could say, "고구마 먹는 느낌이었어" (it felt like eating a sweet potato). Recently, people seem to be picking up on exaggerating the situation even further, and they often say:

고구마 백개 먹은것 같아.

 This translates to "I feel like I have eaten a hundred sweet potatoes" (and they're all stuck without being properly digested, creating that stuck feeling.) If you want to talk about someone being particularly clueless, which is frustrating everyone, you could say something like "쟤 정말 고구마다." 쟤 is an informal language for "that person," and you just make a direct comparison between the person and a sweet potato. Here, it would be awkward to use a hundred sweet potatoes, though.

Sometimes you can also talk about eating boiled eggs as well, because they have a very similar quality of being dense and getting stuck in your throat. You could say "삶은계란 백개 먹은것 같아" instead as well.

If you wanted to get that feeling unstuck, the most readily available method for improving digestion is carbonated drinks. In particular, the 사이다, which is the Korean equivalent of Sprite or 7Up, feels particularly refreshing, maybe to its citrus content, or because of its clear appearance.

Indeed, Koreans use this analogy a lot.  As you are standing in your professor's office feeling frustrated and hopeless, you might think to yourself, "사이다가 필요해," I am in need of some 사이다. Your parents might decide to show up in your defense, and decide to punch the professor's face. Your exclamation might be, "와, 사이다!" Later, you could tell your friends about this adventure, and tell them that "우리 부모님 정말 사이다였어."As an another example, say your rich friend is complaining about how his allowance is only a thousand dollars a week and how difficult his life is. Then another friend tells him to shut up because his allowance is twenty dollars a month, you might call this second friend 사이다, for saying things that you really wanted to say, but didn't for whatever reason.

Although these two usages are definitely in the slang category, it seems that you can use it in most company. A politician described a successful elections as 사이다 to the press, for example. It should of course still be avoided in formal writing.

 

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