Showing posts with label internet slang. Show all posts
Showing posts with label internet slang. Show all posts

Friday, March 30, 2018

#120. 틀딱충 -- Shut up, gramps!

What kind of classes were you taking when you were a grade 9 student? In Canada, where I spent my grade 9 years, I took the core classes (English, French, math, science, physical education), and some electives (business studies, fine arts, and music).

While it did not immediately strike me as odd, I realized over the years that there was one core class that the Canadian education system was missing, that the Koreans thought were important. And that class was called "도덕 (ethics)." It is a core class starting in around grade 3 in Korea, and you take this class every year, well into your high school years.

These classes go by different names; "생활의 길잡이 (guide to everyday living) or 바른생활 (righteous living)" for the elementary school students, "도덕 (ethics/morals)" for middle school students, and "윤리 (ethics)" for high school students. Look at the textbook covers, which supposedly illustrates the ethical way of living.

Honestly speaking, the 도덕 classes were giveaways. They mostly taught you a slightly idealized version of common sense (at least, they should be common sense, if you grew up with good Korean values). While it was an annoying class to be in, I don't remember ever stressing out about the class material. However, looking at it from the perspective of a grown-up in a North American society, some of the values taught in a 도덕 class are pretty strange.

Here is a test question from a 도덕 class: Which of the following people have the most desirable attitude towards being in a relationship as an adolescent?
1. Smoke to look cool.
2. Ask to touch their body to satisfy their needs.
3. Make sure that the time and place of your dates are public.
4. Make it a deep relationship just between the two of you.
5. Meet privately, rather than meeting alongside many other friends.
The correct answer is 3 (not obvious at all, unless you're Korean!)
But in general, these classes teach you to be considerate of the others, and to be courageous in standing up for your morals and values. For example, it teaches you to be courteous and respectful to the elders in the society, and to listen to what they say, since they have years of wisdom; it also teaches you to give up your seats in public transit, if an elderly person gets on board; it also tells you never to raise your voices with an elder -- even if they make a mistake, you should be considerate, don't make them lose face, and privately point out their errors.

An ethical question might be: If you were not seated in a priority seating, and an old man with a cane hobbles in; do you give up your seat, or not?

Be considerate, respectful, and courteous, these ethics classes say. When you respect your elders, you will be respected when it is your turn to be the elderly of the society.

All of these things are, of course, completely reasonable to a Korean, especially considering that Korea is a country built upon Confucian values. However, with the development of the internet, and the ease of cultural exchange that comes with it, the Korean society is facing a fair bit of conflict in its ethical values.

The elderly, as they were taught, expect a certain level of respect and consideration from the younger generation. They expect that they will be given a seat by the younger Koreans whenever they board a public bus or a subway. They expect a certain degree of respect from the young. They expect all this, because they had given up their seats when they were young, and now it's their turn to reap the rewards of an ethical society.

If you're a Korean, you have likely seen pictures like this in your 도덕책 (ethics textbook).

However, the younger generation of Korea feels differently. While being over the age of 65 legally classifies you as an elder who should be respected, nowadays, 65-year-olds barely even have wrinkles, and they can certainly make a few stops on the bus while standing. There is no reason for them to give up their seats to these healthy-looking people, since they got there first. And the younger generation is not shy about speaking up. To the young of Korea, the expectations of the elders feel like entitlement.

So, the scenarios like the following are fairly common in Korea:

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A young Korean is dozing off in her seat on the subway. The subway is fairly empty, with open seats scattered throughout the car. The door opens, and an elderly man strolls in, leaning on his cane. Evidently deciding that hobbling over to an empty seat is too long of a trek, the man stands in front of the young Korean and expectantly stares at her.

The young woman, mostly asleep, doesn't notice the elderly man, who grows impatient and starts conspicuously muttering to himself:
"아휴, 오늘 다리가 참 많이 아프네." (Ugh, my leg really hurts today.)
When the young woman still doesn't notice, the man starts tapping the young woman's leg with his cane, escalating the force with each tap. When the young woman finally looks up, the old man explodes in fury, saying:
"요즘 젊은것들은 버릇이 없어요." (The young ones these days have no manners.)
Flustered, the young woman gets off at the next stop, while the people around the two are trying to calm down the man.

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The consensus among the younger generation of Korea is that these elders have too much entitlement. And so there is a certain degree of enmity between the younger Koreans and the older Koreans. Although many Koreans won't usually raise their voices to an elder, just like how they were taught in their 도덕 classes, they might whisper in their anger:

"와 저 틀딱충 진짜 너무하네." (Wow, that denture-clicking insect is just too much.)
or
"요즘은 틀딱이 벼슬이야." (Nowadays, clicking your dentures is a status symbol or something -- "벼슬" used to mean the status as a government official in Joseon Dynasty, but it makes more sense to translate this as a status symbol instead!)

As you can see, the word "틀딱" or "틀딱충" is an extremely derogatory term that refers to the elderly people (who behave in an entitled manner, or, in some annoying manner.) It comes from two Korean words "틀니" (dentures) and "딱딱" (onomatopoeia for click-clacking sounds).



Quite literally, the young Koreans are being derisive towards these older Koreans, who are often loud and vocal about not getting the treatment that they feel are entitled to, by evoking the imagery of dentures opening and closing, and making those clicking noises. And often, they add the suffix "-충," meaning "insect" (you can also say things like "맘충," those insects of mothers who don't take the time to educate their children.)

So, by calling an older person a "틀딱" or a "틀딱충," you are both making fun of the fact that they are old and obsolete (since they wear dentures), and the fact that they talk too much (since their dentures are making clicking noises).

You can even use this word to insult people even just a few years older than you (when they try to act like they are your elder), as a way of exaggerating, although if you use this word to someone in their twenties, say, it is no longer mortally offensive, as it would be if you said this word to a 70-year-old!

This means that you need to be very, very careful if you're using this word in real life. Sometimes, the older people do act terribly, and perhaps you feel that this is the only word you can use to insult them; however, you should brace yourself for the consequences, as it may very well backfire -- the bystanders might feel that you went too far, and side with the rude elderly person (such public humiliation!)

Unfortunately, judging by the viciousness of this word, all those ethics classes have done very little to the young generation of Koreans!
 

Monday, March 26, 2018

#119. 주작 -- God of lies

It is still snowing where I live. It has been a really long winter, and although I try, it is difficult to look upon the winter season with kindness when it has been dragging on for nearly six months. Save for the Christmas season, winter is the depressing time of the year where the land is barren and the weather harsh. It is something that you must prepare for during the happy and plentiful seasons of spring, summer, and autumn.

Did you ever stop to think that the House Stark is perhaps being a little unfair to winter?
Having lived in Korea, I can tell you that the winter in Korea is just as unpleasant as the winters anywhere else. However, the Koreans seemed to have made a valiant effort against the (well-deserved) notion of "winter sucks," and here is how:

The central idea behind the Daoist philosophy (in Korean, this is called the "도가 (Daoist) 사상 (philosophy)"), which is one of the ingredients that shaped the traditional Korean shamanistic beliefs, is that one must not struggle against what is natural. For example, getting old, dying, as well as the winter, is just a natural way ("도" in Korean) of life, and it is pointless to resist. Furthermore, by enduring and obeying the natural way, one eventually arrives at something positive, such as birth (many Koreans believe in the past life and rebirth to some degree!) or maybe even spring.

The Daoists presumably needed to come up with a simpler way to explain this idea to the laypeople (Daoism was born around 400 BC, by the way!) Their idea seems to have been that they would correspond a "mascot" to each of these ideas, and there won't be a preconceived positive or negative notions attached to these mascots.

They began by assigning a god to each direction. They assigned:

- "청룡", or a blue ("청", as in "청바지" meaning blue jeans) dragon ("룡", as in "공룡" meaning dinosaur) to the east;
- "백호", or a white ("백", as in "백조" meaning swan) tiger ("호", as in "호랑이" meaning tiger) to the west;
- "주작", or a red ("주", as in "주황색" meaning orange colour) bird ("작", as in "공작" meaning a peacock) to the south; and
- "현무", or a black turtle-snake (this imaginary animal is said to have the body of a turtle, and the face and the tail of a snake), to the north.

These mural paintings of the four gods are often found in the ruins and tombs of Goguryeo -- it is said that the Tang Dynasty sent some of its Daoist priests to Goguryeo as part of their diplomatic efforts.
These are called 사방신 in Korean, or four (사) gods (신) of directions (방) if you translate it. These gods not only guard the evils coming in from these directions, but they are also in charge of various other elements of life. For example:

- the 청룡, or the blue dragon (east), is in charge of spring, childhood, and the feeling of anger;
- the 백호, or the white tiger (west), is in charge of autumn, elderliness, and the feeling of sadness;
- the 주작, or the red bird (south), is in charge of summer, youth, and the feeling of happiness;
- the 현무, or the black turtle-snake (north), is in charge of winter, death, and the feeling of fear.

By using these imaginary animals, the Daoists tried to place the everyday occurrences on an equal footing, and emphasized that one is not superior than the other. Living through things as they come may have been easier with this analogy.

It is not a coincidence that the Korean flag is made up of the four colours of the four gods -- red, blue, black, and white.

You can find these gods everywhere in the Korean history. You may find some artwork that draws its motives from these four directional gods, or you may find some ornaments in the Korean architecture (almost like gargoyles) in their shapes. The people of Goguryeo used to paint these gods in the appropriate directions in their houses, in hopes that they protect their houses from all bad things that lurk outside.

However, in this age of the internet, the four gods are no longer on an equal footing. Instead, the 주작, the red bird of the south, the summer, and the youth, is more popular and better-known compared to the other gods, thanks to none other than StarCraft.

StarCraft, of course, could be the game that built the reputation of Korean gamers on the international stage. It was the game that everyone played since the 2000s, and the Korean gamers were the best in the world. Korea even had some betting sites, where you could bet on the outcomes of StarCraft games in the professional league.

In 2010, there was a huge scandal in the Korean gamers' community, where several professional gamers were bribed to rig the outcomes of the games (it seems that they were paid around $5000 USD per game). When this scandal, called "승부 (outcome) 조작 (rigging) 사건 (scandal)," came to light, it shook the Korean gamer community to the core. Several professional gamers were expelled from the gamers league on top of being indicted, at least eight professional teams disbanded, and StarCraft never regained its high level of popularity.

This is 마재윤 (Jaeyoon Ma), one of the professional StarCraft players who was involved in the 승부조작 scandal.
The expelled gamers received an unprecedented amount of hate from the Korean gamers, and it seemed unlikely that they will ever become professional again in any game whatsoever. However, one of the expelled gamers, 마재윤 (Jaeyoon Ma), shocked the Koreans by becoming a streamer via Afreeca (think of it as a precursor to YouTube streaming, as covered in a previous post).

When he started his streaming, the chatrooms were full of the words "조작 (rigging)," designed to insult him. For example, you could type something like
"이것도 조작이냐?" (Are you rigging this, too?)
whenever he did or said something.

Thankfully, as the streamer, he had some control of the chatroom, and he set the word "조작" as a "금지어" (forbidden "금지" word "어"), meaning that you would be banned from entering the chatroom again if you ever type this word.

So his viewers started coming up with clever ways to insult 마재윤. Instead of saying "조작," they started looking for words that sound similar to "조작." For example, a birch tree ("자작") was a popular choice, and one might have said something like:
"이것도 자작이냐?" (Is this a birch tree, too? -- meaning "are you rigging this, too?" with an intentional typo)
to avoid the auto-filter from booting you out of the chatroom. You might be even more roundabout by saying things such as:
"어디서 자작나무 타는 냄새가 나는것 같은데?" (I think I smell a birch tree burning? -- meaning "I think he's rigging this.")

Birch trees


When this caught on among his viewers, 마재윤 also set "자작" as a forbidden word. And thus began the game of hide-and-seek. 마재윤 sets a new forbidden word, and his viewers come up with yet another word that evoke the word "조작" in some way.

The most popular of these was "주작," the red bird of the south and the summer. In particular, the phrase
"날아오르라 주작이여" (Rise, O the red bird of the south -- meaning "lol, he definitely rigged this.")
became wildly popular on the internet, to the point where this phrase migrated beyond the chatroom of 마재윤's personal stream, into the general region of the Korean internet. Nowadays, it is actually more rare to see the word "조작" than "주작" when accusing someone of having made something up, or rigged something!

The font in this picture definitely has to be in 궁서체 -- see this post if you don't get the reference!


For example, if someone posts a tear-jerking story of their childhood, where they were raised by tigers and carried home by a stork when they were sixteen, people might type:
"주작을 하려면 좀 티가 안나게해라." (If you're going to make something up, at least make it less noticeable.)
or just simply:
"주작" (Red bird of the south, although it simply means "fake" in context.)
or, if you want to be particularly sarcastic:
"날아오르라 주작이여."
Interestingly, "주작" is a homonym -- it can mean a red bird (朱雀), but it can also mean "making something up" (做作), although the latter was a very old usage that was barely used prior to 마재윤's internet streaming! So, it is not incorrect to use the word "주작" for something that is fake, and this may be one of the reasons this expression caught on (but in this expression, the word "주작" definitely came from the red bird!)

The nuance of this word is definitely one of sarcastic humour. Not only are you accusing someone of having faked something, you are making fun of them by invoking the name of one of the four directional gods. Yet, as someone who spends way too much time on the Korean internet, the word "주작" almost feels more natural than "조작," and I always have to stop for a second to ensure that I am using the correct word ("조작") when I am speaking in a formal setting. I think that many Koreans would not even bother to stop and think, and just use the word "주작" in most settings!

Finally, to finish off the story of 마재윤, he also eventually set the word "주작" as a forbidden word. The Korean internet users continued to come up with new words (although none of them caught on quite like 주작), such as:

- 저작권 (copyright), 조직 (organization), for sounding similar to "조작 (rigging)";
-  백호 (white tiger), 청룡 (blue dragon), 현무 (black turtle-snake), for being the other three directional gods, and for reminding the viewers of the word "주작";
- 불사조 (phoenix), because a phoenix is another mythical bird;
- 여자친구 (girlfriend), because a girlfriend is also a mythical being among the Korean gamers;
- 전현무 (Hyunmoo Jeon, an anchorman whose first name is "현무", which reminds people of the black turtle-snake, and consequently of 주작), 노무현 (Roh Moo-hyun, a previous president of Korea, whose first name "무현" backwards "현무" is the black turtle-snake);
- 아나운서 (anchorman), because 전현무 was an anchorman, and he reminds people of "현무," which reminds them of "주작," which sounds like "조작."

This is 전현무, an ex-anchorman who now freelances as an entertainer.

All of these words were eventually set as forbidden words in 마재윤's streaming. He never gained popularity as a streamer anyway (as you can tell from the fact that his Instagram account has just 894 followers!) and he probably deserved that, first from his involvement in the rigging scandal, then from his ruthless filtering of his chatroom (although it ended up producing one of the most popular internet neologisms of this day!)

Anyway, that's the story of an ancient Korean god, whose name is still uttered by the Koreans millions of times each day. Does that please him? I am not sure, but I hope that he might be amused by the wittiness of the Korean internauts, and that he does not succumb to anger, in the true Daoist fashion where you just let things happen without fighting them.

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

#104. A trilingual Korean joke (Hanja 3)

I saw the following photo (or , if you are fluent in Korean internet language) while browsing a Korean website. The poster of this image claims that this is a useful image to download onto your phone, and send it to whoever you are texting at an appropriate moment. Can you guess when you are supposed to send this photo? (answer below the image)


The answer is that you send this photo when someone is making excuses. To understand why, you need to be trilingual, amazingly.

The word "핑계" matches up with the background photo, which depicts a pink rooster. The letter "핑" comes from the English word "pink (핑크 in Korean)," and just taking the first letter from it. And the letter "계" comes from the Hanja meaning "chicken." As far as I am aware, the letter "계" does not refer to either the male rooster or the female hen.

The full name of this Hanja is . For an explanation of how Hanja works, see my first post on it!

This Hanja appears often enough in the Korean language that the Koreans would relate the letter "" to a chicken; I am not sure if I would have recognized this Hanja if someone just showed it to me, however. Some Korean words that use this Hanja letter include:

란 (literally, an egg of a chicken -- so it would be wrong to use this word for an ostrich egg, for example!)

- 삼탕 (Samgyetang, a Korean chicken stew, where you boil a whole chicken with various roots believed to be very good for your health)

- 군일학 (one crane among a group of chickens; this word is used to denote someone who is way above everyone else in a group)

So, a "핑계" could mean a pink chicken, because of this clever wordplay using Hanja. Of course, this is just slang, and a fairly minor one at that, almost like an English pun. The prevalent meaning of "핑계" that you can find in a dictionary is "excuses."

The next animal is fairly self-explanatory: a "돼지" is a pig. In this case, however, the Koreans noticed that "돼지" sounds almost like "대지," which is difficult to translate alone in English. The point of this substitution is that the above phrase becomes "핑계 대지 마," which means "don't make excuses." The word "대지," coming from the verb "대다 (to give, tell, or apply things such as excuses)," roughly corresponds to "make" in the above sentence.

And the final animal, which is a horse, comes with a single letter "마." This is another Hanja!

This Hanja, which you would learn sometime in elementary school in Korea, has the full name of . So it means a horse (), but it would be read as the letter "" in Korean. Some Korean words that include this Hanja are:

- 굿간: a stable (for horses)

- 출: to leave on a horse; however, nowadays, it means to become a candidate for an election, as all government officials going to work would have been riding their horses back in the olden days.

- 애: beloved horse (along with the Hanja 사랑 , meaning love); however, nowadays, this is a slang referring to your car. This slang has been used across all generations!

Anyway, putting all of these three photos together, we get:
"핑계 돼지 마" (pink chicken, pig, horse),
  which sounds nearly identical to
"핑계 대지 마" (don't make any excuses).
So, by the virtue of the fact that most Koreans will understand this short photo that incorporates all three languages (Korean, English, and Chinese/Hanja), the above photo becomes a witty internet .jpg file to use among the Koreans! Having spent a lot of my life in notoriously monolingual countries, I am occasionally blown away by just how non-monolingual the Koreans can be!

Tuesday, January 9, 2018

#102. 병림픽 -- Battle of idiots

As a child living in South Korea, I was perpetually afraid of the Korean War II. I used to cry at night worried that North Korea will attack South Korea overnight, and that my family would be caught in the middle of it all without any preparations (this is how the first Korean war started -- North Korea invaded South Korea at 4am on June 25, 1950, and South Korea was not prepared for it at all.)

It also didn't help that instead of fire drills, schools used to have air strike drills. We were to hide under our desks, while the loudspeaker would announce possible scenarios about where the North Korean soldiers were, and what we were to do in these situations. Even as a young kid, I was pretty sure that hiding under our desks wasn't going to save us.

We used to call it "공습경보 훈련," and I guess Koreans still do this! (also effective for earthquakes, etc.)


In a sense, the recent events brought back those nightmares for me. While I was immensely relieved that my immediate family and I no longer live in Korea, I was extremely concerned and terrified about my extended family and friends, and all the other innocent Koreans who would be caught between the two nuclear powers -- North Korea and the United States.

But this time, it was frustrating to watch. As someone who really didn't want a war to break out, the exchange between Trump and Kim was terrifying to watch. Trump calls Kim a "Rocket Man," and Kim in turn condemns Trump to death. All the while, they are threatening to push the button. This may have been based in some politics, but to me, it felt stupid and reckless. And one comment I saw online deeply resonated with me. This Korean internet user wrote on one of the US/North Korea articles:
"병림픽이 따로 없네."
Here, "따로 없네" literally means "there is no other." So this above phrase says that there is no other "병림픽," or that whatever is going on between the US and North Korea is the very definition of "병림픽."





So let me explain the word "병림픽." I am normally offended by this word, which is a combination of the Korean insult "병신" and the English word "Olympics" (in Korean, the "s" in "Olympics" somehow got dropped, and Koreans write it as just "올림픽.")

Now, the word "병신" is frequently used in Korean profanity. If your friend asks out a girl who is way out of his league, and gets turned down in a spectacular way, you might say (in way of consolation)
"병신아, 아주 삽질을 했구나?" (You idiot, you totally wasted your time.)
In this usage, the word "병신" is just a friendly derogatory word, just like how you can insult someone without actually meaning it in English.

Now you must be able to guess that the word "병림픽" means an Olympic of the idiots, where two 병신s (in the lighter sense of the word) duel to see who is the bigger idiot (fairly appropriate in the case of Trump and Kim, and you can easily see cases like this in Korean life too, such as in the case of 현피).

However, the word "병신" actually has a clearly established meaning: it comes from two Hanja letters "병" (illness) and "신" (body), so it refers to a body with an illness; i.e. someone who is disabled. No one should use this word in its full meaning, as it is incredibly offensive. Technically, if someone could not walk, you could call them a "다리병신" (since "다리" means leg, it means that the person has an illness in his legs). But remember that "병신" is also an insult in Korean, so you are insulting a disabled person in the worst possible way. You will NEVER see a Korean use such a word in real life (but you might see it in K-drama, or in some old literature, where this usage seems to have been more common, before the word "병신" became a widespread insult.)

And this original meaning of the word "병신" makes the meaning of the slang "병림픽" incredibly offensive. My issue with the word "병림픽" is that in the literal sense of the word, it is in fact synonymous with the Paralympic games.

Here's one other instance where you can definitely use the word "병림픽," to talk about that Olympic game where the figure skater Yuna Kim lost to Adelina Sotnikova. Koreans were so enraged, and I think they still are.

It seems that the Korean population is divided on this issue; some people will be very offended for the same reason that I just explained. But some argue that the word "병신" is not being used to describe the handicapped, and that one should not even be thinking about this real meaning.

In any case, I would refrain from using this word around most Koreans. Among close friends (who you know are foul-mouthed) I can see it being OK; but I would use this word with extreme caution.

In closing, here's a fun fact. The Chinese calendar uses sixty different words to describe each year (these words cycle, so the same name is given to different years spaced 60 years apart.) By this calendar, the word given to the year 2018 is "무술" ("무" means "yellow" and "술" refers to "dog", hence the year of the "yellow (golden) dog.") Similarly, 2017 was 정유년 (year of "red rooster") and 2016 was, amazingly, "병신년" (the year of "red monkey.")

But of course, the more common usage of the word "병신" is the insult for disabled people. To make matters worse, the word "년" has two common meanings; it can refer to the year, but it is also a derogatory suffix for a woman, so that "미친년" is a "crazy b-tch," and "짜증나는년" is an "annoying b-tch." And what was supposed to be "the year of red monkey" because "disabled b-tch." So, 2016 was an interesting year for the Koreans!

Koreans waited for 2016 just for this. It says "We have entered 2016, the year of the monkey," but of course, the more common meaning is "We have entered 2016, the year of the crazy b-tch."

Although the word "병신" have absolutely nothing to do with the insult "병신"as they are based on different Hanja, the Koreans didn't miss this funny coincidence. Not only that, 2016 was the year of the Olympics in Rio, so this Olympic Games was dubbed "병림픽." I guess this is one of the reasons I can't stay away from the Korean internet. They can be ridiculously politically incorrect, but at least you can count on them to be witty and hilarious!

Thursday, December 28, 2017

#99. 시월드 -- Your in-law problems, and how a traditional Korean marriage works

As a young child in Korea, it was a normal occurrence for me to go visit a friend's house, and to realize that she lived with her parents and her grandparents (and in exceptional cases, also with her great-grandparents!) Some of these grandparents doted on their grandchildren and their friends, resulting in many sweets and head-patting. Others were more strict and wanted to make sure that we finished our homework, that my parents knew where I was, and that I was well-mannered (resulting in scoldings when they felt that my manners weren't good enough).

They might all live in the same house, and this is not weird at all by the Korean standards.

From the Western perspective, this must seem very odd, to say the least. I can't think of a single friend from the Western culture who lives with his grandparents. From the parents' perspective, this is even weirder -- I mean, this is equivalent to being supervised by their parents all the time when you are on a date, even when you become an adult!

Yet this used to be the norm in Korea until recently; we even have words to describe such families. We call them "대가족," meaning "large family" (in Hanja, "대" means large; you should see this letter on your large t-shirts, for example.) On the other hand, the Western-style small families are called "핵가족," which comes directly from the English phrase "nuclear family," consisting only of the two parents and their children.

While the number of nuclear families, or 핵가족, is on the rise, it seems unlikely that the 대가족 will ever disappear completely in the Korean society. And my personal theory is that a part of the reason is because the Koreans view a marriage differently from the Westerners.

This is probably what English-speakers think of when they hear the word "family."

For the Koreans, a marriage is not only a union between two individuals, but really a union of two families. This is of course true everywhere, but in the ancient dynasties before the modern Korea, this idea was taken to the extreme. There were many different castes in all of these dynasties, and marriages were permitted only between those within the right castes; you had to go to an extreme to gain an exception to this rule.

Therefore, it was common for the parents to do extensive research into the family of their child's potential match to ensure that their family was approximately on par with them in terms of values, social class, education, and wealth. This custom continues into today's Korean wedding, and it is now called a 상견례 (in Hanja, it means to see "견" each other "상" with decorum "례"). Once a couple starts to talk about getting married, their first step is to arrange a place (usually a fancy restaurant) for their families to meet. Korean customs seem to dictate that the male pays for this meal (important later). It is absolutely forbidden to talk about worldly things such as money. It is mostly used to get a feel for each other's family, and nothing important is said at this meeting.

A Korean drama portrays a 상견례.

 If one (or both) of the families find the other to be unsatisfactory, they will voice their concerns to the child about to get married, and some marriages are broken up at this stage. Otherwise, the real wedding planning is underway -- the two families agree on the date and the place of the wedding (many families will actually consult a shaman to find an auspicious date, or in extreme cases, to make sure that the two children are suitable for each other, but this is a story for another day!) and now they must talk about money -- that distasteful thing not suitable for any polite company. Naturally, the two children become the messengers of the two families.

The biggest worry for the newlyweds is to find a place to live. Nowadays, living in Seoul is your best bet for a decent job. Unfortunately, salaries are low and housing costs are high in Seoul. Almost no young couple can afford buying a house in Seoul. And it is not unusual for the parents to chip in a significant amount of money to help them buy an apartment. Traditionally, it is the groom's family that are responsible for the house (a quick explanation is that in the Korean male-dominant philosophy, the woman becomes a member of the man's house when she marries him; therefore, the man's family is responsible for the house.) This puts a huge burden on the groom's family, and the parents might be looking into spending their retirement savings to be able to afford a house (important later).

Every newlywed dreams of a beautiful honeymoon house (신혼집), and matching furniture (혼수) to go with it. Most Westerners work towards it, while many Koreans expect to have it ready before the wedding.


It should be noted that it is very rare for the Korean children to live away from their parents -- Korea is a small country, so often moving away from home means you move within an hour's radius of your parent's place, which is not strictly necessary. Furthermore, this is how the traditional Korean society operated -- the children live with their parents at least until they marry. This means that when the couple finds a home, they have no furniture. Since the groom bought the apartment, the bride supplies all the furniture that goes into the apartment. This furniture is called "혼수." Of course, the furniture is much cheaper than a house (important later).

Once all of this is settled, the bride sends some gifts to the groom's family (remember, a marriage is a union of families, so it is not enough to exchange things -- a house and furniture -- between the bride and the groom). This gift from the bride, which is the dowry, is called "예단." Traditionally, the groom's family would send some silk to the bride's house, and the bride would then sew up the silk and make clothes for the groom and his parents (and this served as a further test that the bride was fit to be married!) Nowadays, the bride sends some cash (a few thousand US dollars to tens of thousands of dollars is fairly common) along with beddings, traditional Korean clothes, and other expensive items such as jewellery, watches, or designer handbags for the groom's parents. These are all wrapped in a beautiful traditional papers and sent to the groom's parents.

An example of 예단 -- the bride's family sends these beautiful gifts to her in-laws as dowry, in hopes that the bride will be treated well in her new family.


The groom's parents then return a subset of these gifts (usually around half of the cash) to the bride's parents, for her efforts in sewing the clothes and the bedding (of course, the bride doesn't actually sew anymore). By the way, the list of items for the 예단 and how much will be returned is determined in advance, communicated through the couple to be married. While it seems unnecessary, the traditional Korean wedding tends to have a lot of items on its checklist. And another step of the wedding is complete.

Finally, the bride and the groom agree on the presents for themselves -- their wedding rings (Koreans often skip the engagement rings, and wear a single ring only after the wedding. If the engagement starts with a 상견례, you can imagine that it is not as romantic as a wedding proposal!), and possibly a few more items depending on what they decide to do. The families also pay for this if the couple do not have enough money saved, and these gifts are called "예물." As the bride already paid her dowry, typically the bride receives twice or three times as many 예물 as the groom.

While there are often no engagement rings, the bride receives many beautiful gifts during this stage of the wedding preparations.


If you think that there is a lot of unnecessary money involved, you would be right. And a lot of it will be paid by the parents, as the newlyweds seldom have a large saving. As there is no love connecting the families of the bride and the groom, the families are often doing their own accounting at this point.

At the actual wedding ceremony itself, the money-counting continues. It is customary in Korea to try to attend most weddings that you are invited to. As a wedding gift, you give some amount of cash called 축의금, equaling about 50 USD or 50,000 Korean won (more if you're very close to the couple, less if you barely know them). The catch here is, you are expecting the couple to attend your wedding at a later date, and that the couple will return exactly what you have paid. Similarly, the parents of the couple will also invite their friends, and these friends are either repaying the parents from their children's wedding, or expect the parents to return the money later at their children's wedding. All of these 축의금 are meticulously recorded and sorted, and returned to the right recipients (in some cases, it is not the couple, but their parents!)

There are a few more money-exchanging steps after this -- a 폐백 after the ceremony (where the bride presents the parents of the groom with some food, and her in-laws thank her with some cash), and then the newlyweds bring back expensive gifts from their honeymoon trip.

Traditionally, you write "축의금" in Hanja on the envelope, but you can also write a short congratulatory message instead.

When you make a grand tally of what the families spent, you will notice that the groom's family comes out short. The housing is so expensive that it trumps any other expenses incurred during the process of the wedding. Now, after a long period of preparing for the Korean wedding (a large part of which is the money-counting), the groom's parents have a lot more that they hope to recover to make things fair. And this triggers what the modern Korean brides call a 시월드.

There is no such thing as free lunch. And for the most part, the groom's parents do not buy their son a house for free. They expect their son to repay their monetary contribution with filial piety (terrible English translation in my opinion), or 효도, which is an idea from Confucianism. It means that they are counting on their son to support them materialistically (via money, gifts, by helping them out with various chores around the house, and ultimately, living with them and taking care of them when they are old and helpless) and emotionally (by lending a sympathetic ear, or by gladly being there for them.) And the bride, having been the recipient of their monetary generosity, is on the hook too. Plus, the bride is not even their own child, so the bride often ends up feeling the brunt of the expectations from the groom's parents, who would rather expect the 효도 from the bride than their own son.

The most common form of 시월드 is asking the bride to take care of all the housework in place of the elderly parents of the groom when the newlyweds visit the groom's house.

This feeling of stress and isolation of the bride gave rise to the neologism "시월드." The letter "시" comes from the fact that almost every appellation of the groom's family by the bride begins with the word "시." The groom's mother is "시어머니" to the bride; the groom's father is "시아버지"; the groom's family is "시가" or "시댁"; the groom's younger siblings are "시동생" to the bride, and so on. So when the bride visits the groom's family, she is entering a 시-world, or 시월드 in full Korean. For the most part, 시월드 ends with the bride feeling stressed or isolated; for some families, it is taken to the extreme where the bride is downright bullied.

For example, a 시어머니 might want the bride to come over at 7am on a weekend so that she can learn to cook the groom's favourite dish from his mother (so that the mother no longer has to cook for her son -- the bride is taking over one of her duties, thus engaging in an act of 효도). The bride obviously doesn't want to go, as she would rather spend the day sleeping in with her groom, but the 시어머니 could be insistent, and as the bride owes her, she feels obliged to go. She might complain to a friend:
"시월드때문에 늦잠도 못자고 정말 힘들어." (I'm so tired from not being able to sleep in, thanks to my mother-in-law.)
 Or, a 시어머니 might pay a surprise visit to the newlywed's home, and nag the bride for not having done the laundry (although she should really nag her own son!) The bride's friend, upon hearing about it, might tell the bride:
"웰컴투 시월드." (Welcome to the world of the in-laws.)
Notice that "시월드" sounds exactly like "sea world" which is probably some fun water-themed amusement park. Of course, the "시월드" is also fun. This word reflects the younger, trendier generation's disdain for the traditional Korean marriage, and how they cope with it by bringing some humour into the situation in a typical Korean way.

The brides seem to feel the most abandoned when their husbands don't step in to rescue them from the 시월드.

Furthermore, as a composite of a Korean prefix "시-" and the English word "world," the Koreans are creating a type of word that does not exist in the proper Korean language! These words are often humorous in nuance, and "시월드" is no exception. This word, from its unusual combination of two languages that did not meet until the 20th century, takes on the nuance of sarcasm and satire.

The best part about this word is that it is not vulgar at all (albeit offensive to the in-laws!) So the Korean media has picked up on this word, and they will sometimes use it to describe the conflict between the in-laws and the bride! As long as you do not use it to your in-law's face, this word is fairly safe to use.

While this custom is the traditional Korean way to get married, I am not really a fan of it. I personally feel that going through this lengthy process of keeping scores and counting contributions will sour the love held between the couple. This also highlights the sexism that is still rampant in the Korean society -- if there were no pre-defined gender roles within the marriage, things would have been more equal!

Furthermore, some people get the wrong idea that the more the groom's family pays for a wedding, the more his family is entitled to the near-bullying towards the bride. In my opinion, some Koreans end up putting a price on something that should never be evaluated.

As a result, many young Koreans are beginning to exclude their families from paying for any part of their new lives as a married couple. This trend of "반반결혼" or "half-half marriage," where the couple splits all the expenses in half, is gaining popularity, and might one day be the norm in the Korean society. I have a feeling that I would be happy to see this change.


Monday, December 4, 2017

#96. 오지라퍼 -- your business is my business

The Western society has come a long way.

When I imagine a peaceful medieval town, I imagine a small community of maybe a hundred families. Many of these families probably had children of similar age, and they probably all played together. Their parents probably took turns providing snacks for these children when they got hungry. If one child was not around for a few days, they would be concerned for the child, and also for his parents. They would pay them a visit, and make sure that everything is alright. Maybe they'll bring some bread and soup, just in case. In these towns, everyone would know everyone, and if something happened to one of the families, the news would travel quickly throughout the entire town. If a young couple eloped, the entire town would stop by the parents' house to offer their unsolicited advice.

With time, this familiarity with your neighbours started to fade in the West. Now, the invasion of privacy is a crime. Spreading gossip indiscriminately can be prosecuted as slander. It is impolite to be discussing your neighbours.

The increase of the radius of your personal bubble ensures your privacy. However, with it, you lose the familiarity with your neighbours. You lose the sense of community. And you lose the trust. It's always that if you win some, then you lose some.

The Korean society started out in a very similar way as a Western medieval town.

A very typical imagery for a traditional Korean town. The roof made of hay was extremely common for the middle and lower class families!
While the Koreans grew to value privacy a little bit more, they also clung to the idea that the sense of community, and knowing that your neighbours care about you is still very important. It is still common to have very close neighbours who will stop by unannounced to make sure that your children had snacks while you are out working. They may bring over a portion of their dinner, because they cooked so much and the dinner turned out great. To thank them, you may ask them over to have a bottle of beer. Like the Koreans say, you may get so close to your neighbours that you know how many spoons they have in their household.

But this also means that you are subject to a lot of unsolicited advice. They may have something to add to your spending habits. They might think that your children could do better, if it weren't for your terrible parenting, and take it upon themselves to lecture you on how to raise your children better.

The Koreans have a word for this. When someone sticks their nose in your business one time too many, you can say:
"저사람 정말 오지랖이 넓네." (He has a very wide shirt-front.)
The word "오지랖" doesn't seem to be commonplace in English. We talk about the tail of a shirt, which is the bottom part of the shirt in the back which hangs below the waist. "오지랖" is the corresponding counterpart in the front. If you have a very wide shirt-front, then it will end up covering your pants, leading to an unwise fashion choice. Your shirt is invading the space that rightfully belongs to your pants, just like your annoying neighbour who doesn't know when to leave you alone.


While the grammatically correct idiom is to use it as an adjective "오지랖이 넓다," now "오지랖" itself can be used in many different form. For example, "오지랖" itself can be used as a noun meaning "butting into situations where one is not welcome." For example, in the picture above, the common type of 오지랖s that most Koreans experience are written:

when you're a student, the 오지랖 is whether you're getting good grades;
when you graduate, the 오지랖 is to ask whether you have found a job;
when you're over 30, whether you will marry;
when you marry, that you should have kids;
when you have a son, that you should have a daughter because it's nice;
when you have a daughter, that you should have a son to feel secure;
when you have a son and a daughter, that you should have a third child since two children of different gender (남매) are rarely close to each other;
when you have two sons, that you should have a daughter;
when you have two daughters, that you should have a son;
when you have three kids, that you won't be able to afford having three kids...

It seems incredible, but most Koreans do deal with these kinds of 오지랖! An appropriate response to these unsolicited concerns might be:
"쓸데없는 오지랖이야" (These are useless worries, and none of your business.)
The word "오지랖" itself is completely standard, and you can use it to Koreans of any age (although if you use it to the offending party, they will find it insulting!)

However, the cute neologism popular among the younger Koreans that I have been seeing a lot lately is the word "오지라퍼." And perhaps you can already guess what it means. Well, a "rapper" is a person who "raps," so an "오지라퍼 = 오지랖+er" is a person who doles out generous amounts of "오지랖" to people. As always, the combination of a pure Korean word and an English word has a humorous effect (since it destroys the beautiful Korean language!) so it intensifies the nuance of sarcasm.

It also feels trendy in the sense that the word itself sounds a bit similar to "rapper," almost like "my bro the busybody." This means that you do not want to use this word with your superiors or elders, in case they get offended (although I think most Koreans, except the very elderly who did not have an English education, should understand it). So, if you want to exaggerate your feelings of sarcasm, you could say:
"세호야말로 진정한 오지라퍼야." (Seho is the true busybody, man.)
This has the effect of sounding a bit more vulgar and sarcastic than just saying it in the standard way:
"세호는 오지랖이 참 넓어." (Seho has a very wide shirt-front),
 which sounds relatively polite and almost gentlemanly compared to the slangy sentence using "오지라퍼."

Finally, there is a very similar (and fairly standard) clothing-related slang for "helicopter moms." The helicopter moms tend to hover around their children, and become involved in all of their childrens' businesses. The Koreans call these women "치맛바람," literally meaning "skirt winds." They are so busy chasing their children that their skirts cause wind! :) You can use it in various capacities, such as just as a noun (just like how you would use 오지랖), or you can use it as an adjective by saying "치맛바람이 세다" (her skirt winds are strong), or you can say it as a verb via "치맛바람이 분다." I close this post with three examples:

"요즘 어머니들 치맛바람때문에 못살겠다." (I can't carry on my day-to-day activities these days because of the skirt winds of the helicopter moms.)
"슬기 어머니는 치맛바람이 너무 세서 아이가 불쌍하다." (The skirt winds of Seulgi's mother are too strong that I feel bad for the child.)
"요즘은 학원가에도 치맛바람이 분다." (Nowadays, the skirt winds reach even the hagwons (private academies).) 
If anyone is given the description of "치맛바람" they will of course be annoyed. However, the word itself has become completely standard, appearing in newspapers and other news outlets.


Thursday, November 30, 2017

#94. 지리다 -- so awesome that I peed my pants (or worse)

I stared at the blank screen for nearly half an hour, because after such a long hiatus, I have no idea how to start again.

I guess I should start by apologizing. With my full-time job, I realized that writing a blog frequently was going to be harder than I imagined. The prospect of doing something on a schedule scared me and although this blog was on my mind almost every day, I couldn't bring myself back to it. In fact, I was too afraid to sign into my account for months, for some reason. When I finally signed into my email attached to this blog post, I had so many emails and comments from the readers encouraging me to continue, and I decided that I would give it another shot! :) This blog really is something that I cherish, and I would never let it die completely. So, if you're still subscribed, or if you're still reading this blog (I was surprised that I was still getting a ton of visitors even though I didn't write for three months). Sorry for being away for so long.

Sorry!

Here is a word that seems to have become popular on the Korean internet during the past three months that I was gone. It is mostly used among the 급식 of the Korean internet (that is, immature middle schoolers!) to express their admiration.

Say that you are watching a game tournament (as you should, if you're a proper K-lover!) and one gamer seems to be miles above everyone else. No one is able to even put up a fight against this gamer. Usually these one-sided games are boring to watch, of course, but this gamer is just so otherworldly in his skills that you're past the point of being bored -- you're fascinated and you cannot look away.

Then after a particularly awesome gameplay, you might hear some Korean teenager who was watching the game next to you exclaim:
"와, 저사람 지린다" (Holy shit, that person is f-ing awesome)
His friend might agree with his friend by saying:
"진짜 지렸다 ㅋㅋ 나 지릴뻔" (That really was f-ing awesome. I nearly peed my pants)
As you can tell from this dialogue, the verb "지리다" made its way into the teenage vocabulary in the past few months, and it is used to describe something that is seriously awesome.

This word, unlike many of the trendy slang, is actually not a new word at all. As far as I know, even my grandparents would understand this word if they heard it, because it is a dialect of the Jeolla province in the southwestern tip of the Korean peninsula. Its major cities include Gwangju and Jeonju, and it is known for having particularly delicious food (but it is also home to the famous fermented skate, called 삭힌홍어, that sometimes make its way into the Korean entertainment programs).

In Jeolla province, you can order something like this with 30-40 side dishes for yourself for not that much money, around $20-30 USD (tip/taxes included!)
Anyway, Jeolla province is known for its characteristic dialect. I promise to do a listening exercise on it very soon! But for now, the word "지리다" is a long-standing Jeolla dialect that means "to pee or poop." While I am not from the Jeolla province and I am not sure how it is used there, but from a native Seoulite's perspective. this word carries a negative connotation -- to me, it means to pee or poop in a place where you shouldn't have done so.

For example, if you get very very drunk, and decide to pee in an alley, the Koreans might derisively say:
"걔는 술먹고 담벼락에 오줌지리고있더라" (I saw him get drunk and pee on someone's wall.)
More commonly, and related to the current slangy usage of the word, this verb can be used to describe someone soiling one's pants, like this:
"소영이는 너무 놀라서 바지에 오줌을 지렸다." (Sohyoung was so surprised that she peed her pants.)

Usually not actually this.

In fact, the context above is where the modern usage derives. It is commonly accepted and understood in the Korean culture (much more so than in the western culture) that if you're surprised or frightened, then you soil your pants.

And this particular cultural understanding, along with the hilarious fact that there is a separate verb for peeing in one's pants, is where the modern usage of the word comes from. Now the word "지리다" means that someone (or something) is so frighteningly awe-inspiring that it made the speaker pee his/her pants (or worse!)

Of course, as it is currently very popular in Korea, it doesn't have to be actually awe-inspiring to use this word. It is mostly used in exaggeration. For example, you score an 80% in a test, and your friend who only scored 60% might say:
"너 80점이야? 와 지린다!" (You got 80%? That's f-ing awesome!)
Unfortunately, the adults, knowing the meaning of the word, very rarely (if at all) would use this word, and it is popularized only among the very young -- if I had to guess, college students would already view this word to be fairly immature. While it is not a particularly offensive word (as it is ultimately a compliment), I imagine that most people are not excited to evoke the imagery of themselves in soiled pants. However, used in the appropriate situations, it could bring out some explosive reactions -- no pun intended!

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

#92. 삽질 -- killing the time in the worst possible way

Korea is in the state of truce against North Korea. This may sound great, but if you think about it, truce is totally different from peace. It means that a war can break out any day -- given the current climate, it doesn't even seem that unlikely (actually, the Koreans are surprisingly nonchalant about the possibility of war even now, but that's a story for another day.)

Anyway, the possibility of war means that every Korean men bears the responsibility of protecting their country. On their 19th birthday (or thereabouts), the Korean men undergo a physical examination that determines whether they are fit to serve Korea as a soldier. Most Koreans get declared that they are physically and mentally fit, and they serve in the infantry or the marines (for 21 months), the navy (for 22 months), or in the air force (for 24 months). These people are called "현역 병사," or "active duty soldiers." The letter "현" means "present" as in "현재 (right now)," and "역" means "duty" as in "역할 (given role)."

Being in the Korean military sucks, though. So while having been a 현역 병사 is a source of pride for many Korean men, they would probably prefer to have avoided it in the first place. Indeed, many celebrities and the children of Korean politicians get caught up in military duty scandals for having tried to game the system by getting diagnosed with obscure illnesses. If they get caught, it destroys their (or their parents') careers. Yet they continue to do this, so you can imagine how terrible being in the army might be.



Here's a scenario that supposedly happens frequently in the Korean army.

A captain decides that all soldiers will be assigned to a construction within the army base for the day. Every soldier is given a shovel ("삽" in Korean) and is put to work. At the end of the day, his officer stops by to check on the progress, and finds that the work isn't even close to being half-done. Afraid that the captain might find out, the officer calls for a bulldozer, which finishes the remaining work in less than half an hour.

So, why would you do this?

Koreans believe in the art of looking busy. This is true in most cultures. In office environments, you don't just pack up and go home when you're done with your work (well, some innovative companies in North America have started this, but there are still many places where this is not an option.)
Koreans do this even better. Not only do they stay until 5pm, they actually stay glued to their seats until their boss (who also stays later than 5pm to look good to her boss) packs up and leaves. It doesn't matter if they're done with everything; they'll sit there looking busy.

Koreans also joke about underlining and highlighting every word in your textbook. That's the biggest aspect of studying after all, no?

In the military also, since there is no active battles being fought, the soldiers must be kept busy. This is often done in the form of training, or manual labour. If there's snow, send out the soldiers with a shovel to clear the snow from everywhere in town. If a hole needs to be dug, send out the soldiers with a shovel. And so on.

Thus, a neologism "삽질" was born. "삽" means "a shovel," and "-질" means "the act of doing something," and it is often used as a derogatory suffix (for another example, see 선비질). So "삽질" means "the act of shoveling," and with the unsaid nuance, it means "to shovel uselessly." Nowadays, it is used to make fun of the situation where someone is working very hard for no gain at all.

For example, say your friend is courting a girl rather aggressively, but the girl is not interested at all and turns him down despite all his efforts. You might tell him,
"괜한 삽질만 많이 했네." (That was a lot of useless shoveling).
The Korean soldiers whose work got out-done by a bulldozer might use this in a more literal sense and say:
"불도저 앞에서 삽질했네." (That was a lot of useless shoveling in front of a bulldozer.)
 If your younger sister is begging for a ride on your car this evening by doing all of your chores, and you already have a plan so you can't give her a ride, you might say:
"삽질하네." (You're doing some useless shoveling.)
While this expression does have a vulgar nuance, just by the virtue of all Korean men having experienced this, this expression gets used quite a bit, especially among men (but women will also use it from time to time.) This expression is suitable among friends or peers, but because of the inherent sarcasm in the word, you should take care not to say it in front of your seniors.