#11. 발 -- Being terrible at something

It is infuriating when someone doesn't put their heart into the work they are tasked to do. Maybe your teammates are not pulling their weights in your group project, and the work that they do manage to do is so terrible that you can't even use it. Maybe one of the actors in your favourite K-drama is terrible at acting, and it's really grating on your nerves.

In one of these cases, consider the following retorts. The common key word is "발," meaning "foot."

너는 과제를 발로하니? (Are you doing the project with your foot?)

발로 연기를 해도 저 배우보다는 잘하겠다 (Even if I act with just my feet, I could do better than that actor.)

The reason for these kinds of remarks should be fairly obvious even for the non-Korean speakers; since feet are much less adroit than the hands, we are mocking the clumsiness of the receiver of the comments, since even my feet would accomplish better than what they have done.

English has a similar expression as well; namely, to have two left feet. However, compared to this English expression, the Korean version described above has a nuance that is much more vulgar. It conveys the annoyance of the speaker, if not anger, and I would not use this expression at all to a person older than me. Even for my peers, I'd have to be pretty annoyed to throw one of these retorts to them.

In some cases,  there's a slightly more humorous usage, when you are not directly insulting someone, but rather a third party. In this case, you can use the prefix "발-" to mock someone. For example, when you're mocking an actor (there's really no danger of offending the actor personally, since you probably don't even know him!) you could say

발연기 장난 아니더라 (His terrible acting was no joke.)

Similarly, you could be reading an English novel translated to Korean, and notice that the translation is terrible. In this case, you could refer to this translation as "발번역," and say things like "그 소설 읽지마. 발번역이 너무 심해" (Don't read the novel, there was too much terrible translation.") Here's a hilarious clip of "발 CG," or terrible quality computer graphics, from one of the Korean dramas "연개소문:"

You can pretty much tell that whoever did these special effects really didn't have much time, so you would be laughing hard with your friends, calling it "발 CG." So, again, the prefix "발-" has a different nuance from just using the word "발" in your sentences! The effect is rather humorous! (As an aside, the last scene is probably a bit puzzling. It depicts thousands of palace maidens throwing themselves to their death from a cliff, because the enemy had taken over the palace and they were in danger of getting caught and being sold as slaves, or worse. It's a fairly well-known bit of Korean history that I hope to write about in the near future!)


Finally, you can use the "발-" prefix to mock yourself, when you've made something of a questionable quality. You can preemptively declare it to be of terrible quality "발퀄리티" or "발퀄" for short, thus introducing some quick humour into the situation, and acknowledge that your product is not of the best quality. You will often see the hashtag #발퀄 on Instagram, for example, for terrible quality photos. This word is especially humorous, because of the two parts that make up this word. One is pure Korean, and the other is English. Since no real Korean word is made from two stems such as this, the combination of Korean and English usually has a humorous effect. You can even add the all-purpose prefix "개-" to make it "개발퀄," or "f-ing awful quality."

The prefix "발-" is not offensive, so you could use it to most people, although it is slang, and I would avoid it in formal company.

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#10. 신의 한 수 -- Looking very far ahead

The game of 바둑 (go) and 장기 (Chinese chess) both have a long tradition of being very well-loved by the Korean population. They go way back to our folklore, even. In the traditional Korean shamanism folklore, the old immortal man-gods (called 신선), who know everything about the humans but do not like to meddle in our affairs, pass their time playing 바둑 and 장기. The legend has it that their playing style is so fantastical that if a mortal man passes by while they are playing, they will be completely mesmerized, and will not notice the passage of time. The game of 바둑 and 장기 for the 신선 can take decades to finish, and when the mortal man gains hold of himself again, the wooden handle of their axe might have rotted off thanks to the passage of time.

신선 playing 바둑 is one of the most popular topics of oriental art. There's also the notion that if you can while your time away by playing 바둑, your life is pretty good! So this picture is supposed to be relaxing, and the viewer is supposed to look at this wistfully.

Anyway, a move in one of these games is called "수" in Korean. "Making a move" is called "수를 두다." ("두다" is the usual verb for "playing" these kinds of games; for example, "바둑을 두다" means "play go.") Here, "수" comes from the Chinese letter meaning "hand." For example, a bad move in 바둑 or 장기 is called "악수" (the same 악 as in "악마," a devil; different from shaking hands.) When someone is giving you an advice about how to play, this is called a "훈수" as a noun, and "훈수를 두다" as a verb.

When the 신선 play, each of their 수 is said to have been so profound that mortals might not even understand the ramification of it until many moves later. From this folklore, the Koreans have picked up on a new neologism, called "신의 한 수." It literally means the "one move by 신선," or the one move by a god. When is this used?

In our lives, many a meaningless event happens. But when we look back on it later, some of those events that we brushed off as meaningless were actually very crucial, or very lucrative, or in some ways unexpectedly positive, as if a 신선 has silently coached our move without us noticing. Maybe the restaurant I wanted to go to was completely booked up, so I decide to go to the quieter restaurant next door, only to discover that this restaurant is miles better than the original restaurant I had planned to go to. Then I would say that "그 레스토랑에 가기로 결정한 건 신의 한 수였어," or "the fact that I had decided to go to the other restaurant was a move whispered to me by a god." This expression is often used by sports fans almost as an exclamation as well, as in "우와, 신의 한 수!" for a particularly good assist.

Speaking of "수," there's another word related to it. When someone tries too hard to achieve something, we call it "무리수." "무리" means overexertion, as in "무리하지 마," or "don't overexert yourself." You might have seen a homonym of it, meaning "irrational numbers," but the underlying Chinese characters are different (the "수" in "trying to hard" comes from the word "hand," while the "수" in "irrational numbers" comes from the word "number.")

For example, if two people are on a date, and one person is telling one cheesy joke a minute, the other might be wincing and thinking, "무리수를 두네." You could also exaggerate that someone is trying way too hard by adding the all-purpose prefix "개-" to say, "개무리수," even!

Both words, "신의 한 수" and "무리수" are widely used in real life and online!

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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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#8. 허세 -- The culture of showing off

The culture of trying to show off your superiority to the others isn't new. Back in the olden days, the educated people would quote from the literature, and see who picks up on the subtle references. Only those who pick up on these obscure quotes were their intellectual equals!

We haven't changed much, because we are still searching for those whoreally "get us," by posting cryptic messages on social media. Sometimes it works; but sometimes, it leads to an epic failure whose memory will make you blush every time you think about it. When these messages are especially pretentious, Koreans might caution you not to show off, by saying:

허세 부리지 마.

"허세" is a Korean word with Chinese origins. "허" means fake or empty in content; "허상" means "fake imagery (for example, holograms or shadows)"; "허구" means "made-up stories"; "허허벌판" means a field that has completely barren. "세" is a bit harder to translate, but I would say that it means "aura," or "force." For example, "기세" means "force"; "위세" means "authority"; "텃세" means "assertion of power due to an advantage."

When someone gives off the fake vibes, the verb that describes this is therefore "허세부리다." Here is a classic example of 허세 that most Koreans would know, from none other than 장근석, a famous celebrity. He posted a picture of himself with the following words on Cyworld, an early Korean version of Instagram. Note that his writing style is rather literary than colloquial; this was supposed to set the stage for his reflexive and deep thoughts. Unfortunately, the content did not match the seriousness of the tone, and he is still known as "허세킹," or "king of 허세."

 

Here is the translation:

The racing in Le Mans left excitement in my arms,
and the wine in Paris made me subdued.

Paris..
The relaxed atmosphere of the people on the streets
and the beauty of the historical and traditional architecture..

And

an unknown artistic aura enters my body in this city..

If an opportunity ever comes to me again to visit Paris,
I shall hold a bottle of wine in one hand, and newspaper in the other
and cry in the Avenue des Champs-Elysées

"New York Herald Tribune!"

Anyway, as he was already a very famous celebrity, some TV shows parodied this post, and eventually he ended up closing his account on Cyworld. People laughed at this post, saying "허세좀 보소," "대단한 허세다,"and "손발이 오그라든다."

There is another older Korean word that means the same thing. You could have also said

폼 잡지 마.

폼 comes from the English word "form." Its literal translation says "don't take a form," but it's really Konglish for "don't strike up a pose." With the rise of the word "허세," this word is in decline, but it is still used by the people who are trying to create the feel for the bygone days of the 1990s.

And finally, I will note that these words are widely used, even among the older people of Korea.

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#7. 오글거리다 -- Overly sentimental

If you've spent even the smallest amount of time watching Korean dramas (highly recommended), you know that these dramas are thickly laden with mushy and lovey-dovey dialogues that you would never dare to utter in public unless you wanted to face snickers from everyone around you.

Believe it or not, Koreans feel the same way about these scenes.

 

I make this exact same expression when I see these cheesy scenes.

There's a slangy expression for this reaction in Korean, which I believe doesn't exist in English. Notice what Merida is doing with her hands. This finger-curling reaction must be universal, because Koreans say that over-sentimental scenes make their fingers and toes curl, or:

손발이 오그라든다.

"손발" just means "hand and foot," and "오그라든다" means "shrink while curling inwards." In my opinion, this is a pretty perfect description of our reaction. Here's a four-cut Korean webtoon that depicts the perfect situation where you can use this expression.

Woman: Huh, what are you looking for?
Man: Ah... I'm looking for a key but I can't find it...

Woman: Do you need some help? What key are you looking for?

Man: The key that will open your heart.

손발이 오그라들다. Source

There are a few related expressions as well. Instead of using the verb "오그라들다," you can also use an adjective "오글," more commonly using it twice for emphasis "오글오글," and say "오글오글하네." For strong emphasis, you could say "온몸이 오그라든다" (my entire body is curling up), but Koreans often invent their own expressions too.

Another related expression you might see in this direction is the phrase "손발 퇴갤." The letter "퇴" usually means exit, or going out. When you leave work for the day, you say that you are going to "퇴근." When you exit stage, you say "퇴장." The letter "갤" is short for the DC Inside Galleries (갤 is from 갤러리, Koreanization of the word "galleries"). This means that your hands and feet have left the galleries, where you have presumably just seen something incredibly cheesy. Your hands and feet shriveled up to the point where they are just not there anymore. Reading this phrase always feels to me as if it has an English equivalent, where the commenter is announcing, "Ladies and gentlemen, my hands and feet have just left the house."

On a website, I have seen a commenter write, "손이 오그라들어서 팔꿈치로 타자친다." He has written, "since my hands have shriveled up, I am typing this with my elbows." This is a typical Korean internet humour, which, in my opinion, is characterized by very fresh perspectives and humorous imagery that is completely unexpected.

Finally, you can talk about just how much of this stuff you can take. The amount of natural resistance that you have to the sentimentality is sometimes called "항마력" in Korean internet-slang. "항마력" actually means the "ability to resist the evil." All three characters have Chinese origins. "항" means to resist -- think of the word "대항" which means to "resist against"; "마" refers to the things magical -- the words such as "마녀 (witch)," "마법 (sorcery)," or "마귀 (devil)" all have the same letter; "력" means power or ability -- "활력 (vitality, or power of life)," "인력 (manpower)," and so on.

항마력 is often a character attribute in online role-playing games. This word naturally made its way into the Korean internet scene, because a lot of people spending time on the internet play these kinds of games, and because it just feels so appropriate! After all, what could be more evil than a couple being lovey-dovey to each other in public? This word is almost never used in real life, unless you're talking to your buddies, whereas "손발이 오글거리다" is much more widely accepted in the Korean society. As long as you don't directly insult someone with it, you can use this latter in almost any situation!

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#6. 정주행 -- Binge-watching a show

Despite the fact that I left Korea more than fifteen years ago, and that I consider myself very much an anglophone, there are a few things in the Korean culture that I find to be irreplaceable by the anglophone culture.

One example that I always talk about is the manga and anime scene of Korea. In Korean, we call it "만화" for both. If you want to distinguish the two, you add the second words -영화 or -책, obtaining "만화영화" and "만화책." The Korean 만화책 scene in particular has no parallel in terms of creativity. The usage of the Korean humour by the 만화가, or "comic book artists," never fail at making me burst out laughing in the middle of my workdays. In the digital age, most comic book artists have switched to the internet as the medium, and you can get weekly installments of hundreds of comics for free through 네이버 만화 or 다음 웹툰 (now that these things are published online, Koreans have taken to calling them webtoons).

Since these fantastic creative works are released in weekly installments, readers quite often feel that they can't get enough of it. Thus, if you're a true fan, while you're waiting for the next installment, you would re-start the series by re-reading every episode from the very beginning (often, these webtoons go on for hundreds of installments, so this is no easy feat). To say that you are about to embark on this quest, Koreans will say, "이 만화 정주행해야지." This means "I will read every episode of this webtoon from the very beginning." Once you've done it, you can say "정주행 끝났다." You can use the same phrase for drama binging as well.

This neologism comes from a standard dictionary word (noun) "주행." Its verb form would be "주행하다." It usually refers to the movement of some mode of land transport that is not your legs. For example, if you wanted to describe a car driving down a road, you could say that "자동차가 도로를 지나간다." If you wanted to be fancy about it, you could say instead: "자동차가 도로를 주행한다." Similarly, you could describe the movement of a train (기차), a subway (지하철), or a motorcycle (오토바이) using the word "주행." The only exception is when you're walking. The fancy word for "walking" is "보행," not "주행."

Anyway, this word gave rise to the internet neologism 정주행. "정" means straight, or in the correct way. So, if we were describing the movements of a car, "정주행" would mean that the car is moving forward. In the context of webtoons, we're basically plowing through the series in a straight fashion, from the first episode to the last. While this word remains a slang, it is fairly well-accepted within the Korean community, and unless you're speaking to an elderly person (who might not understand the meaning if they're not into binge-watching), you can use this word without worrying about being rude. I still would avoid using this word in a formal report, however.

As an aside, if you were going to take my suggestion and try your hands at reading some of the webtoons, I would recommend Noblesse. It's about a vampire who was in hibernation for 700 years, and awoke to find himself more or less alone in our current-day world. He soon gets entangled in a battle against evil scientists to protect the humanity. It is iconic in the Korean internet culture. It is so popular that it has been going strong for ten years with one installment every week. Almost every Korean has heard of it, and you will actually see some people quoting it in random places on the Korean internet, and if you can understand the context, these comments are actually hilarious.

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Listening exercise with transcript #1: A disastrous date

Here is a set of two TV advertisements that are very well done! In this post, I want to talk about the first advertisement, between 0:00 - 1:26.

Like everywhere, there is always the fear of going on a terrible date in Korea as well. In this aspect, the phrase "아무거나" is definitely the one that will make a lot of people cringe. In a typical scenario of a couple going on a date, the man is usually the one who is expected to take the initiative, and plan out a fun course for the date. And one of the most important aspects of the date is, of course, where to eat dinner. It's rare for Koreans to be very straightforward with their wishes, because being too open could be judged by others to be uncouth. Thus a conflict arises. The man tries his best to guess what kind of food will make his girlfriend the happiest. The woman, on her turn, tries her best to lead the man to her preferred dinner option. This often leads to frustration, and the feeling of eating "고구마 백개." Indeed, for a typical Korean man, the phrase "아무거나," meaning "anything," might be the most dreaded phrase that one can hear during a date (she doesn't want to sound selfish, so she wants to appear generous and let her boyfriend choose by saying "anything," but more often than not, she does have quite strong opinions!)

"아무" means "any." You see it in many typical Korean usage. For example, if you want to say "in any way," you can say "아무렇게나"; an undesignated person, the Korean equivalent of John Doe, is "김아무개," where 김 is one of the most common Korean last names, and "아무개" has its root in "아무." Sometimes, when people want to humble themselves, or when they don't want to give their name, they might just use their last name with the name "아무개," saying "저는 그냥 박아무개입니다." This last part isn't very commonly used in day-to-day life, although you might see it in literary works. If you want to say "is anyone here?" you could say "아무도 없어요?" (technically it's closer to "isn't anyone here?")

"거" means "thing." "This" is "이거," and "that" is "저거."

"나" as a particle signifies your indifference. For example, your younger brother is bothering you to play with him, and you're tired and you want him to go away. In your annoyance, you could suggest to him that he should "go eat some chips, or something" (but you don't care at all if he actually eats the chips or not.) In Korean, it's "과자나 먹던가." The "나" signifies your indifference, which is expressed by "or something" in the English phrase. In contrast, if you were concerned that your brother was actually hungry, you could have said "go eat some chips!" In Korean this would be "과자 먹어!" Another example that conveys a similar sentiment of indifference is "믿거나 말거나" ("believe it or not.")

Anyway, I have transcribed the first advertisement in the above YouTube video. Try listening to the clip first without the transcript, and see how much you can understand. You'll notice that there is more inflection in the dialogue than usual. That is because there's a lot of aegyo going on between the couple.

Man: 아 근데 웃었더니 배고프다.
Woman: 어! 나도!
Man: 뭐 먹을래?
Woman: 오빠 좋은거 아무거나.
Man: 그래? 그럼... 파스타?
Woman: 면 말고. 면 말고 아무거나.
Man: 그래? 아... 우리 자기가 또 이게... 예뻐가지고 또 입에 묻히는걸 싫어하는구나.
        그러며는, 난 오늘 좀 피자가 땡긴다. 피자 어때? (ed: "땡기다" is a slangy Korean for "having a craving for.")
Woman: 피자는... 오빠 앞에서 예쁘게 못먹잖아.
Man: 나한테 그렇게 예쁜 모습 안보여도 돼. 빨리 가!
       그러면... 빠삭빠삭한 돈까스 먹을까?
Woman: 돈까스 말고 아무거나.
Man: 그래? 짬뽕?
Woman: 매워...
Man: 감자튀김?
Woman: 목맥혀. (ed: the correct pronunciation would have been 목막혀)
Man: 카레?
Woman: 어제 먹었지~
Man: 그렇지... 초밥?
Woman: 어... 비려!
Man: 청국장?
Woman: 냄새배!
Man: 갈치조림?
Woman: 불쌍해~
Man: 추어탕? (ed: this is a spicy soup made from mudfish -- small eels -- which are typically very very alive right up until they are cooked. It's quite a sight and a bit terrifying!)
Woman: 무서워!
Man: 팥죽? (ed: sweet congee made from red beans. It's said to scare away the ghosts and goblins, and it's reddish in color).
Woman: 빨개.
Man: 그러면... 똠... 양꿍! (ed: tom yum kum soup, for some reason all the Koreans love this!)
Woman: 아... 몰라 몰라. 다 모르겠어. 그냥 그거 말고 아무거...

--After the advertisement message --

Man: 아~ 잘먹었다!
Woman: 배불러!
Man: 나두 배불러. 우리 배부른데 영화하나 딱 보고 끝! 어때?
Woman: 나, 오빠가 좋은거 아무거나.
Man: (runs away)
Woman: 오빠! 아무거나!

At the end of his date, he resolves his frustration of 고구마 백개 by drinking a 사이다!

Anyway, as you can guess from the fact this is an ad that was aired nationally, everything that we discussed today is suitable for all ages as long as you're not using 존댓말!

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