#81. 괴담 -- Just how real is the tiger-demon of Korea? (Shamanism 6)

I'll admit it, I slept with the lights on after I wrote the tiger-demon article from last week. Something about the Korean horror stories (especially if they're claimed to be true) freaks me out; maybe it's because there's traces of shamanism in my upbringing (and as a consequence, a small part of me believes these stories); or maybe it's just the sheer number of these stories, and how they all seem to match up. There were so many stories that some media outlets even wrote articles about them!

These kinds of news articles actually appeared in media.

Tiger-demon aside, there are actually a surprising number of these stories in the Korean society. These "scary urban legends" are often called "괴담."

The letter "괴" is Chinese meaning "strange" or "scary." For example, "괴물" is a "monster" in Korean, aliens are sometimes called "괴생명체 (strange life-forms)" and demons are called "요괴 (magical and strange beings)."

The letter "담" means "story" and it is used widely. If you want to read about someone's experience, search for "경험담 (experience story)." If you want to hear about the time when your friend saw something happening, ask about their "목격담 (witnessed story)."

So "괴담" means "strange story" and you will find so many "장산범 괴담" on the internet.

Anyway, here is the story that really scared me, with some edits to make the story clearer. As before, if you'd like to read the story in Korean, you can find it here.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 My grandmother is 93 years old. Yep, she is pretty old. But she is still full of life. She can still walk well, and she can down an entire bottle of soju if there is a family gathering. She likes to sing, and her memory is top-notch. She remembers even the smallest events in my family from many years ago.

Anyway, this is a story that my grandmother often told me when I was in elementary school and middle school. It's the story of a 범. Every time she told this story, she always looked tense and shivered.

Whenever she sees a tiger ("호랑이" in Korean) on TV, she always says that this is not a 범 (while it is another word for a tiger in Korean, it seems that at least some people distinguish them, at least in these stories!) She says that 범s have magical powers, and that they are snow-white.

When she was in her 20s, my grandmother lived in the 황해 province, which is now in North Korea. One day, she went into a nearby mountain to pick some wild fiddleheads with three friends. While they did this often, that particular day, they decided to go a little deeper into the woods in hopes that there will be more fiddleheads.

Indeed there were a lot of fiddleheads and other wild edible plants, and they filled up their baskets with them. My grandmother remembers that on that day, they ate lunch of barley rice (보리밥), soybean paste (된장), and cucumber kimchi (by the way, this is a totally standard meal in the 1920-30s of Korea). Then they decided to leave the mountain early because it looked like they could be trapped in a storm if they stayed too late.

Unfortunately, they didn't bring enough water. As they finished lunch and started to come down from the mountain, one of their friends was whining about how thirsty she was. But as they were near the summit, they couldn't find any water.

All of a sudden, they heard the sound of a stream, where the water seemed to be flowing (in Korean onomatopoeia, it is described as "졸졸졸 시냇물 흐르는 소리 -- the sound of flowing stream.") All four of them heard it.

The friend who was whining didn't want to get separated from the group, so all four of them set out to search for the stream so she could drink some water. Although they followed the sound for some time, they couldn't locate the stream. Sometimes they could hear the sound, and sometimes they couldn't. They were so tired so they gave up on the search for the stream and turned back to get back on the mountain trail.

Then they saw the thing on their way back up. Two lights not unlike the headlights of a car shining down at them. My grandmother described it as a thing covered in white fur. Very fine, very soft, and long. While it was clearly not human, it felt human. It was standing there, between them and the trail, looking down at them, and making the sound of the flowing stream from its mouth. It wasn't growling or roaring.

The four women screamed and ran down the side of the mountain, already having dropped all of their baskets full of fiddleheads, and even losing some shoes in their panic. And behind them they could still hear the sound of the stream following them.

About halfway down, they saw a little hut, probably used by those who look for medicinal herbs in the mountain. They ran inside the hut, locked the door, and cried in their panic. Then the sound of the stream stopped.

They could hear something coming up to the door. It circled the hut, then called out the name of the friend who was whining earlier of thirst. The voice was so full of warmth, and so soft. The friend recognized it as her mother's voice. No one dared to answer, and it started to rain. So instead of trying to get back to their village, they all fell asleep in the little hut together.

In the dawn of the next day, when the woke up, the friend who was complaining of thirst was gone. The three remaining women searched for her frantically but could not find her. Their return to the village of course put everyone in panic, and the Japanese police force with their long swords (this would have been in the Japanese occupation era) searched the village and the surrounding areas. But no one ever saw the friend again, and they never found her body either.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm still not sure why I am so fascinated by these stories, but all of these shamanism theories aside, it's good fun to read scary stories once in a while and get some organic goosebumps in the heat of the summer, no?

Read more

#80. Someone tweeted about a 맘충

Today, while browsing the internet, I saw a tweet, in which someone complains about a 맘충 that they encountered. It seemed to have just the right amount of slang that I thought I would put it here.

Here is the text:
와 진짜 골때린다 ㅋㅋㅋ
Wow, I really feel like I've just been hit in the head.

요즘 애엄마들 다 그러나?
Are all moms like this nowadays?

남의 가게 메뉴꾸며놓은 칠판에 애가 낙서하고있는데 거기다대고 "어머~ 참잘했어요~"
Her kid was ruining the menu board for someone else's store and she said "wow~ good job~"
(Note that the writer made one typo, saying 낚서 instead of 낙서.)

ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ 왘ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
"왘" is actually "와" but if you type "와" and "ㅋㅋㅋ" together, you often end up with "왘." It just means "wow."

닥치고 니가 그대로 복구해놔라
Shut up and put it back yourself.

Hopefully studying the Korean slang made this tweet easier to understand!

Read more

#79. 파오후 -- You are f-ing obese (not my words, theirs!)

Another shout-out to Shane for suggesting covering more onomatopoeic words! :)

This had not occurred to me before Shane asked me about the Korean onomatopoeia in one of my other posts -- the Korean language is full of onomatopoeia, compared to English! For example, the following sentences all use onomatopoeia and they are sentences that you would often hear in everyday life.

"먹을때 쩝쩝대지 마." (Don't chew with your mouth open -- "쩝쩝" is onomatopoeia for the sound that you make when you do)

"이 수학문제를 가지고 한시간째 끙끙대고 있어." (I've been struggling with this math problem for an hour -- "끙끙" is the sound that you might make when you're struggling with a heavy weight at the gym. Math problems make you suffer just as much, right?)

"물결이 찰랑대는 호수가 너무 예쁘다." (The lake with small waves is so beautiful -- "찰랑" is the onomatopoeia for the small sloshing of water. For a larger wave, you might use "출렁" instead.)

These onomatopoeia occupy a large portion of the Korean language, and while we, the anglophones, might use these words to a toddler to engage in conversation, these are totally normal words to use in Korean. This brings up the question, how about on the internet? Do the Koreans also make up new onomatopoeia?

The answer is a loud YES. Looking through my previous posts, I have talked about one instance of onomatopoeia here (the word is "철컹철컹" which describes the clanking of handcuffs, and also describes how you might be locked up in a jail cell with a lock). Perhaps this is not totally satisfactory since "철컹철컹" is an onomatopoeia that already existed in standard Korean. But here is one that you might find to be more amusing (or more offensive, as is the case with most internet literature!)

Long before YouTube was a thing, Koreans already had a platform where people could have their own channels, and create video content that was broadcasted live. The website still exists. But it often comes under fire because a lot of people there create questionable content (for example, minors trying to create sexual content for the money, or adults trying dangerous stunts), and the censorship is not well enforced for the most part.

Anyway, one of these broadcasters, who was known for being overweight, was one day streaming a video of himself eating. He made some interesting noises during the broadcast, which, to Koreans, seemed like the sound that people make when they are very enthusiastic about food (and this is an awful stereotype, but a fair number of these people are overweight).

When he inhales the food, it sounds like he's breathing in and saying "파오후," and when he chews, he makes a sound very similar to "쿰척쿰척," listen for yourself and see if you agree that this sounds like a fair representation of the eating sounds that the broadcaster is making.

So the Koreans started making fun of obese people with the phrase "파오후 쿰척쿰척." First when they were eating food, but then it just kind of became a phrase to mock the obese people of the internet. In the current usage, "파오후" just became a noun for "an obese person," and "쿰척쿰척" became an onomatopoeia describing anything that an obese person does. (Another theory says that "파오후" refers to the sounds of breathing of an obese person, and "쿰척쿰척" is the sound of sniffling, so you are free to believe whichever theory suits your imagination!)

At this point, I can imagine your reactions. You are gasping in shock, because this is incredibly insensitive and mean-spirited. And I agree with you; Korean internet users tend to be a lot more vitriolic than their anglophone counterparts.

One of the reasons this is tolerated is because the Korean society is a lot less forgiving towards the people who stand out. This is really how the unfortunate tradition of 왕따 started, where people attempt to punish those who stand out by not acknowledging their existence, or with open hostility.

Another reason is that these kinds of words get made up in what you might call the garbage dumps of the Korean internet -- namely DC Inside and ilbe.com, where they are notorious for their blatant disregard for the social norms. A lot of people hide the fact that they have accounts on these websites (for the fear of being ostracized), but I guess a lot of people still use these communities, as they are still one of the most popular internet communities of Korea. These slang words end up becoming mainstream either through these secret users slipping up and using them in real life, or by the non-users, who try to use these new neologisms to insult the users of DC Inside and ilbe.com (as the internet communities always seem to be at war with one another.)

Finally, the default assumption of the Korean internet users is that whoever you are interacting with on the internet is the biggest loser imaginable (as this makes it easier to insult them). They are probably losers with no jobs, ugly or deformed, never dated, and probably went to a 지잡대. Also, they are probably morbidly obese. So it is not unusual to see insults of the kind

"이 파오후새끼야, 쿰척쿰척하지말고 가서 알바라도 해." (You f-ing pig, stop being a fat loser and get a part-time job)

Regardless of they are actually obese or not. (Of course, they also get used correctly to mock obese people.)

So there you have it, probably the first truly mean Korean internet slang that I've covered in this blog. This only touches the surface of what some of the Korean internet users are capable of, though (and if this scares you, you should stay far away from DC Inside and ilbe.com, and a few other communities!) And please, do not use these words in real life!

Read more

#78. 아닥 -- Shut your pie hole

If you've spent time around any Korean media at all, chances are good that you know the most used Korean expression for "shut up!" That expression is:

"닥쳐!" (Shut up)

and it is literally identical to "shut up." According to 국립국어원 (National Institute for the Korean Language), the word "닥쳐" originally comes from "닫쳐," which means "to shut (things like doors, etc.)" This word has been widely used for generations, but there is actually a trendier slang going around the younger generation of Korea.

Suppose that you were in a group project with a couple of your friends together. They all slack off, and you end up having to pull an all-nighter to pick up the slack and complete the project on time. When the time comes for you to submit it, your groupmates show up and take a quick look at what you've done, and they start criticizing your work. Your font isn't professional. Your content could have been better researched. Suppressing the urge to punch them in the face, you say:

"나한테 죽빵맞기싫으면 당장 아닥해라." (Unless you want to be punched in the face, shut your pie hole right now.)

 So, "아닥" is short for "아가리 닥치다," and since the verb ending has been suppressed, you use "아닥하다" as its verb form (in particular, Koreans don't use "아닥치다" which seems more logical!)

The word "아가리" is an old Korean word that is probably a little bit too old even for our grandparents -- their parents and their grandparents might have used this word to denote the mouth of a jar, or the entrance to a village. And just like in the English usage, this word has long been used as a slang to denote our mouths. For example, if someone has a foul mouth, Koreans might say:

"아가리에 걸레물었냐?" (Do you have a rag in your pie hole?)

So both "아가리" and "닥치다" are fairly vulgar slang words, but Koreans managed to combine them to into yet another word that should be at least as vulgar. However, this word came into usage in the last few years, so among the younger generation, it is used fairly commonly, not only for the literal usage of "shut up" but also for the situations where you have nothing to say. For example, if you were debating with someone and your opponent was so logical that you can't think of anything else to say, you might concede defeat in a slangy and vulgar way by saying:

"니 논리가 나를 아닥하게 만드네." (Your logic made me shut up.)

In general, it seems that the most vulgar of the Korean slang are exclusively reserved for the internet. Then the next tier of vulgar words are used mostly by Korean men, then there are the mildly vulgar words used by everyone. I can easily visualize even the Korean women using this word as well, among close friends or on the internet.

Read more

Listening exercise with transcript #13: the Korean Pig Latin

Here are some Korean girls speaking 외계어 that I talked about a few days ago. The older members in the show clearly don't know anything about it, and they are shocked that all these young girls know how to communicate with each other using this strange language!

There are many popular Korean girl groups in this video, including GFriend, APink, and IOI, but I won't refer to them by name since not every reader is familiar with everyone.

Panel member 1: 할줄아시는분 계세요?
(Can anyone speak it?)

Panel member 2: 도깨비 언어가뭐야?
(What's the 도깨비 언어? -- language of the hobgoblins)

Girl 1: 어떤거요? ㄹ이요?
 (Which consonant do you use? ㄹ? -- remember that you need to pick a consonant to speak the Korean Pig Latin, and that choice is up to you!)

Girl 2: 아.. 저는 ㅂ으로...
 (Oh, I use ㅂ...)

Girl 3: 저는 ㅅ이요.
(I use ㅅ.)

Panel member 3: 도깨비 언어가 뭐야?
(What is the 도깨비 언어?)

Panel member 4: 일단 시범을 한번보여줘요.
(Can you do a demonstration first before talking about it?)

Girl 1: 펴성소소에세 보소미시서선배새니심 패샌이시에세요소.

Girl 2: 아사 저서도소 너서무수 패샌이신데세.
(The above conversation between the two girls is repeated twice)

Girl 3: 너서무수 귀시여서워서요소.

Girl 4: 가삼사사하삽니시다사. ㅅ은 잘 못하겠어요.

Girl 5: 저러도로 하랄수루이맀스릅니리다라.

So there's the transcript. Can you figure out what they are saying? Here is the translation of the Korean Pig Latin:

Girl 1: 평소에 보미선배님 팬이에요. (I've been a fan of Bomi sunbae -- sunbae is a word referring to someone who has been in your profession for longer than you. For example, a student in a higher year is your 선배, as well as someone who has worked at your workplace for longer than you.)

Girl 2: 아 저도 너무 팬인데. (Oh, I'm a fan of yours too.)

Girl 3: 너무 귀여워요 (You're so cute!)

Girl 4: 감사합니다. ㅅ은 잘 못하겠어요 (Thank you. I can't really speak it well using ㅅ -- here, she messes up slightly in speaking the Korean Pig Latin, and she says that she is used to using a different consonant from ㅅ.)

Girl 5: 저도 할 수 있습니다 (She pipes up from nowhere, telling people that she can also speak it too. But instead of using ㅅ like all the other girls before her, she chooses to use ㄹ, which is presumably the consonant that she is familiar with.)

Read more

#77. 현피 -- Korean gamer drama gone wrong

The gaming community (of which nearly every Korean is a member) always carries a lot of potential for drama. People put in years, if not decades, of effort into their characters, and it is so easy to lose all of that in a heartbeat if someone sets their mind on it. So "keyboard battles" (키보드 배틀, or 키배 for short) where people insult each other via chat are a daily occurrence in the Korean internet.

Well, everyone fights, you say. And you would be right. However,  there is one thing that is unique about the Korean gamer drama.

Remember that Korea is a tiny country. For context, South Korea is about 1/3 the size of Germany, and about 1/5 the size of California. And the majority of the Korean population lives in Seoul. This means that if you get so upset at your opponent in a 키배 that you want to punch him, that can be easily arranged.

The Koreans would say,

"너 나와! 나랑 현피뜨자!" (Come out, let's have a 현피).

The word "현피" and its verb form "현피뜨다" comes from combining "현실" (real life) and "PK" which is a gaming word for "Player Kill." So you get "현P" which gets written as "현피" in Korean. It literally means that two gamers want to meet in real life to kill each other (instead of killing each other's characters online.) You can substitute "real-life player kill" for "현피" and it would be a pretty accurate translation.

By the way, this is one of the reasons that makes the Korean internet so unique in my opinion. It feels so much more "real" than say, American internet.

In reality, no blows were exchanged in this 현피.

 Anyway, you are probably wondering, why on earth would you agree to a real-life fight?

Well, I can think of two major reasons.

The first is that most Korean internet users tend to assume that everyone on the internet is a huge loser. They are probably weak, they were probably bullied in school, they probably don't have a job or a girlfriend, they probably mooch off of their parents. Of course they are going to win if they fight in real life.

The second is, of course, peer pressure. Koreans tend to value community over the individual, so compared to an average North American, Koreans tend to be a lot more aware of what is going on around them. In general, they seem more susceptible to peer pressure as well. Once a major 키배 breaks out, a lot of people are watching them fight and exchange brave words, and they are egging them on. Once the word "현피" is uttered, it would be majorly embarrassing to back down!

It's not incredibly frequent that a 현피 takes place, so when it does, it provides a major 떡밥 to the internet community. Word travels quickly that something is happening in real life, and since all communications leading up to the 현피 are done publicly, hundreds of thousands of people end up knowing the time and the location of a 현피. You are very likely to have a spectator if you ever engage in it.

Often it ends up with a hilarious result. In one instance, one riled-up internet user accepted the challenge of 현피 just to see that his opponent was a kid in elementary school; in another case, two internet users met up to fight, only to realize that they were far too overweight to actually fight in earnest (and to their mortification, a sizeable audience had gathered); and sometimes they get stood up by their opponent.

I would discourage you from engaging in a 현피, however, since some of the spectators will probably record the interaction and you will be forever remembered in a gif ("움짤" in Korean, which comes from "움직이는 짤방" or "moving pictures"). Most likely you will be doing a lot of 이불킥 when you think about it in a couple of years! Then there are the couple of rare cases where someone actually ends up being killed, although those are incredibly rare, maybe one or two cases in the history of Korean internet have been known to the public.

However, if you ever see people actually organizing a 현피, grab some popcorn and stick around -- they are pretty rare, and chances are, you are witnessing the birth of yet another page of Korean internet literature!

As for when to use this word in real life... I guess you wouldn't really. The only cases where I can think of using this word is maybe when you're texting your friend and you playfully challenge them to a fight. This is definitely a word among the younger generation, though!

Read more

#76. 통수 맞다 -- Backstabbed

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

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

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

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

This is your 뒤통수.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more