#104. A trilingual Korean joke (Hanja 3)

I saw the following photo (or 짤, 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 닭 계. 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 "계" 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 닭 계 include:

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

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

- 군계일학 (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 말 마. So it means a horse (말), but it would be read as the letter "마" in Korean. Some Korean words that include this Hanja are:

- 마굿간: a stable (for horses)

- 출마: 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.

- 애마: beloved horse (along with the Hanja 사랑 애, 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!

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#103. 대나무숲 -- Tell me your secrets

It must be human nature to want to talk about your deepest secrets. Relationship troubles, secret crushes, and inner turmoil. Some of us pour our hearts out to our closest friends, some of us to our dear diaries. Yet some others, wanting impartial feedback and advice, turn to anonymous online forums. Whatever your method of choice may be, there is the feeling of relief and catharsis after having gotten something off your chest.

Koreans are no exception to this rule, and this is well-documented in our history.

There was a king in Unified Silla (remember that the three kingdoms were unified thanks to the efforts of the General 김유신) named 경문왕 (King Gyeongmoon). While he is not a notable king in terms of politics or military tactics, he leaves behind many mysterious legends. One says that whenever he slept, hundreds of snakes appeared out of nowhere and formed a blanket across his body. When his surprised servants tried to chase them away, the king stopped them, telling them that he couldn't sleep as well without the snakes. Another says that he is the father of 궁예, whose terrible reign led to the downfall of Unified Silla and to the establishment of the Koryo Kingdom (고려).

 But the most popular story of all says that 경문왕 developed very long ears shortly after becoming king, like those of a donkey. Even circa 850, people were insecure of their appearances, it seems, and this was a very well-guarded secret, as the king never took off his crown-hat.

Really?

 Even the servants and his wives didn't know about it, and the only one who knew was his hat-maker, as he had to take off his crown-hat to get his measurements taken when it was time for a new hat.

For what it's worth, I always imagined that his hat was slightly bigger than his actual size, so that he could stick his ears into the hat!

While the poor hat-maker tried his best to keep this a secret, legend has it that he started getting sicker and sicker from not being able to get this secret off his chest.  Eventually unable to bear it any longer, he went to a bamboo forest (which was fairly common in Korea) nearby, and yelled out into the forest his deepest secret:

"임금님 귀는 당나귀 귀!" (The ears of our king (임금님) are donkey (당나귀) ears!)

Bamboo groves are usually fairly dense, and uninhabited.

But ever since days, whenever the winds rustled through the leaves, it seemed to the listeners that the leaves were whispering the secrets of the king, saying that "임금님 귀는 당나귀 귀." So the rumours spread, and eventually even made it into history books of the Unified Silla era! It is said that eventually the king got wind of it, and ordered to have all of the bamboo cut down. The bamboo grove was replaced by small berry bushes, after which they only whispered "임금님 귀는 길다!" (The ears of our king are long).

Anyway, this story is so famous among the Korean public that the phrase "대나무 숲" (bamboo forest/bamboo grove) almost always evokes this story. Furthermore, the need to speak your mind hasn't decreased at all in the past 1200 years since Unified Silla, so the Korean internet users have created a safe space to whisper your secrets to, much akin to the bamboo groves from the days of Unified Silla.

In the Western world, the easiest thing to do would be to create a throwaway account and talk about your troubles online; however, in Korea, most account creation requires some form of an ID; they usually ask for your 주민등록번호 (resident registration number) which is a form of your government ID, or your cell phone number. So it hardly feels like a safe space to spell out all of your secrets.

So, the Korean alternative works like this. Some page (whether it be a Facebook page, a Twitter account, or a separate website) is created, along with an email address to which you can send your secrets to. When the creator/moderator of the webpage receives your email, your email is posted to the webpage, to which people can react or comment.

The most famous bamboo grove (대나무숲) belongs to the prestigious universities; for example, here is a post from the SNU Bamboo Grove (SNU is Seoul National University; possibly the most prestigious university in Korea):

January 1st, oppa (in this context, boyfriend who was older than the poster) wished me a lot of happiness and luck. January 2nd, oppa dumped me.

People seem to be interested in these university-level 대나무숲, because of several reasons. First, most internet-savvy people belong in this generation; they are either still in university, or university is a recent memory. Secondly, many Koreans have fantasies about the students in these elite universities; it is interesting to see that even an SNU student deals with the same everyday problems as the rest of us. Finally, these well-educated students tend to be more eloquent in their writing, and more interesting posts show up in these bamboo groves of the prestigious universities.

Aaaah, Bamboo Grove! I accidentally accessed Instagram with my boyfriend's phone! I opened my Pandora's Box... I knew that he [used Instagram] often... As I tried to access my own account by searching, I saw that his search history had "Sextagram," "hot body,"... etc.  He followed a lot of accounts that post hot body pictures... It's not like he's contacting them privately, so I'm trying to ignore it, but I can't... Is this common? It's not that common... is it?

I enjoy accessing these 대나무숲 every once in a while. Koreans tend to be extremely polite; I have pretty much never met a Korean who would say rude or risqué things to my face. So it is nice to know that even the Koreans think about the same things that I do. Also, I feel that the writings in these bamboo groves are very representative of the everyday Korean language, talking about mundane things. It's a way for me to keep current on the language trend of an average Korean, while getting my gossip fix of the day! For those who are interested, here is the link to the SNU Bamboo Grove. You can access many others via Google, of course!

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#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!

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#101. How to find your true love (feat. Would U by Red Velvet, Shamanism 9)

K-Pop is one of my guilty pleasures in life. Yet I can't completely figure it out.

Although I am a straight woman, I listen almost exclusively to the girl groups. I suppose I do this because I feel that the K-Pop girl groups are the embodiment of femininity. Having always been a super-feminine person, listening and watching these girls with perfect faces and perfect body, with beautiful hair, makeup, and costume make me feel envious and happy at the same time.

They are also something that I could never be; I could never have that much courage to step out into the streets of North America wearing so much frills and laces in my clothes (although I secretly love them!), nor could I reasonably put that much care into my appearances and still not be sleep-deprived.

So, I never tell my real-life friends and acquaintances about how much time I actually spend listening to K-Pop (answer: most of the time when I'm listening to music.) But sometimes, you come across something so fantastic that you have to talk about it somewhere!

Red Velvet is one of the most popular K-Pop girl groups today. They are produced by SM Entertainment (the producer of Girls' Generation, f(x), Super Junior, TVXQ!, SHINee, EXO, NCT, etc.) which means they are comprised of the most elite trainees in the Korean entertainment system. Indeed, all five members of Red Velvet are known for being beautiful and talented. Everyone sings, raps, and dances extremely well. Furthermore, they go by two concepts: "red" and "velvet." While the "red" concept is the usual K-Pop stuff -- cheerful, bright dance songs -- the "velvet" concept is aimed at musicality and artistry. And they have found success in both, which is fairly unusual.

Let's stop for a moment to appreciate these beautiful and talented girls.

Anyway, the song that really caught my attention recently is a fairly minor piece for Red Velvet. This song was featured in SM Station, which publishes a song each week by SM artists to allow for experiments. The artists are free to deviate from their usual style and work on whatever they want. Red Velvet occasionally participates in SM Station as well, and the song "Would U" feels neither "red" nor "velvet." It is more stereotypically K-Pop, and a beautiful one at that. Take a moment to watch and listen:

In this video, Irene (there is just one girl in this video!) is surprised by a red yarn while daydreaming, and she follows it to find a boy waiting for her. Through the lyrics, she expresses her hope that this is the love from the fairy tales that she's been dreaming of for a very long time. And there is no doubt in my mind that she found it in this music video.

I say this because of the red yarn. According to a very popular myth in East Asia (Korea, China, and Japan), it is said that every woman has a red string tied to her little finger from birth. When you follow the string, you will find that the other end of the red string is tied to her spouse and one true love.

One famous legend comes from China, where a man meets a 신선 (immortal man-god who is said to know everything about humans) during his travels. The 신선 was carrying a heavy bag and resting under the moonlight. The man was curious about this bag, and asked the 신선 what the bag contained. When he looked inside, he saw heaps of red strings, and the man-god explained that everyone is tied to their future spouse by one of these red strings (which are invisible to the human eyes). When the man asked about his red string, the 신선 pointed out an old one-eyed woman in rags carrying a toddler, and told him that the toddler was his future bride. Enraged, the man ordered  his servant to kill the toddler. The servant, as ordered, found the pair and stabbed the toddler with a knife, then ran away.

Many years later, the man was still not married, although he played a crucial role in a battle which led his country (Tang Dynasty) to victory. His general was very pleased and offered to give his daughter to the man as a reward. The daughter was very beautiful, but had a scar between her eyes. Curious about this scar, he asked the general about it, who responded that when the toddler was out with her nanny, some psychopath (!) tried to stab her and ran away. Her nanny was, of course, one-eyed and very old. It is said that the man finally realized that he could not go against the will of the gods.

There are many variations of this story; some say that the strings are tied to one's ankles, or that the strings are actually red and blue (to signify yin and yang). In fact, in traditional Korean marriages, the strings are featured prominently in various parts of the wedding.

Can you find the red-and-blue strings?

Even in modern-day Korea, some shamans will claim to see these red strings ("붉은 실") tied to people's fingers (and the Koreans are, for the most part, willing to play along or believe). Can you imagine what our world would look like, though, if everyone had a string tied to their fingers? It would look amazingly complicated, as all the strings will be tangled together.

But then, if you think about it, this is how relationships work. Like the mass of tangled strings, we meet many people and then drift away, realizing that we're not right for each other. Sometimes the strings are so tangled up that we don't realize that our true love has been right beside us all along. Then once in a while, the world rights itself, all the strings get untangled, and it is clear as day that the person in front of you is definitely your true love.

While I find the Asian philosophy to be too complicated for the most part, I find the story of the red string of fate to be incredibly romantic. It tells me that if I follow the path of my life as I follow the red string tied to my finger, one day I will eventually arrive at my destination, where my true love awaits.

Of course, this sounds way to fantastical to actually voice out in real life -- just like how I will only ever secretly listen to K-Pop. In that sense, I am glad that Irene of Red Velvet managed to follow her red string of fate and found her true love. Such is the world of K-Pop. That wonderful world of ideals and fantasy.

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#100. 졸혼 -- the most searched-for Korean slang of 2017

Happy new year! As we send off 2017 and greet 2018, here is a short blog post about the most popular Korean slang of 2017.

Naver, as you probably know, is probably the most-used search engine among the Koreans (I often find that Google is not the best at searching Korean content; for example, Google often assumes that I made a typo when I am searching for some celebrity's name, and shows me the result for the more popular celebrity. What can I say, the Korean names are all very similar!)

Unlike Google, Naver offers various other services and entertainment. You can read all the headline news and celebrity gossip; you can read webtoons; you can find information about stocks and exchange rates; there are online forums not unlike Reddit; and you can read articles entirely dedicated to humour. Furthermore, Naver offers a good dictionary for various languages, which sometimes includes slang words in Korean.

The Naver dictionary team writes a blog post about various statistics at the end of each year. Among these is the most searched-for slang word of the year. In 2017, the slang word chosen by Naver was the word "졸혼."

The headline that prompted me to write this article.

This word, not really existent in the English language, comes from the combination of two words. "졸업," which means to graduate, and "결혼," which means a marriage. (You could have guessed, without actually looking up the meaning of the word, that "졸혼" had something to do with marriage, because of the Hanja letter "혼.")  Putting the two words together, "졸혼" roughly means that you "graduate from a marriage." You might say something like:

"우리부부는 이제 서로에게 간섭하지 않기로 했어. 이제 졸혼하려고." (My spouse and I decided not to get involved in each other's life. It's time to graduate our marriage.)

It almost sounds like a divorce, but for the Koreans who are after this lifestyle, it is definitely different. While a divorce is often heated and bitter, graduating from a marriage isn't quite the same. You look back at the good memories with fondness, you still support your partner, and you still maintain your marriage (like how you are still an alum to your old school, and occasionally make donations.) However, you no longer try to involve yourself in the life of your partner, and your partner does the same. Some people in the stages of 졸혼 might go on a long trip; some might start dating others; yet others might continue living their lives in the exact same way as before.

This post parodies the title of the popular Korean entertainment show, "We got married" (우리 결혼했어요). In that show, two celebrities pretend to be in a marriage and go through all the motions of a Korean marriage.

I suppose the idea of 졸혼 is somewhere between a marriage and a divorce. I think there are a few reasons in the Korean society why such a phenomenon might become commonplace.

In my previous post, I talked about how a Korean marriage is often a union of two families, rather than a union of two individuals. While Korean marriages are usually not arranged, this means that your family could potentially object to you marrying your one true love. They could decide not to support you at all financially (typically most Koreans will support their children with a significant amount of money at the time of their marriage, either in the form of cash, or by paying a large part of their apartment.) They could also decide to bully your spouse whenever there is a family gathering (the women feel this more than the men; hence the word 시월드.)

If you thought that a couple is likely to split while planning a wedding, a typical Korean couple plans a wedding and deal with two families who want the best for their respective child (who is clearly the best spouse there is!), and so they are even more likely to split in the planning stages. Even if they hold onto each other, I think the continuous nagging from their families really wear on the Korean marriage.

And Koreans tend to have less privacy --  your spouse (and their family) will most likely be interested in even your very private business, and perhaps they would like some space.

On the other hand, Koreans are still a conservative bunch. A divorce is still somewhat frowned-upon in the Korean society, and having a divorced parents is one of the reasons a family might reject a potential spouse for their child. So it is a huge decision to get a divorce, especially if you have a child. Not only will you be labelled as the divorcee, your child might have problems when it is time for him to marry. So as long as you and your spouse can't stand the sight of each other (and it's just a case of love not being there), there are social advantages to keeping a marriage going, at least in the eyes of the public.

Here is an image inserted into a Korean newspaper article explaining the word "졸혼." It explains that 졸혼 comes from the Japanese culture, where a couple maintains their marriage, but they live separately to pursue their personal hobbies, while meeting a couple of times each month. It seems that 57% of the surveyed Koreans felt positively about it.

There seems to be a lot of negative publicity on getting married on the Korean internet nowadays. People feel that there are so many unnecessary components to a Korean marriage (both financially and emotionally). The women feel that there is a significant risk that the in-laws will treat them like a servant (which is how a traditional Korean marriage worked), and the men feel that the women will quit their jobs when they marry (which is also how a traditional Korean marriage worked), leaving them to be the sole bread-winner of the family while the women enjoy their free time and the money that they bring home. You often see people writing that you should not get married if you are able to support yourself.

Despite that, this seems to have a neutral nuance. It's less of a taboo than 이혼 (divorce), and there is no underlying vulgarity that even the media feel fine using this word once in a while.

I haven't quite made up my mind about how I feel about this phenomenon of 졸혼, but I suppose I will go with my usual philosophy about these things -- as long as there is no harm done to the others, people are free to do whatever they want in their bedroom!

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#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.

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#98. 빻다 -- you're f-ugly

A few years ago, a journalist contacted people of various nationalities, and asked them to photoshop her own face to conform to the standards of beauty of their country.

This is the original picture of the journalist.

I suppose that if less photoshop was applied to her face, then the corresponding culture has a less rigid standards of beauty. Here are some examples of the photoshopped results by various nations. To see more photos, you can visit here.

Australia

Germany

Morocco

United States

I had an interesting reaction to this experiment. While I felt that all these women were undoubtedly on the pretty side, I felt reluctant to call any of these photoshopped images the ideal standard of beauty.

Except the one from Korea.

One Korean netizen commented: "Wow, we even changed her race."

To me, the Korean beauty very accurately reflected what people consider to be ideal. In fact, I feel confident that nearly every Korean will agree that this woman is beautiful.

I suppose this is because the Koreans tend to have a very rigid standards for beauty. For example, you are required to have snow-white and clear skin; your eyes must be large and double-lidded; your face must be oval-shaped and not too long, nor not too square; your nose should be high (but not too high), and narrow (but not too narrow); your lips must be plump (but not too plump) and curve slightly upwards. I could go on, but you get the idea.

I can more or less understand why the Koreans do this; they are ranked from the first place to the last place on their grades from their early lives. This rank largely determines their life trajectory, and so the Koreans remain sensitive to "where they stand in relation to the others." This attitude does not just apply to your grades in school, or the rank of your university that you attended. They tend to want to rank many different things, from the prestige of your job, to your desirability as a potential spouse, to how beautiful your face is.

This means that the Koreans use the word "ugly" to describe someone's face with more ease than those coming from the Western culture. There is a rigid standard of beauty, which you can use to rank everyone's faces, and if someone's face does not conform to the Korean standards, then they must be ugly. And quite frankly, they can be offensive about it.

The most standard way to say that someone is ugly is:

"준호는 정말 못생겼어." (Junho is really ugly).

"생기다" means "to have an appearance." For example, if something looks like a flower, you can say:

"저건 꽃처럼 생겼네" (That has the appearance of a flower).

So, if you say "못생기다," since "못" means "unable," it means to "unable to have an appearance," which is to say, "ugly." While the connotation is of course rude, this word is standard and nonoffensive (for example, if you want to talk about an ugly but endearing doll, you can say "못생긴 인형.")

Unfortunately, as the concept of "being ugly" is so clearly defined in the Korean culture, the slang for "ugly" also has many variations. When I was a child, I remember the popular choice of word for being ugly was to say:

"내친구는 메주같이 생겼어." (My friend looks like a block of fermented soybeans.) 

"메주" is a block of fermented soybeans, which is the Korean version of the miso paste. The Korean 메주 is a lot thicker in texture; so thick that you can mold them into bricks and hang them up.

You ferment the soybeans for a while, then you hang them up like this to dry them. This way, they get preserved for years. From this, you can make soy sauce (간장) and gochujang (고추장).

The reason for calling someone a "메주" is because a 메주 is everything that you don't want in your face. It has a dark complexion; its surface is rough and uneven, and sometimes you can even see pieces of soybean on it; and its shape is a square instead of oval. If you had any of these attributes on your face, you would be ugly by the Korean standards. Thankfully, it seems that "메주" is no longer in fashion, and I have not heard anyone use it in years.

The current choice of word for being ugly is "빻다." This verb, pronounced "빠타," is a standard verb that you can find in a Korean dictionary. It means to pulverize something using a mortar and pestle. For example, you may dry some hot red peppers, then pulverize them to get the hot pepper flakes (in Korean, you would say "고추를 빻아서 고추가루를 만든다.")

The Korean version of mortar and pestle. (절구 is the bowl in Korean, and 절구공이 is the pestle). 

So, if you say that someone's face is "빻았다" (past tense of "빻다," pronounced "빠았다"), this means that they are so ugly that it looks like their face has been pulverized by the mortar and pestle. For example, you might say:

"은영이 얼굴은 진짜 빻았어." (Eunyoung's face is so ugly that it looks like it's been crushed into a powder.)

When this word was popularized (maybe in 2016 or so), many people understandably felt repulsed by the word. This word was mostly used on the internet, as people tend to be more cruel when they can be anonymous, and strongly shunned in real life. You should also stick to this guideline -- never use this word in real life, as it is highly offensive.

Another theory for the origin of this word is that it comes from the 경상 dialect, which says "빠사지다" or "빠아지다" instead of "부서지다" (broken); while this is slightly less offensive, I think this origin is still plenty offensive!

As of very recent, this word does get used in an endearing way in very specific contexts (however, one should still avoid this word in real life). Below is a photo of a girl named 최유정 (Yoojung Choi), who placed 3rd in the reality show "Produce 101," which aimed to choose eleven beautiful girls to form an idol group (the group debuted under the name of IOI, and became immediately popular; however, under the terms of the contract of the reality show, the group disbanded less than a year after their debut.)

Absolutely adorable!

This adorable and talented girl immediately gained many fans. She could sing, dance, and rap, and most of all, she had a ton of aegyo, which won over many viewers.

Unfortunately, she does not meet the standards for the Korean beauty. Her eyes are a tad too small; her face is a little bit too round; her nose is not high enough; and the list goes on. Her talents were more than enough to compensate for it, though, and the Korean fans found this very amusing that this "ugly" girl had charmed an entire nation.

Her fans therefore gave her the nickname of "빻요미" (here, the ㅎ is silent). This is a combination of "빻다" and "귀요미," meaning "an ugly cutie." I suppose this is Korea's way of admitting that there are beautiful girls out there who do not meet the traditional standards for the Korean beauty. 

This style of nickname found its way to other Korean celebrities who are in the same boat as 최유정, namely, not beautiful enough, yet so charming that you can't help liking them. Another example is the Korean girl group Gfriend ("여자친구" in Korean). They are sometimes called "빻자친구" in the Korean internet.

The Korean reaction to these nicknames varies. Some people find this nickname adorable, and they use it with love and endearment. The others are offended by this nickname, and they will get angry when they hear it.

The fact that there is a clear divide between "beautiful" and "ugly" is one of the most difficult things for me to reconcile, having spent enough time in both the Korean and the Western culture. A huge point of debate for the Koreans is the following: some will insist that the foreigners secretly have an identical standards for beauty, and that whoever is beautiful in Korea is also beautiful abroad; and the others will argue that the foreigners all have different standards for beauty, and some "ugly" Koreans would be a top-notch beauty in other cultures. What do you think?

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