#109. 욜로, 골로가다 -- What the YOLO lifestyle will get you in Korea

#YOLO is something of a 2010 phrase in the English language (Drake used it first in 2011). While it is still occasionally used as a hashtag, the feeling that I get is that it is often used ironically.

In Korea, however, the word YOLO (욜로 in Korean) is still going strong. Generally, it takes a while for a foreign word to gain enough popularity, so the word was slow to rise in the Korean culture, so the word became popular after its English counterpart was past its peak, and it started being used in the Korean media around 2017.

Like many English-based slang in Korean, the word 욜로 actually changed its meaning at some point. While the anglophones use the word to justify reckless behaviour, the Koreans use it to describe something slightly different.

For the Koreans, 욜로 is a lifestyle. So, people who pursue this lifestyle are called 욜로족 (the YOLO tribe; the "족" here appears in words such as "가족 (family)," and "부족 (tribe).")

The Koreans who pursue the 욜로 lifestyle tend to live for the moment. These people, mostly in their 20s and 30s, spend most of their earnings on their hobbies. They see their spending as an investment in a better quality of life in their future. They save very little, if at all, and they immerse themselves completely in the activities they enjoy. For example, a 욜로족 might decide to quit their high-paying job and travel around the world until they run out of their savings. Or they might decide to spend thousands of dollars to pursue their ballet hobbies, by taking many lessons. They try to think as little as possible of the consequences of their decisions, because for them, living the moment is just as important as their future.

So, instead of the completely negative and derogatory nuance in the English language, the Korean version of YOLO is a mix of the positive and the negative. I would say that the nuance of "욜로" matches the phrase "carpe diem" much more than "YOLO."

Of course, there are many Koreans that disapprove of this lifestyle, especially among the older Koreans. While reading an article that describes this YOLO lifestyle, I saw a comment that made me laugh out loud. The comment was:

"욜로족 좋아하다 골로족 된다."

If you try to translate this sentence following its nuance, it could translate to something like "if you keep following the YOLO tribe, you'll become a part of the GOLO tribe."

This sentence was so appropriate that even the super-popular Korean celebrity 유재석 (Jae-Suk Yoo) made references to it.

The value of this sentence in this clever construction of the two rhyming words. The writer of this sentence managed to make the connection between the similarities of the two words "욜로" and "골로." So, what does "골로" mean, and why is this an appropriate and witty thing to say on the internet?

Well, the word "골로" in the above sentence (which is not actually a word) comes from the verb "골로 가다," and it actually has a sad history.

The word "골" means "valley." You may have come across this word in "산골짜기" which means a valley in the mountains. Or you may have seen this word in "고랑 (which likely comes from "골앙" although no one knows the exact etymology)," which means furrow (long narrow trench in the ground, to make the water flow through it).

So the verb "골로 가다" means "to go to a valley" (and this is why "골로" is not actually a word; it means "to the valley" and it is an incomplete phrase in the Korean language).

"너 골로가고싶냐?" might be a perfect caption for this photo -- remember how to use the conjugation -냐?

It turns out that this slang comes from the times of the Korean War in the 1950s. Back then, the Korean population was divided into two factions; the heavily left-leaning people (most of whom left to North Korea to see their communist ideals come to fruition), and the heavily right-leaning people (who had the political power right after the Korean War). Both sides tried very hard to kill off the other side. Back in these days, even the smallest act such as giving a bowl of rice to the "enemy" was enough to get you killed by the other side, whichever side that may be.

When one was pegged as the enemy by one of these sides, they would force one into a secluded area, to be shot and killed, then buried quietly. As Korea is a very mountainous place, the easiest choice for a secluded area were in the mountains, and often in the valleys as it would be difficult to escape from a valley. Therefore, back in the 1950s, if someone led you to a valley, you would know that something has gone very wrong, and you would have been fearful of your life.

So people in this era, and the years following it, used the phrase "골로 가다" to (playfully) threaten each other. For example, say that you were doing the dishes, then you slipped and almost broke one of the family heirloom dishes. Your younger brother, who watched the whole thing, might say:

"조심해. 엄마가 알면 골로간다." (Be careful. If mom finds out, she might send you to the valley.)

Or, if you failed your exam badly, you might say:

"나 오늘 집에 가면 골로 갈듯." (When I go home tonight, I might get sent to the valley.)

So, the phrase "골로 간다" means that you f*cked up big time, and your life is at stake (exaggeration, I hope!)

Of course, this phrase doesn't get used that much anymore, as it sounds fairly old-fashioned.

This screenshot is a bit funny; while "골로 가다" has a long history, it is still slang and not totally appropriate to use in a formal setting -- certainly I would not expect a uniformed police officer to use this word!

However, this phrase is so perfect for the situation that I described above, that it made a brief comeback. Now we can understand what this sentence means:

"욜로족 좋아하다 골로족 된다." (If you like the YOLO tribe too much, you might be sent to the valley.)

"골로족" is not actually a word; however, knowing that the suffix "-족" describes a clan or a tribe of people doing the activity in the root word together, the word "골로족" should mean a group of people who are getting sent to the valley (if you think about it, this word is a bit troubling, as many Koreans were indeed massacred in the valleys during and immediately after the Korean War).

So this clever comment is saying that if you try to hard to be in the "YOLO tribe," you might end up in the "GOLO tribe = 골로족," which are the people who get sent to the valley -- that is, the people who screwed up big-time in their lives. Of course, the speaker is trying to say that if you spend without any regards to the future, you will one day be sorry.

Except, the sentence sounds a lot catchy with this clever rhyme of "욜로족" against "골로족." To me, sentences like this really highlight the linguistic abilities of the Korean people -- what a clever yet appropriate witticism!

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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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#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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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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