#45. 막장 -- That k-drama sucks as if there is no tomorrow

K-dramas, as addictive as they can be, are full of clichés. If you take a step back, the majority of the plots can be described by the same sentences. An orphaned but optimistic girl meets a rich and handsome prince. The man's family, rich and huffy, can't accept this relationship and they try their best to sabotage it. Then the man's family hires assassins to kill the girl too, because actually, the man's family was responsible for the girl's parents'...

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#44. 드립 -- How to compliment a fellow internaut on a post well done

Although I'm no expert in literature, it seems to me that a lot of value is placed on novel expressions (and cliché is, for the most part, hated.) If the Koreans could figure out a way to be a little less vulgar on the internet, the Korean internet could really be a treasure trove for the aspiring writers, and the Korean internet writers would be veritable literary connoisseurs. From the ancient times, Koreans always have placed a lot of value on...

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#43. 종범 -- Invisible

Baseball is a huge part of the Korean sports scene. In fact, there are multiple internet communities dedicated to the discussion of baseball. The two major ones that I can think of are MLB Park (엠팍 for short in Korean) and 국내야구 갤러리 (야갤 for short in Korean) of DC Inside. In theory, the former is more concerned with the major league baseball, and the latter with the Korean league, but n reality, these distinctions don't really exist. (As an aside,...

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#42. 김칫국 드링킹 -- Being pathetic

Of course, there are many breeds of pathetic out there. The kind of pathetic people that I want to talk about are people like 준호. 준호 happens to have a crush on a girl 아영, and from any outsider's point of view, it's painfully clear that 아영 is not interested in 준호 at all. In fact, she goes out of her way to avoid 준호, to ensure that he doesn't get any false hopes. 준호, on the other hand, is not getting any hints. He thinks that 아영 is avoiding him because...

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Listening Exercise with Transcript #7: Tunak Tunak Tun!

Korean fundamentally lacks a few sounds. The fact that there is no distinction between the English "R" and "L" is a well-known fact. In addition to this, Korean does not have the rolling "R" of Italian or Spanish, it does not have the guttural "R" or nasal sounds of French, or the guttural "CH" of German. These words are fairly hard to approximate with the Korean language system. Despite this, Koreans realized that Korean is often excellent at approximating...

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#41. 청개구리 -- You little contrarian

Here's a short story that every Korean knows. It goes by the title "말안듣는 청개구리," or "the tree frog that never listened." This is a "청개구리," a species of frogs that you see often in Korea. The letter "청" means "green or blue (depending on context)," and in this case, it means "green." You see it in "청바지 (blue jeans)" or "청와대 (blue-roofed house; the Korean white house)." Once upon a time, there lived a mother tree frog ("청개구리" meaning green frog)...

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#40. 호모나 게이득 -- A contradictory society

I find Korea to be a country full of contradictions. One of the things that I find to be the most strange is its attitude towards the same-sex relationships. Just like in any country, the younger people tend to be more open about the same-sex relationships, although many elder people will openly speak out against it. In any case, the Koreans tend to be a lot more conservative about it as a whole. Misinformation and prejudice is definitely present,...

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