50 Fun Facts About Korean Language

What does the Korean name of electronics giant Samsung, founded as a small trading company, literally mean?

Three stars was the meaning its founder gave the name, which is written with the characters 三星. The firm began in 1938 dealing in dried fish, groceries and noodles.

Which food do Koreans traditionally say aloud when posing for a photo, where English speakers say 'cheese'?

Kimchi ends in the same smile-stretching 'ee' sound as cheese. In most Latin American countries, the word photographers ask for is 'whiskey'.

What does 'Gangnam', the Korean district name made world-famous by a Psy hit song, literally mean?

South of the river is the literal meaning, the river being the Han. In everyday use the term also covers the neighbouring districts of Seocho and Songpa.

Which fifteenth-century Joseon king is credited with creating Hangul so that ordinary Koreans could learn to read?

Sejong the Great appears on South Korea's 10,000 won banknote. Hangul was unveiled at his court around the end of 1443 and formally published in 1446.

Which family name, written with a character meaning 'gold', is shared by roughly one in five South Koreans?

Kim was recorded for about 10.7 million people in South Korea's 2015 census, which was 21.5% of the population.

Which Korean word does a woman use to address her older brother, and also unrelated men slightly older than herself?

Oppa reached a global audience in 2012 through the chorus of Psy's 'Gangnam Style'. A man addressing his own older brother says hyung instead.

Which Korean martial art's name joins words for striking with the foot, striking with the hand, and 'the way'?

Taekwondo has been a full Olympic medal sport since the 2000 Games, after appearing as a demonstration sport in 1988 and 1992.

Which city's name was originally an everyday native Korean noun that simply meant 'capital city'?

Seoul became the city's official name only after liberation from Japan at the end of the Second World War. Under earlier rulers it was called Hanyang, Hanseong and Keijō.

In Korean, where a cat's miaow is written 'yaong', which animal makes the sound 'meong-meong'?

A dog says meong-meong in Korean. A pig goes kkul-kkul, a cow says eum-mae and a frog croaks gaegul-gaegul.

Which English word did Korean borrow as a cheer of encouragement, shouted at sports events and before difficult tests?

Fighting, usually written 'paiting' or 'hwaiting' in Korean, is best translated as 'Come on!' or 'Let's go!'. North Koreans do not use it.

Which everyday Korean greeting for 'hello' comes from a word meaning to be well and peaceful?

Annyeonghaseyo is the polite form of annyeonghada, 'to be peaceful, well'. Between friends it shrinks to a casual 'annyeong', which can mean either hello or goodbye.

Which formal Korean phrase means 'thank you' and has a native Korean twin, 'gomapseumnida', used in the same way?

Gamsahamnida is built on gamsa, a noun borrowed from Chinese that means 'thanks'. The native alternative comes from a word that once meant 'to be worth respecting'.

Which Korean term blends the words for 'eating' and 'broadcast' to name videos of hosts eating on camera?

Mukbang became popular in South Korea in the early 2010s and a global trend by the middle of the decade. Hosts earn money from advertising, sponsorships and viewer support.

What does the name of Hyundai, the Korean conglomerate founded by Chung Ju-yung, mean in English?

Modernity is the meaning of hyeondae, the Korean word behind the name. Chung first put it on a car-repair shop in Seoul in 1946, before building the group on construction.

Which Korean word, written with characters for 'wealth' and 'clan', describes family-run conglomerates such as Samsung?

Chaebol is the Korean reading of the two characters that also spell Japan's zaibatsu, the business dynasties broken up under American occupation after the Second World War.

Which Korean word, literally 'Korean flow', names the worldwide boom in K-pop, dramas and films since the 1990s?

Hallyu, or the Korean Wave, was named abroad: the phrase took hold in the Chinese-language press of the late 1990s to describe local enthusiasm for Korean dramas and pop songs.

Which Korean dish of thin, marinated slices of grilled beef has a name that literally means 'fire meat'?

Bulgogi is thought to take its name from the Pyongan dialect of what is now North Korea. Refugees from that province are credited with making the dish popular in Seoul.

Which Korean dish, with celebrated versions from Jeonju and Jinju, has a name that literally means 'mixed rice'?

Bibimbap joins bibim, 'mixing', to bap, the Korean word for cooked rice. Bap also ends the names of kimbap rolls and gukbap soup.

Which clear Korean spirit has a name meaning 'burned liquor', a reference to the heat of distillation?

Soju reached Korea with the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century. The Mongols had learned to distil from the Persians and carried the technique east.

What are Chinese characters called when used to write Korean, where nearly all retain their traditional forms?

Hanja are almost all identical to traditional Chinese characters, with only a small number modified for Korean. North Korea officially eliminated them in 1949, though they went on being taught.

In the name of footballer Son Heung-min, written in the traditional Korean order, what is 'Son'?

The surname comes first in a traditional Korean name and the given name follows, with no middle names. In Hangul the two are usually written with no space between them.

In South Korea, where children usually take the father's name, what happens to a woman's family name when she marries?

She keeps it, and so does her husband: both partners retain their full names after the wedding. Children take the father's name unless the couple chooses otherwise when registering the marriage.

Which suffix do Korean adults of similar status attach to each other's full names as a standard polite address?

Ssi follows a full name or a given name but never a family name alone: addressing someone as just 'Park-ssi' is considered inappropriate.

The Korean family name usually spelled 'Lee' in the South takes which form in North Korea?

Ri is how the North writes and says it. In the South the name has no opening consonant at all and is pronounced like a long 'ee', which is why it is also romanized as Yi.

Korean clans sharing one family name, such as the Jeonju Yi, are told apart by a 'bon-gwan' that records what?

A place of origin, the birthplace of the first ancestor, identifies each clan, so the Jeonju Yi trace themselves to the city of Jeonju. A census in 2000 counted 286 family names but 4,179 clans.

Hangul letters are not written in a row but stacked into compact blocks, each of which spells what?

A syllable fills each block, built from an initial consonant, a vowel and an optional final consonant. The word Hangul itself takes two blocks: han and geul.

The shapes of five basic Hangul consonants, to which strokes are added for harsher sounds, were modelled on what?

The speech organs are drawn in outline as they form each sound. Whether that makes Hangul a 'featural' script, a label coined by a linguist in 1985, is still argued over.

Which Hangul letter is silent at the start of a block but sounds like 'ng' at the end?

ㅇ is named ieung and works as a placeholder: a block that begins with a vowel sound still needs a consonant in first position, so the silent circle fills the gap.

What is the Korean alphabet officially called in North Korea, which dropped the name Hangul in 1949?

Chosŏn'gŭl echoes Chosŏn, the North's own name for Korea, where the South says Hanguk. The North also celebrates its alphabet in January, while the South's holiday falls in October.

Which pioneer of Korean linguistics coined the name 'Hangul' in the 1910s, replacing labels like 'vernacular script'?

Ju Si-gyeong coined the name between 1910 and 1913. He also urged Koreans to write the letters in a single line instead of blocks, one of his few proposals that never took hold.

Which part of a typical Korean sentence comes last, the one element that can never be moved or left out?

The verb closes a Korean sentence, giving the basic order subject, object, verb. Everything before it can be shuffled, so English 'I eat rice' comes out, in effect, as 'I rice eat'.

Korean has two formal goodbyes: who in a parting is the one expected to say 'annyeonghi gaseyo'?

The person staying says it to the one who is going. The departing guest replies with 'annyeonghi gyeseyo', so each side of a Korean farewell uses a different phrase.

South Korean hospitals often skip the fourth floor because the Sino-Korean word for four sounds like the word for what?

Death and four are both pronounced 'sa' in Sino-Korean. Many buildings that do have a fourth floor label its lift button 'F' instead of using the number.

In Korean compounds such as noraebang for karaoke and PC bang for internet cafés, what does 'bang' mean?

Room is the meaning, and Korean has stretched the word from a part of a house to whole businesses. A PC bang is an internet café, and a jjimjilbang is an elaborate public bathhouse.

What does 'Bangtan' mean in Bangtan Sonyeondan, the full Korean name behind the initials of boy band BTS?

Bulletproof is the literal meaning, and the full name translates as 'Bulletproof Boy Scouts'. J-Hope has said it signals blocking out the stereotypes and criticism fired at young people.

In the Korean version of Red Light, Green Light, played in Squid Game, the chant says which flower has bloomed?

The Rose of Sharon, mugunghwa in Korean, is South Korea's national flower and is mentioned in the national anthem. The chant 'Mugunghwa kkochi pieotseumnida' doubles as the game's Korean name.

The English name 'Korea' derives from which dynasty that unified the peninsula and ruled it from 918 to 1392?

Goryeo, also romanized Koryŏ, is the source of an exonym: foreigners kept using the dynasty's name long after it fell, while Koreans themselves moved on to other names for their country.

Which Korean slang exclamation, originally a noun for a big win or great success, is used like 'awesome'?

Daebak still works as a noun for a jackpot or a smash hit, the sense it had before speakers turned it into an all-purpose cry of amazement.

Which Korean word, often compared to Japan's 'kawaii', names a cute display of affection through voice and gestures?

Aegyo is usually translated as 'cuteness'. It is not only a stage habit of pop idols: ordinary people use it to show affection toward loved ones, family and friends.

Which Korean word for the last-born child of a family is also used for the youngest member of a K-pop group?

Maknae covers the youngest son or daughter of a family and, by extension, the junior member of any group, whether an office team or an idol band.

Which Korean island's tongue, unintelligible on the mainland, was classed by UNESCO in 2010 as critically endangered?

Jeju islanders' language had already diverged from the mainland's by the fifteenth century, and visitors from the peninsula could no longer follow it by the sixteenth.

Which Joseon king persecuted the use of Hangul in 1504 after learning that criticisms of him had been written in it?

Yeonsangun cracked down during his purge of scholars that year. Hangul lived on outside the classroom: it was rarely part of formal Confucian schooling but was often taught by women at home.

In which country did the city of Baubau promote Hangul as a script for the local Cia-Cia language from the late 2000s?

Indonesia never made Hangul an official script for Cia-Cia because of legal restrictions. The project was driven by a private South Korean society, and neither government paid for it.

Koryo-mar is the Korean spoken by descendants of settlers deported from the Russian Far East in 1937 to which region?

Central Asia, above all Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, became home to the Koryo-saram. Most now use Russian as a first language, and Koryo-mar is hard for speakers of standard Korean to follow.

Which proposed language family, now widely rejected, once grouped Korean with Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic tongues?

Altaic found wide support in the twentieth century, but the resemblances are now mostly put down to long contact between neighbours. Korean sits instead in a small Koreanic family of its own.

Which term describes languages such as Korean, Turkish and Japanese that build words by attaching chains of suffixes?

Agglutinative comes from a Latin word meaning 'to glue together'. Finnish, Hungarian, Mongolian and Swahili are built the same way, with each added piece carrying its own meaning.

Which exam, introduced by the South Korean government in 1997, grades non-native speakers of Korean on six levels?

TOPIK comes as two papers: TOPIK I awards levels 1 and 2, while TOPIK II covers levels 3 to 6 and adds a writing section to the reading and listening.

Which comedian nicknamed 'the nation's MC' began hosting the Korean talk and quiz show 'You Quiz on the Block' in 2018?

Yoo Jae-suk began the show on the streets, stopping passers-by to chat and then quizzing them for prize money. In that format, filming had to stop by 6 pm under a 'work-life balance' policy.

South Korea's standard language is based on the prestige dialect named after which province surrounding the capital?

Gyeonggi's dialect is the model for the South's standard language. North Korea declared in 1966 that its own standard should rest on the speech of Pyongyang.

Which Joseon research institute, revived in 1420, supplied the scholars who wrote the official commentary on Hangul?

Hall of Worthies scholars co-wrote the commentary, yet the institute was split: in 1444 a faction led by Ch'oe Malli sent the king a famous protest against the new letters.