Korean Language
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50 free Korean Language trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Korean is one of the few languages whose alphabet has a known inventor, a publication date and a public holiday of its own. Its letters stack into tidy blocks instead of running in a line, its grammar turns English sentence order inside out, and a speaker has to weigh age and status before choosing how to say something as simple as thank you. Thanks to pop music, television dramas and film, millions of people who have never taken a class already know a handful of its words. This quiz starts with the Hangul alphabet and the story of how it was made, then moves through the vocabulary beginners meet first: greetings, family terms, food words and the everyday slang heard in dramas and song lyrics. Other questions cover how Korean names are built and which family names are most common, the literal meanings hiding inside famous brand and place names, the words English has borrowed from Korean, and the ways Korean differs between the North and the South. It is pitched for beginners and curious fans, with harder questions for students who are further along. You barely need to read Hangul to play, since nearly every Korean word is given in Roman letters. Each answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches you something, and the questions can be printed for a class or a study group.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does the Korean name of electronics giant Samsung, founded as a small trading company, literally mean?
Three stars
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.
Q 02Which food do Koreans traditionally say aloud when posing for a photo, where English speakers say 'cheese'?
Kimchi
Kimchi ends in the same smile-stretching 'ee' sound as cheese. In most Latin American countries, the word photographers ask for is 'whiskey'.
Q 03What does 'Gangnam', the Korean district name made world-famous by a Psy hit song, literally mean?
South of the river
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.
Q 04Which fifteenth-century Joseon king is credited with creating Hangul so that ordinary Koreans could learn to read?
Sejong the Great
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.
Q 05Which family name, written with a character meaning 'gold', is shared by roughly one in five South Koreans?
Kim
Kim was recorded for about 10.7 million people in South Korea's 2015 census, which was 21.5% of the population.
Q 06Which Korean word does a woman use to address her older brother, and also unrelated men slightly older than herself?
Oppa
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.
Q 07Which Korean martial art's name joins words for striking with the foot, striking with the hand, and 'the way'?
Taekwondo
Taekwondo has been a full Olympic medal sport since the 2000 Games, after appearing as a demonstration sport in 1988 and 1992.
Q 08Which city's name was originally an everyday native Korean noun that simply meant 'capital city'?
Seoul
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.
Q 09In Korean, where a cat's miaow is written 'yaong', which animal makes the sound 'meong-meong'?
A dog
A dog says meong-meong in Korean. A pig goes kkul-kkul, a cow says eum-mae and a frog croaks gaegul-gaegul.
Q 10Which English word did Korean borrow as a cheer of encouragement, shouted at sports events and before difficult tests?
Fighting
Fighting, usually written 'paiting' or 'hwaiting' in Korean, is best translated as 'Come on!' or 'Let's go!'. North Koreans do not use it.
Q 11Which everyday Korean greeting for 'hello' comes from a word meaning to be well and peaceful?
Annyeonghaseyo
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.
Q 12Which formal Korean phrase means 'thank you' and has a native Korean twin, 'gomapseumnida', used in the same way?
Gamsahamnida
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'.
Q 13Which Korean term blends the words for 'eating' and 'broadcast' to name videos of hosts eating on camera?
Mukbang
Q 21In the name of footballer Son Heung-min, written in the traditional Korean order, what is 'Son'?
The surname
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.
Q 22In South Korea, where children usually take the father's name, what happens to a woman's family name when she marries?
She keeps it
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.
Q 23Which suffix do Korean adults of similar status attach to each other's full names as a standard polite address?
Ssi
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.
Q 14What does the name of Hyundai, the Korean conglomerate founded by Chung Ju-yung, mean in English?
Modernity
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.
Q 15Which Korean word, written with characters for 'wealth' and 'clan', describes family-run conglomerates such as Samsung?
Chaebol
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.
Q 16Which Korean word, literally 'Korean flow', names the worldwide boom in K-pop, dramas and films since the 1990s?
Hallyu
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.
Q 17Which Korean dish of thin, marinated slices of grilled beef has a name that literally means 'fire meat'?
Bulgogi
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.
Q 18Which Korean dish, with celebrated versions from Jeonju and Jinju, has a name that literally means 'mixed rice'?
Bibimbap
Bibimbap joins bibim, 'mixing', to bap, the Korean word for cooked rice. Bap also ends the names of kimbap rolls and gukbap soup.
Q 19Which clear Korean spirit has a name meaning 'burned liquor', a reference to the heat of distillation?
Soju
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.
Q 20What are Chinese characters called when used to write Korean, where nearly all retain their traditional forms?
Hanja
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.
Ssi follows a full name or a given name but never a family name alone: addressing someone as just 'Park-ssi' is considered inappropriate.
Q 24The Korean family name usually spelled 'Lee' in the South takes which form in North Korea?
Ri
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.
Q 25Korean clans sharing one family name, such as the Jeonju Yi, are told apart by a 'bon-gwan' that records what?
A place of origin
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.
Q 26Hangul letters are not written in a row but stacked into compact blocks, each of which spells what?
A syllable
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.
Q 27The shapes of five basic Hangul consonants, to which strokes are added for harsher sounds, were modelled on what?
The speech organs
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.
Q 28Which Hangul letter is silent at the start of a block but sounds like 'ng' at the end?
ㅇ
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.
Q 29What is the Korean alphabet officially called in North Korea, which dropped the name Hangul in 1949?
Chosŏn'gŭl
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.
Q 30Which pioneer of Korean linguistics coined the name 'Hangul' in the 1910s, replacing labels like 'vernacular script'?
Ju Si-gyeong
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.