I have no idea what idiomatic phrases or colloquial expressions are commonly used in Korean, much less slang.
Sweet potato vs. lemon-lime soda
Tag: Korean
Korean words for the pandemic
What can I say that hasn't already been said? It is April 2020, and we are in the midst of a global pandemic.
9 Naver Webtoons I read in 2019
When I think of my evolving relationship with Korean pop culture, I think I will remember 2019 fondly as the year I committed myself to Korean webtoons. Webtoons are online-first original comics optimized for mobile consumption. (There's an interesting article that came out earlier this year contrasting webtoons to Japan's print-first manga culture.) A number [...]
On reading Han Kang
When I read The White Book, I felt a kind of desolation. It wasn't agony like Human Acts, but a quiet, persistent sadness.
More Korean words I wish existed in English
This is a follow-up to a popular post I wrote over SIX (gasp?!) years ago. My Korean vocabulary (much as I complain how lacking it is) has increased over the years, which means, yep, more Korean words I wish existed in English. To be fair, I've come to dislike articles that say some word from another [...]
Tips for improving Korean essay writing
After more than a year of attending advanced Korean classes and regularly writing and reviewing 500-800 character essays with my teacher, I've accumulated a few useful tips for improving long-form writing that I thought I'd share here. I'll preface this by saying few people write well in any language, even among native speakers. I'm a [...]
Interview with Jung Yumi (Elle Korea 2018)
I've liked a lot of projects that Jung Yumi has been in, but the one I can't forget is Que Sera Sera, her first TV drama. It's possibly one of the most horrifying and hard-to-stomach (i.e. amazing) melodramas I've ever seen. I've seen it 2.5 times myself and the opening song still always gives me goosebumps. That said, I [...]
Throwback to my K-pop listening days
Confession time. I tend to get defensive when people ask me if I'm learning Korean because of K-pop. That's because 1) K-pop was never a motivation for me to learn the language; it was a side-effect, and the better I got at Korean, the less I started to like idol music anyway. And 2) the [...]
Thoughts on literary writing in another language
Last month, I told my Korean teacher about staying up really late to finish an assignment for an online YA fantasy writing course I was taking, and she semi-jokingly suggested that I should try writing a novel in Korean. Now, I don't think this is something I'll ever do or even be interested in doing -- [...]
2018 language goals
In all honesty, I never liked setting personal goals because why bother when there's good chance that I'll just fail and make myself feel bad? There are a few different things wrong with that attitude, yes, but one major reason for it is that my goals were always either 1) grossly unrealistic or 2) not [...]
