jabiSlang & Society
New words Koreans invented this year, and what they reveal about how people live.
인싸 and 아싸: Korea's Words for Being In or Out
Two English words bent into Korean shape, now in the national dictionary. They describe a social split that university life in Korea makes unusually visible.
정 (情): The Attachment Korean Has a Word For
Not love, not friendship, not loyalty. 정 is what builds between people simply because time passed — including people you do not particularly like.
내로남불: Four Syllables for a Double Standard
Romance when I do it, an affair when you do it. A compressed sentence that became a noun, and then became the standard word in Korean political argument.
눈치: The Skill Korea Assumes You Already Have
Not tact, not intuition, not reading the room — something narrower and more demanding. Here is what 눈치 actually measures, and why foreigners are told they lack it.
갓생 (Gatsaeng): The Korean Word for a Life Lived Perfectly
God plus life. A joke about 5am wake-ups became the word a generation uses for the pressure to optimise every hour. Here is what it really means.