Why are Korean Names Two Syllables?

(To read more about Korean names, here is a list of all posts related to Korean names.)

Dear Korean,

I want to know what the deal with the two syllable names. After almost 8 months of teaching and living here in Korea 99.9% of the names I come across are two syllable names. Why the two syllables all the time? And why is it ok to break that rule sometimes?

Jo-Anna

Jo-Anna is correct that most Korean names are two syllables, like, for example, Jin-yeong [진영]. Why the two syllables? 

Actually, this question was partially answered in the previous post that explained dollimja [돌림자]. To recap: generally, Koreans follow a convention in which they use one of the syllables to signify the generational level, and the other syllable is given as the "true" name. Thus, a traditional Korean "given" name ends up being two syllables: one to show your generational level, the other your "true" name.

Dollimja tradition is somewhat weakened today, but the convention for two syllables stayed. For Koreans, it just looks normal for a given name to have two syllables. So even in case of a given name that do not follow the dollimja system, Koreans tend to name their children with two syllables. For example, purely Korean names, by definition, do not follow dollimja, because dollimja requires Chinese characters. Yet even Korean people with purely Korean names tend to have two-syllable first names. (E.g., Ha-neul [하늘] or Na-rae [나래]).

Deviation from this rule can come in two forms: a single-syllable given name, or a given name with 3+ syllables. Single-syllable name is generally still in the dollimja framework. Certain clans (e.g. Yangcheon Heo [양천 허씨]) consciously reject the "generational syllable," and name their children with a single syllable. Certain others name their firstborn son with the generational syllable only (without a "true" name,) to signify that the child is the first of the generation.

On the other hand, given names with 3+ syllables--which are extremely rare--are almost always a result of the parent's attempt to use a purely Korean word. For example, in 1997 there was a notorious kidnap-murder case involving an 8-year-old girl. Although a murder of an 8-year-old is a sensational news under any circumstance, the murdered girl's name was so unusual that it stayed with Korean public's consciousness like the way Jon-Benet Ramsay's name stayed with American public consciousness. The girl's name? Take a deep breath: 박초롱초롱빛나리, a given name with whopping seven syllables.

Interestingly, because the two-syllable convention is so strong, even Koreans with 3+ syllable given names are usually compelled to use a two-syllable nickname. (For example, in a lot of official forms in Korea, there are only two spaces to fill out one's first name.) The murdered 8-year-old was also known as 박나리, taking the last two syllables of her name.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Your One-Stop Guide to Korean Dialects

Dear Korean,

Could you give us a primer on the dialects of South Korea's provinces/areas?

Cactus McHarris 

Certainly! Korea is known as a very homogeneous country, and to some degree it is true. It has been a single country for thousands of years, and it is mostly comprised of a single ethnicity. Yet in other respects, Korea has a great deal of regional variations across the peninsula--and regional dialects are a great window into those variations.

Before we get started: if you cannot read Korean characters, it would make sense to review this post, which provides an overview of how to read Korean alphabet.

First, we should get a sense of how regions are divided in Korea. By "regions," the Korean means a sub-area within the country that is recognized to have similar dialects, cuisines and culture. (E.g. the American South, Japan's kansai.) Let's take a look at this map.

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This map shows Korea's administrative districts, which roughly correlates with Korea's cultural regions. Broadly speaking, there are six regions in Korea:  Seoul/Gyeonggi, Gangwon, Chuncheong, Yeongnam, Honam and Jeju. Seoul is the city in the center of Korean Peninsula, in blue; Gyeonggi is the province that surrounds it, colored in olive. Gangwon is the large province to the east of Gyeonggi, colored in tan.

Chungcheong region is in the immediate south of Gyeonggi, and encompasses the two provinces (i.e. Chungcheongbuk-do and Chungcheongnam-do) colored in orange and red. Moving further south, Honam refers to the two provinces of Jeollabuk-do and Jeollanam-do, colored in light and dark purple. Yeongnam refers to the two provinces to the east to Honam, i.e. Gyeongsangbuk-do and Gyeongsangnam-do (colored in light green and yellow.) Finally, Jeju is the large island south of Honam, colored in blue.

Each region of Korea displays a great deal of variation in food, temperament, manners, politics and language, in the form of dialects. We will take a look at the dialects of each region in turn, after the jump. Please be mindful that this is a broad overview, rather than the most precise description. Warning -- unless you have basic knowledge of Korean, much of the rest of the post will be gibberish.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Seoul/Gyeonggi:  It may be a bit odd to call Seoul accent a "dialect," at least in a sense that the word is used to describe that deviates from the standard language. This is so because the National Institute of Korean Language decreed that the standard Korean shall be: "modern Seoul language used generally by educated people." In other words, Seoul accent is the standard Korean, and all Koreans are educated to speak like a Seoul person. Thanks to universal public education and mass media, most Koreans actually do. Even Koreans who grew up with an accent can usually shift in and out of the "standard Korean" depending on the circumstance.

This is not to say that the Seoul/Gyeonggi dialect is exactly coterminous with standard Korean. Compared to standard Korean, Seoul/Gyeonggi dialect consistently mispronounces certain words in a certain pattern. For example, this dialect often replaces ㅗ ("oh") with ㅜ ("ooh"), such that 삼촌 ("uncle", pronounced "samchon") would be pronounced like 삼춘 ("samchoon"). There are other differences between Seoul/Gyeonggi dialect and the standard Korean language, but they are so subtle that discussing them would only confuse most people. Let's move on to the more obvious accents.

Chungcheong:  Being that Chungcheong-do is somewhat close to Seoul, Chungcheong accent is still pretty close to the standard Korean. One difference, however, is immediately noticeable in a major Chungcheong-do city like Daejeon--everyone speaks slowly. The long-standing joke about Chungcheong accent goes like this: a father and a son was walking up the hill, when the son saw a huge boulder rolling down the path. The son said:  "Faaatheer, therrre iiiiiiss a bouuuuulderrr rollllllling dowwwwwwn." Before the son could finish the sentence, however, the boulder had already rolled down and killed the father.

Chungcheong dialect also more commonly replaces ㅗ with ㅜ, and ㅛ ("yo") with ㅠ ("yu"), especially with verb conjugations. So instead of "하세요" ("haseyo", "please do"), a Chungcheong dialect would say "하세유" ("haseyu"), or shorten it to "하슈" ("hasyu").

(Side note: because the Korean Father is from Chungcheong-do, the Korean himself sometimes reverts to this dialect.)

Gangwon:  Although Gangwon is a large province in terms of area, the high Taebaek mountain range that bisects the province meant that historically, relatively few people lived in the Gangwon area. Because there were less people living in the area, Gangwon did not really develop a highly distinctive dialect. This is particularly true as to the western part of Gangwon (e.g. with cities like Hongcheon, Chuncheon, etc.) which has no physical barrier between it and Seoul.

But the part of Gangwon that touches on the eastern coast of Korea (also known as "Yeongdong" region, i.e. "east of the mountains") did develop a fairly unique dialect, as the steep mountains cut off much of the exchange with other regions. Unlike standard Korean (=Seoul dialect,) Gangwon dialect uses tones to distinguish the meaning of homo-phonic words, like Chinese or Vietnamese do. It also has a number of words that are very unusual to speakers of standard Korean, such as 콩칠팔새삼육하다 ("to banter") or 맨자지 ("white rice").

Gyeongsang:  Also known as "Yeongnam" region, this large and populous region speaks with a strong, harsh accent, befitting its stereotype of being the land of manly men. Compared to the mild and flat Seoul accent, Gyeongsang dialect is dynamic with high peaks and low valleys in its speech. Like Yeongdong dialect, Gyeongsang dialect uses tones to distinguish the meaning of homo-phonic words.

One prominent feature of Gyeongsang dialect is the inability to pronounce certain sounds that appear commonly in Korean. For example, Gyeongsang dialect speakers are unable to pronounce ㅆ when it appears as the beginning sound of the word, leaving them unable to properly pronounce 쌀:  "rice", one of the most commonly used words in Korea. (Instead, Gyeongsang-do dialect speakers are forced to say 살.) Gyeongsang-do dialect is also missing the vowel sound for ㅡ ("eu"), which is instead pronounced as ㅓ ("eo"). So if a Gyeongsang-do person is faced with the word 음악 ("music"), she is likely to pronounce it as 엄악. 

Gyeongsang dialect also has trouble with compound vowels, such as ㅘ or ㅢ. In many cases, Gyeongsang dialect drops the first sound of the compound vowel. So 사과 ("apple") is pronounced like 사가, and 의사 ("doctor") is pronounced like 이사. Former President Kim Young-sam, who was not only from Gyeongsangnam-do but also was a George W. Bush-esque mangler of words, often faced snickers when he would give a speech about promoting 관광산업 ("tourism industry")--because his inability to pronounce the consecutive ㅘ, and his penchant for not enunciating words, made him sound like he wanted to promote 강간산업 ("rape industry").

Jeolla:  Also known as "Honam" region, this southwestern region also developed a highly distinctive dialect of its own. Jeolla dialect is slower than Seoul's, but faster than Chungcheong's; it has more ups and downs in sound, but not as much as Gyeongsang dialect. 

Jeolla-do dialect often adds extra ㅅ and ㅂ in within certain words. For example, 저어라 ("stir") is pronounced as 젓어라, and 더워 ("hot") is pronounced as 덥어. Often, ㅏ and ㅓ are pronounced as ㅐand ㅔ, such that 마음 ("mind") is pronounced as 매음 and 떡 ("rice cake") is pronounced as 떽. 

The most distinctive part of Jeolla dialect is the vowel conjugations that end a sentence. The most commonly known characteristic is the tendency to finish sentences with an extraneous 잉. (Example: 재미없다 --> 재미없다잉, "[This is] not fun.") Vowel conjugation ~요, which creates a formal honorific, is ~이라 or ~어라. (Example:  좋구만요 --> 좋구만이라 ("[This is] nice."); 다 먹었어요 --> 다 먹었서라 ("[I] finished the food.")) Vowel conjugation ~데 is ~디 in Jeolla dialect, such that 그런데 is 그런디.

Jeju:  The largest island of Korea is also the most geographically isolated population center. As such, proper Jeju dialect is nearly a separate language from Korean. In fact, in 2011, UNESCO listed Jeju dialect as "critically endangered language," which means UNESCO considered Jeju dialect to be a separate language. 

Jeju dialect is grammatically Korean, but a lot of its vocabulary is nearly unrecognizable to mainland Koreans. This is so because Jeju has been so isolated, it has preserved extremely old Korean words. It also has imported words from Japan, China and Mongolia--the last from Mongolian invasion of Korea in the 14th century (!). Words like 송키 ["vegetable"], 오름 ["mountain"], 야개기 ["neck"], 가사 ["umbrella"] have tenuous connection to mainland Korean. 

Vowel conjugation is also significantly different in Jeju dialect. Basic honorific is ~ㅂ서, which replaces ~요. (Example:  오세요 --> 옵서 ["Please come."]). Honorific question is ~꽈, instead of ~ㅂ니까 . (Example:  아닙니까? --> 아니꽈? ["Isn't it?"]).

(Side note:  Jeju dialect word for "potato" is 지슬 ["jiseul"], which is also the title of a recent movie that won the Grand Jury Prize in the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. The movie is about the April 3 Massacre in Jeju, in which South Korean military and right-wing militia massacred more than 14,000 civilians of Jeju in 1948.)

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Ten Most Influential Korean Movies

Dear Korean,

What are the ten most influential Korean movies?

Sam J.

This highly worthy question has been languishing for years in the Korean's inbox for one simple reason: the Korean is not a big movie person. Sure, he likes movies, and Korean movies. But he cannot write about Korean movies in a way that he could write about, say, Korean pop music.

When in doubt, call in the experts. Pierce Conran, with his blog Modern Korean Cinema, has been providing an excellent resource for devotees of Korean movies abroad, with movie reviews, box office figures and discussions about contemporary issues in Korean movies. And he graciously agreed to enlighten the readers with his top 10 list.

So without further ado, here is Mr. Conran's top 10 most influential Korean movies, after the jump.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

I’m often asked what my top 10 favorite Korean films are but when The Korean asked me to write on the top 10 most influential Korean films, it immediately piqued my interest. Many of us love Korean cinema, but are the films that paved the way for the modern industry?

The list that follows is not a "best of" list, though some of my favorites are sprinkled throughout. A few of the films are older and may not be very well known while others are modern classics, but all have had a seismic impact on the evolution of Korean film. I’ve slanted a little in favor of more modern films, preferring not to offer a list of films you will be very difficult to find.
 

Here are ten films that I think have had a major role in shaping today’s Korean film industry:

The Housemaid [하녀] (1960)

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Kim Ki-young’s 1960 masterpiece is slowly but rightfully taking its place among the pantheon of great international classics. Filmmakers like Park Chan-wook have admitted to being influenced by his ferociously original and uncompromising body of work. Reveling in the macabre and anchored by a sophisticated and progressive use of mise-en-scene, The Housemaid turned a lot of heads upon its release 53 years ago and continues to do so today. It’s many fans include Martin Scorsese, who had a hand in re-mastering the film in 2007.

Declaration of Idiot [바보선언] (1983)
 

For the sheer force of its social critique during the height of Korea’s military regime under Chun Doo-hwan, Lee Jang-ho’s Declaration of Idiot has to make it onto this list. Gutsy, audacious and damning, it’s remarkable that the film saw the light of day at all. Without it, it’s hard to imagine any of the subsequent social films of Korean New Wave that would follow, such as Park Kwang-su’s Chilsu and Mansu [칠수와 만수] (1988) and A Single Spark [아름다운 청년 전태일] (1995) or Jang Sun-woo’s A Petal [꽃잎] (1996), not to mention the prevalent thread of social consciousness seen in today’s Korean films.

Declaration of Idiot was also revolutionary for its formal experimentation in a time when the industry had lost its bite, as formerly great filmmakers were relegated to producing cheap quota ‘quickies’.

The Road to the Racetrack [경마장 가는 길] (1991) / Resurrection of the Little Match Girl [성냥팔이 소녀의 재림] (2002)

A filmmaker that is less well known to today’s Korean film fans but should be a priority, Jang Sun-woo was a maverick in the late 1980s and 90s who reinvented himself which each film that he made. Though all his films have been influential, I’ll single out two in particular.

Road to the Racetrack is essentially the blueprint that led to the work of Hong Sangsoo and then all of his subsequent imitators. Featuring members of the upper crust grappling with existential malaise and selfishly pursuing their individual desires in the most prosaic banal fashion, Jang’s off-the-cuff and intimate style is style de rigueur in indie Korean cinema.

Jang’s final work, Resurrection of the Little Match Girl, is easily his most derided. I’m also not terribly fond of it, so why include it here? Jang’s film was a cataclysmic failure that has made every producer since think twice about given an auteur free reign on a project. Jang has never been able to make a film since and commercial cinema was also never the same again.

Sopyonje [서편제] (1993)

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You could probably add a number of Im Kwon-taek’s 101 films to this list but far away the most well-remembered of his films is his 1993 masterpiece Sopyonje, about a family of traveling traditional Pansori performers on the road. A lyrical drama with an arthouse aesthetic, it nevertheless became the first Korean feature to cross one million admissions in Seoul and is considered by some to be Korea’s greatest work committed to the medium.

Whispering Corridors [여고괴담] (1998)

This may not be the greatest K-Horror out there. Hell, it’s not even the best in the Whispering Corridors series: that honor would have to go the excellent Memento Mori [여고괴담 두번째 이야기]. But Whispering Corridors has spawned dozens of imitators. To this day, every summer we are subjected to the year’s crop of increasingly lackluster horror offerings, most of which feature long dark-haired ghostly teenage girls that skulk around dark corridors and the hidden recesses of playgrounds, music practice rooms and the like. 

These may not be to everyone’s taste but over the past 15 years they have figured prominently in the Korean films that has found their way overseas. They somewhat misrepresent all that Korean film is capable of but one can’t deny their hand in raising the visibility of Korean cinema overseas. That said, Whispering Corridors is actually one of the better offerings of the genre, as it cleverly highlights some of the country’s societal ills, such as its excessive approach to education.

Shiri [쉬리] (1999)
 

Korea’s first major blockbuster, Shiri combined a sleek script with explosive action, high drama and fraught North-South tensions to deliver the country’s first across-the-board hit. Featuring a lot of future stars of the industry, such as Choi Min-sik, Kim Yun-jin and Song Kang-ho and the already established Han Suk-kyu, Shiri proved to Korean producers that the nation’s filmmakers were ready to play in the big league. Subsequently, budgets suddenly got bigger and more tent poles began to appear on summer schedules. Shiri may not be everyone’s favorite Korean film, it certainly feels very dated to me, but without it the industry may never have grown bold enough for us to know about it.

My Sassy Girl [엽기적인 그녀] (2001)
 

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One of the most important Korean film genres is the romantic comedy. Even if those aren’t your cup of tea, you may be surprised by how much you will like some of the country’s better rom-com examples. Though not the first, the riotous, fresh and brilliant My Sassy Girl, which teamed the dopey Cha Tae-hyun with the beautiful but very tomboyish Jeon Ji-hyeon, made the genre a sensation in Korea. Though sentimental at times, the film was earnest and endearing. It became a huge hit when it was released in Korea (almost five million viewers went to see it) and throughout Asia, launched its young actors into stardom and has been copied ever since, with varying level of success. Just don’t watch the American remake…
 

Memories of Murder [살인의 추억] (2003)
 

2003 was a big year for Korean cinema, as a number of works by the likes of Park Chan-wook (Oldboy), Kim Ki-duk (A Tale of Two Sisters [장화/홍련]), Im Sang-soo (A Good Lawyer’s Wife [바람난 가족]) and Bong Joon-ho (Memories of Murder) demonstrated the kind of quality commercial film making that Korean movie industry was capable of. These were the works that set off the ‘Well-Made Film’ trend in Korean cinema.

Memories of Murder happens to be my favorite Korean film. In addition to being a masterpiece and ‘Well-Made film’, it also informed all the dark thrillers that would follow it. Every year it seems like dozens of foreboding works featuring rape/kidnap/murder/etc. are unleashed on the market in Korea--yet few come close to the effortless and unnerving skill demonstrated by Bong with Memories. Recent examples include the Confession of Murder [내가 살인범이다] (which references it heavily) and the current hit Montage [몽타주] (which features actor Kim Sang-gyun in a similar serious and thwarted detective mode.)

Oldboy (2003)

Easily the most famous Korean film abroad, it would be impossible to make such a list without mention Park Chan-wook’s wildly successful cult hit Oldboy. Revenge films are synonymous with Korea and this one certainly prompted a lot of filmmakers to follow suit. Park’s detailed mise-en-scene, in particular his obsession with patterns, has seeped into all corners of Korean cinema, as in subsequent years production values rose across the board.

Lee Chang-dong (All Films)

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Whenever I interview a Korean filmmaker, my sign-off question is always the same: “What are your favorite Korean films?” Aside from a few outliers, almost everyone answers with Lee Chang-dong's movies. It’s hard to overstate how towering a figure he is in the industry. His debut Green Fish [초록 물고기] (1997) put him on the map, but it was his follow-up Peppermint Candy [박하사탕] (1999) that cemented him as truly gifted filmmaker. Each of his subsequent films--Oasis [오아시스] (2002), Secret Sunshine [밀양] (2007), and Poetry [시] (2010)--have met with the same response, unequivocal adulation. Throw in the fact that he was the Minister of Culture and Tourism for a few years and that he has launched the careers of a number of other filmmakers, such as Park Jeong-beom (The Journals of Musan [무산일기]) and it’s easy to see why members of the local industry revere him so much.

Pierce Conran is the editor of Modern Korean Cinema.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Can Non-Asian Foreigner Succeed in the K-pop Scene?

Dear Korean,

How ready do you think Korea is for a foreigner in the K-pop scene? My definition of a foreigner in Korean market would be someone who isn't Korean and does not look visibly Asian.

Maria J.

The Korean would point out the vaguely racist quality of this question first. "Foreigner," from the perspective of Koreans, has its own definition: anyone who is not Korean. The Korean has no idea why Maria J. had to twist that word and narrow its coverage to someone who "does not look visibly Asian." But be that as it may...

This type of question has been coming in fairly frequently, apparently because a new girl group called The Gloss has a white French girl named Olivia as a member. So is Korea ready for a non-Asian foreigner in its music scene?

Try this for a size:  the number one band of K-pop in 2012 has three members, all of whom young men. Two of this band's members are Korean, but one is not. One of them is a white man from America, named Brad Moore. Mr. Moore has been quite visible in all of the band's activities (including music videos and show programs,) and his whiteness or non-Koreanness has never been a subject of discussion in Korean people's appreciation of the band.

The band's name? Busker Busker.

The Korean is not joking when Busker Busker was the number one K-pop band of 2012. They deserve the moniker based on any serious metric. Busker Busker sold the most number of albums in 2012 in Korea, and their songs were the most downloaded. (They sold significantly more songs online than PSY in 2012 Korea, even with PSY's Gangnam Style.) The band also placed six different songs in the top 10 of Gaon Chart (the most authoritative chart for K-pop) through 2012, and five songs in the top 10 of Billboard's K-pop chart. Busker Busker also took home three Korean Music Awards for 2013, including Best Pop Album and Best Pop Song. In the cafes of Seoul last year, it was practically impossible to avoid Busker Busker's songs, like 벚꽃 엔딩 ["Cherry Blossom Ending", the video above] or 여수 밤바다 ["Yeosu Night Sea"]. And this wildly successful band had a highly visible white member, who is the drummer for the band.

Does this mean that the next non-Asian foreigner will be inevitably successful, or be able to completely avoid Korea's racism? Of course not. But Busker Busker's success is still a significant data point. The number one band of K-pop in 2012 had a member who was a non-Asian foreigner, and Korean pop music scene hardly made a fuss about it. That should have answered the question before it even made its way to the Korean's inbox.

It is fair to wonder if non-Asian foreigners can succeed in the K-pop scene. But it is strange to see that, in discussing this topic, no one among the supposed devotees of Korean pop music brings up the fact that K-pop's number one band has a white member, and it has been that way for a whole year. Maybe they would have noticed if they stopped distracting themselves with shitty music.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Looking for Korean Language Tutor in Washington D.C.

Dear Korean,

I am learning Korean and my formal classes at the Korean Cultural Center begin later this year. In the meantime, I would like to immerse myself in dialogue outside a class/ study environment and in the casual setting of the summer social scene.

I am outgoing & meet lots of young-adult Korean-Americans but they do not speak Korean. Am I correct to assume that newly arrived Korean-speaking young adults are very scarce. So, finding a tutor at a university may be too formal but that's the best option I can think of, what do you think?

American Learning Korean

There is an even better option: put out an APB through this blog! If you are interested in becoming a Korean language buddy with ALK, reach out to her at aaraliesels@gmail.com. (The email is posted here with the questioner's permission.)

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Good Korean Beer is Just Around the Bend

The Korean just returned from another trip to Korea, and he is ready to make a bold prediction:  good beer from Korea is just around the bend.

If the Korean were asked to pick the most significant change in Korea in the past five years, he has an easy winner:  coffee. In the last five years, Korea's coffee went from the range of terrible-to-average, to the range of average-to-pretty-darn-good. To be sure, coffee in Korea is still on the expensive side, easily topping KRW 5,000 for a cup of good drip coffee. But five years ago, good coffee was simply unavailable in Korea, regardless of the price. Starbucks was the only option for a decent cup of coffee, and for many, Starbucks stretches the definition of "a decent cup of coffee."

Not so today. Coffee in Korea, and especially in Seoul, compares favorably to any large American city associated with good coffee. The Korean would dare say that coffee in Seoul is head and shoulders better than coffee in Washington D.C., where he lives. The coffee quality improved outside of Seoul as well. The Korean was able to get a solid cup of espresso near his grandmother's small town, where, just 20 years ago, the Korean Grandmother lived in a house without indoor plumbing. This progress was so remarkable that the Korean came up with a hypothesis connecting liberal education and the progress of coffee.

Korea's beer is ready to make a similar leap. If Korea's coffee was terrible-to-average five years ago, Korea's beer was abominable-to-tolerable just a year ago. The state of beer in Korea was so awful that the Economist took note:  "brewing remains just about the only useful activity at which North Korea beats the South."

But that is about to change. As the Economist noted, a large part of the problem was the governmental regulations that enabled the duopoly of Hite-Jinro and OB in Korean beer market. Together, the two companies hold more than 96% of Korea's market share for beer. However, responding to the Economist article, Korea's National Assembly will soon pass a series of legislation that will slash down those regulations so that microbrewers in Korea will face lower taxes to import the ingredients for beer and distribute the final product. Currently, a brewer must have a minimal capacity to produce 120,000 litres of beer in order to apply for a wholesale license. The new law will halve the minimum required capacity. Also, brewers currently face 72% tax; for microbrewers only, the tax will be lowered to 30%.

Korean people's taste for beer is ready for the change as well. Five years ago, even the imported bottled beer selection was limited to Budweiser, Miller and Heineken, save a few hip bars. Now, regular grocery stores in Korea carry Warsteiner and Hoegaarden. In trendy parts of Seoul, it is not difficult to find a selection of craft beer that would make the hipster bars of Lower East Side green with envy. The logical next step is good local brews, and there are several Korean microbrewers ready for the challenge, such as 7brau and Kapa Brewery. The infrastructure of establishing more microbreweries and distributing different kinds of beer--such as wholesale of brewing equipments--is also taking root as we speak.

So, the prediction: in five years, the beer scene in Korea will be nothing like the one we see today. It will have a diverse selection of interesting beers, brewed in Korea. The revolution is well on its way; when it is completed, you will hardly remember that Korea once was a beer wasteland.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Ask a Korean! Wiki: Time Expressions in Korean

Dear Korean,

Anyway I'm after some metaphors involving the concept of 'time' in the language. So far I've gathered:

시간에 쫓기다: 'to be chased by time'
때를 놓치다: 'to miss an opportunity'

The idea behind the sentences is that Korean views time as something to capture or be chased by, likened to an animal in a prey-predator relationship. Can you think of any other examples along the same vein?

Cana X

This is a rather interesting question. Rather than confining the answer to whatever he could think of on his own, the Korean decided to open this question up for a little bit of crowd-sourcing. Korean-speaking readers: what other time-related expressions in Korean refer to time as if it were an animal?

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.