LEARN KOREAN LANGUAGE [COMPILATION]

KOREAN SLANG

Contemporary Korean Slang

1. 남사친 – A guy who is “just a friend”

남 is short for 남자, meaning “man”
사 is short for 사람, meaning “person”
친 is short for 친구, meaning friend.

Put them all together, and you get man-person-friend, or a male friend.

* Guys, you can use the same term for a girl who is your friend but isn’t your girlfriend. Change the 남 to 여 (여자), and you’ve got 여사친!

2. 남친 / 여친 – Boyfriend or girlfriend

Like lots of Korean slang (and indeed Korean words in general), these words come from taking the first parts of two other words. Can you guess which words they are made up of? 남친 comes from 남자 친구 and 여친 comes from 여자 친구. That should save you some typing time on KakaoTalk when you ask somebody if they have a boyfriend or girlfriend .

3. 꿀잼 – Something that is fun, funny, or interesting

꿀 means ‘honey’.
잼 is short for 재미있어요, which means ‘interesting.

If you put them together, you get ‘꿀잼’, which can be used to describe something that is fun or interesting.

4. 노잼 – Something that is not fun, funny, or uninteresting

The evil twin of 꿀잼 is 노잼.
노 means “no” or “not”
잼 is the first part of 재미있어요, meaning interesting.

So if you see something that you don’t think is fun or funny, you can say “노잼!”

5. 솔까말 – To speak openly and honestly
솔 stands for 솔직히 with means “honestly”.

The 까 and 말 parts come from 까놓고 말하다, meaning “speak your mind”.

The full phrase is 솔직히 까놓고 말하다, but you can keep it simple. When you want someone to tell it to you straight, use 솔까말.

6. 더럽게 – Badly

Literally means ‘dirtily’ (from 더럽다), but is often used to mean ‘badly’, for example 더럽게 못생기다 would mean ‘really ugly’ and ‘더럽게 느리다’ would mean ‘really slow’ (referring to a slow computer perhaps).

7. 품절남/녀 (되다) – Man or woman who just got married

품절 is another expression for sold out (매진), coming from the hanja for product (품) and gone (절). The words 품절남 and 품절녀 literally mean ‘sold-out man’ and ‘sold-out woman’, they refer to somebody (a celebrity or po