While watching Korean dramas, I often come across words American speakers of the English language are tragically lacking. Sure, we have bon mots like kerfuffle, mooncalf, and onomatopoeia. But what about selca, CF, and skinship?
It’s clear that Korean has borrowed many words from the English language; as far as I’m concerned, it’s high time the English language returned the favor. Here’s a list of Kdrama terms and concepts essential to life in the modern world, wherever you are.
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| Gong Yoo unveils his chocolate, Big |
Chocolate abs
Meaning:
Chiseled abdominal muscles that stand out like the segmented pieces on a chocolate bar
As seen in:
Big, and every single drama
that includes a gratuitous shower scene (Thank you, Korea!)
American
parallel: Six-pack abs
While
America does have an exact equivalent for this term, it’s not
nearly as wonderful. Sure, abs can look like a six-pack of beer as seen from above, but why associate something so marvelous with cold,
hard, metal? The Korean conception of chocolate
abs is
much more appealing. Who can say no to a nibble, after all?
Yoon Eun Hye and Lee Seung Gi sure make a cute couple.
You should get on that, Drama Overlords.
CF
Meaning:
Commercial film
As seen in:
Greatest Love
American parallel: Commercial
Like so many entries on this list, CF is actually a short
version of an English phrase that doesn’t even exist in
English-speaking countries. Why CF evolved in Korea and
not on American shores isn’t clear, but I suspect it has something
to do with the frequency of celebrity appearances in ads: it seems as
if every big Korean star shills for a list of products approximately
as large as my town’s phone book.
This abbreviation allows the arty word film to be appended to something we
Americans see as slightly crass—celebrity endorsements. Somehow, this tiny addition manages to class up the concept to the point of making it sound like an art form. It’s all about
positioning: a commercial is
something you fast-forward through; a commercial film is a
work of art that just happens to be shilling a kimchi refrigerator or
foundation for men.
Maybe someday we Americans will start talking about CFs, too. After all, “serious” actors like Brad Pitt are now appearing in
television ads, which seems to indicate that a change is brewing. (Who can
blame him for that bizarre Chanel ad, anyway? He’s got a
lot of kids to put through college.)
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| If Jan Di had spent more time fighting in Boys over Flowers and less time saying Fighting! it would have been a much better drama |
Fighting!
Meaning: An
expression of encouragement
As seen in:
Boys over Flowers, and every
other modern Kdrama romantic comedy
American parallel: You
can do it!
Along with its distinctive arm gesture,
Fighting! started off as a
cheer used during Korea’s 2002 World Cup matches.
If the (many, many, many)
Kdramas I’ve watched are any indication, it caught on big time and
is now an indispensable part of communication in Korea.
It’s no great
surprise that Fighting doesn’t really have a direct equivalent
in America. If Fighting is Korea’s cultural keyword,
America’s is Cool; we rarely offer expressions of
encouragement and support. (The horrible, dated expression “You go
girl!” might once have worked, but nowadays it’s exclusively used
for the purposes of mockery.)
Ironically, this
word that the English language is sorely lacking is actually an English word in the first place. If we adopted it in its new, Korean
form, it might just make us better people. All I
know for sure is that I’m always encountering situations
tailor-made for Fighting!,
but its effectiveness is diminished by the need to
explain what it means before I can say it.
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| I’m sorry, but I can’t write a caption for this picture. I’m too busy restraining myself from making naughty jokes about eating ramyun. Suffice it to say, these are the boys from Flower Boy Ramyun Shop |
Flower boy
Meaning:
Pretty, pretty boys who
aren’t afraid to put some effort into how they look. (Did I mention
that they’re pretty?)
As
seen in: Practically
every Kdrama made since the 2009 airing of Boys
over Flowers
American
parallel: Metrosexual
Like
many Western fans of Kdrama, Boys
over Flowers was my
first exposure to Korean television. But when I started watching it
on Netflix streaming, I had literally no idea what the title meant.
Boys? Flowers? In America, those two concepts rarely go together.
In
Korea, though, flower boys are all the rage. Heck, there’s even a
series of television shows created specifically to take advantage of
their appeal: tvN’s “Oh Boy” dramas, which includes Flower
Boy Ramyun Shop, Shut Up: Flower Boy Band, and
the eagerly anticipated Flower
Boy Next Door.
Key
traits of flower boyhood are a slender body, a delicately lovely
face, and fastidious personal grooming habits, sometimes even to the
point of wearing makeup. Being a pretty boy is something Korean men
actively aspire to, which is why in 2011 they were
responsible for a quarter of worldwide sales of cosmetics made specifically for men.
Mainstream
American culture would probably consider most flower boys too
feminine to be attractive, but we in the know realize that life
without flower boys is barely worth living.
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| Kim Ji Won, you were so cute in What’s Up that I completely forgive you for To the Beautiful You. |
Fourth
dimensional/4D
Meaning:
Someone
odd or spacey
As
seen in:
Endearingly goofy Park Tae Hee from What’s
Up and
dreamy Yoon Ji Hoo in Boys
over Flowers
American
parallel: Space
cadet; weirdo
Regular
human beings live life in three dimensions. But some people seem to
exist on a different plane, never quite thinking or acting like
anyone else. They’re easily distracted, whether by pretty things or
big ideas, and prone to misunderstanding what seems obvious to those around them.
I
suspect that people in my life would be especially grateful if this
phrase entered the English language: they’ve probably spent a lot
of time trying to figure out how to describe me, after all.
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| You know it’s true love when a flower boy dyes his hair gray for you, as Kim Bum’s character has done in this scene from The Woman Who Still Wants to Marry |
Noona
Romance
Meaning: A
story focusing on an woman’s relationship with a younger man
As
seen in: The Woman Who Still Wants to Marry and I Do, I Do,
among many others
American
parallel: Anything
involving the icky, condescending word Cougar
When
I first started watching Korean dramas, words like noona
and
oppa were
stunningly exotic; as a speaker of English, I’ve spent most of my
life calling everyone I know by their first name. Koreans, on the
other hand, have at their disposal a complicated network of words
indicating almost every kind of relationship, from your father’s
older brother (keun
aboji) to
the youngest person in your group of friends (maknae). There’s a case to be made for either of these approaches: the
American way of doing things emphasizes equality, while the Korean
way emphasizes interconnection.
But
lacking a similar classification system, we Americans don’t have have an easy way to describe a romantic
relationship between a woman and a younger man. (Not that we have
much call to do so, anyway: As long as an age difference isn’t
enormous, it probably wouldn’t be mentioned at all. And if it is
enormous, in the post-Demi-and-Ashton world it’s almost certainly a
relationship between a older man and and a younger woman.)
On
other hand, Korean dramas glory in older women dating younger men.
There are a number of sensible reasons for this: It’s a good source
of narrative friction in a society that values age-based hierarchy.
Plus, mandatory military service in Korea means that it’s harder to
pair actresses with their peers—until they’re safely in their
thirties, a chunk of the male population is otherwise occupied at any
given time.
As
genres go, the noona romance is probably my favorite. So what happens
when similar plotlines appear in Western entertainment, like the
upcoming Hello, I
Must Be Going?
I spend a lot of time explaining to my friends that “noona”
doesn’t indicate a matinee showtime, that’s what.
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| Lee Hyun Woo, you were so darling in To the Beautiful You that no forgiveness is necessary. |
Selca
Meaning: A
photo you’ve taken of yourself
As seen in: Cha
Eun Kyul’s selca diaries in To the Beautiful You
American
parallel: To the best of my
knowledge, there isn’t one
Fifty
percent of the profile pictures on the Internet are probably selcas,
yet we Americans have yet to realize that it would be handy to have a
word to describe them. When we finally do catch on, the Korean
version will fit right into our language: it’s a mashup of the
English words self
and
camera, after
all.
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| I don’t think they waited for marriage in Can We Get Married, btw. |
Skinship
Meaning:
Affectionate touching, often
involved with romantic relationships
As seen in: Most cable dramas, including the currently airing Can We Get Married?
American
parallel: Long strings of words
like “physical displays of affection,” but nothing as short and
catchy
There’s
an urban legend that the Eskimo language doesn’t include a word for
snow. Instead, the
legend states, there are words for “heavy, wet snow,” “snow
that’s falling slowly,” and “hard, crusty snow.” The theory
is that in a world where it’s almost always winter, specific,
descriptive terms for snow are more useful than the general word.
And
that, my friends, is why there’s no American version of the word
skinship. Physical
intimacy here isn’t a big deal; we’re prone to casually touching
those around us and displays of affection happen all the time. For
example, consider my favorite recess game during elementary school:
Kiss Tag. This is exactly what it sounds like—the person who was
“it” had to kiss whomever they could catch, at which point the
kissee became the new “it” and repeated the process. By the end
of the first game, I had the kissing experience of the average
thirty-year-old Kdrama heroine. (I was a slow runner, by fate or design. I’ll never tell which.)
Even in America, it’s hard to imagine the word Skinship
not coming in handy: It’s
shorter and more concise than most of our descriptions of physical
intimacy, so why not use it?
