As Matthew explained in his last post, kids in Korea have a lot of pressure to perform well in school, and not only in normal classroom activities but also in extracurricular studies, sports, foreign languages, music, etc, etc, etc.. What he didn’t mention, however, is how much Korean mothers like to brag about their friends’ children, and how well they are at the aforementioned etc, etc, etc..

A very interesting expression has come out of this phenomenon: 엄친아. This is short for 엄마 친구 아들 (mom’s friend’s son).

As any Korean child would know, your 엄친아 always gets perfect grades, speaks perfect english, and french, and japanese, plays at least 3 musical instruments, plays soccer, volunteers every week, and is absolutely gorgeous while doing all of it. And he obeys his mother, of course. Plus more. No matter what, you can never compete with 엄친아. 엄친아 will always win (even if they don’t actually exist).

This expression is now also commonly used to describe a guy who seems to have all of these perfect brag-worth qualities. It is a way to describe this sort of ideal guy who excels at everything. But girls, we are not off the hook either. Although it is not as commonly used, there is also the expression 엄친딸 : 엄마 친구 딸 (mother’s friend’s daughter).

Interestingly enough, a lot of news reporters and bloggers are using this expression to describe 꽃보다 남자 actor 김범 in a lot of recent reports. I would definitely have to agree that he has all the qualities of a model 엄친아.

Have you ever heard this expression before? Were you always compared to 엄친아 as a child?

Also, if you haven’t already listened to Advanced Lesson #8, you can hear more about 엄친아 there.

^^