KoreanClass101.com Blog

Hi Hyunwoo here. I hope everybody is having a wonderful day and enjoying your Korean studies. Some might think there's enough variety to the list of categories on this blog already, but I've just added one more category to it. And as you can see, it's about how to translate certain words or phrases between English and Korean - sometimes from English to Korean, and other times, the other way around. I'd like to start with a very basic word describing a very important behavior, which, however, is not translated very correctly all the time. It's  'to eat.' What's the Korean word for it? It's very easy. 먹다. But the thing is, when you use it in a sentence, you always need an object noun. So for example, if you want to say "I'm... Show more

Politeness levels. 반말, 존댓말, 높임말. Essentially, this is the socially appropriate form of language that is used depending on the situation. Think "Please" and "Thank you" times a million. But if you think about it, we have this concept in English - just not as heightened. I feel that Spanish has a little more in common with Korean politeness levels. For that matter, dozens of other languages have this concept, right? Either way, it's not an easy concept to transfer. In all honesty, this was probably the most difficult transition for me when first actually speaking Korean. But like all things, I like to make a game out of it. Let's pick one of my favorite genres, the RTS. In Company of Heroes, if you want to decimate a wondering group... Show more

Korean blind dating. Awful. Painful. Haven't quite figured it out yet. I'm going out on a limb here to present my lack of confidence personal experience on the subject. I hope you'll forgive me for being frank. 소개팅 is just about as comfortable as a root canal. It's a standard game - single guy and single girl meet up in a safe, well-populated environment in hopes of finding a relationship. But it wouldn't be Korea without a twist. Let's talk about the third wheel. This person is a mutual friend that hooks the two people up. Perhaps this person might meet both people together at a cafe - and all three might sit down for a cup of coffee. The friend will try to stimulate conversation and sort of acts as a temporary match-maker. If... Show more

We started making more homework videos so that more people can participate in them and make their own videos, but we didn't expect that we would get so many response videos in such a short time! Thank you very much everyone for your participation and all the amazing videos! And if you haven't participated in making videos in response to our "Answer Me in Korean" videos, please feel free to make a video response to any of the existing videos or to our future videos as well! Thank you everyone!!! Keep on practicing!! We're looking forward to more videos!!! Thank you all once again!

Congratulate Daniel Rhodes for being the first runner-up for our Mail Bag Contest #2! Daniel lives in Korea and teaches English as a second language.  He's very enthusiastic about learning the language and increasing his cultural knowledge.  Read Daniel's great story he sent us: "I started to learn Korean after I moved to Daegu, South Korea to teach ESL in September 2004.  I immediately felt an overwhelming desire to connect with the Korean people and to  have a more intimate understanding of Korean culture to avoid feeling like an outsider.  I, therefore, asked a friend to teach me how to read Hangul and I started to study basic Korean grammar. Now, after living in Korea for over four years, and learning more and more Korean... Show more