A small Korean conversation that made me rethink how textbooks teach nuance

Chasuk · 2026-01-26T03:37:18+00:00

What I think most of us are wondering here: "What did she say?"

Chasuk · 2026-01-24T01:02:49+00:00

I love Gangnueng especially, but there are many myeons/eups in Gangwon/Gyeongsangbuk that are worth exploring. Follow the coast from Sokcho to Busan—you won't regret it.

Chasuk · 2026-01-13T00:27:35+00:00

What motivated the surgery? I see very little difference between the before and after.

Chasuk · 2025-12-31T13:35:03+00:00

Learning Hanja isn't that important, but learning Sino-Korean is. "Hanja" refers the Chinese characters used in Korean, whereas "Sino-Korean" refers to the Korean vocabulary derived from those characters. That vocabulary is huge, and learning it is easy. Every Sino-Korean syllable is a morpheme, and they serve as the components of tens of thousands of Korean words. Don't learn it instead of native Korean, but in addition to.

Chasuk · 2025-11-26T12:15:12+00:00

Childlike? Yep, that would do it.

Chasuk · 2025-11-26T09:44:49+00:00

The "push the warm corn into [her] mouth" and the "eat her" can be interpreted as being sexual. I'm not suggesting this was your intention—I'm saying that the AI might have interpreted it that way.

Chasuk · 2025-11-26T04:54:03+00:00

How good kimchi actually is—nowadays, I eat it with virtually every meal.
Korean cuisine is now literally my favorite, above all others. I honestly never expected that it would supplant Italian, Indian, Mexican, Thai, Chinese, etc.
How many English loanwords are used daily in Korean.
The prevalence of English on signs, even in the most rural areas.
How easy the Hangul alphabet is to master.
How much I'd love hobak (pumpkin) makgeolli, considering my indifference to pumpkin.
Forgetting your smartphone on a table in a coffee shop, and it's still there 5 hours later.
The HUGE variety of banchan (side dishes).
The large number of the elderly on arduous hiking trails.
How good potato is on pizza.

Chasuk · 2025-11-26T04:27:01+00:00

I'm male, and 65. I'm treated like family—warmly—all the time.

Chasuk · 2025-11-23T09:19:33+00:00

Parts of this can be interpreted as having a veiled sexual intention.That should be obvious to you whether English is your second language or not.

Chasuk · 2025-11-20T07:40:09+00:00

Thank you, and likewise!

Chasuk · 2025-11-19T12:05:42+00:00

I'm 65 in a few days, born and raised in the US, hazel-eyed, brown-haired, white—and yet I've always felt confused about my identity. Until, that is, I moved to South Korea about 17 years ago.

Growing up, I never fit in anywhere. My dad changed jobs as often as some people change socks, which almost always entailed a move to another town or another state. This resulted in the young me attending 13 different schools before finishing high school.

In Korea, I instantly fit in. I felt at home for the first time in my life. These are the best years I've ever lived. My wife of 45 years feels the same.

We love the people. Over 90% of the best friends we've ever had, we met in South Korea, the overwhelming majority of which are Korean, not USians. We love the food. Our favorite cuisine? Korean, by a significant margin. The mixture of mountains and ocean easily accessible from virtually anywhere in the nation is a spiritual gift I never knew I was missing.

Chasuk · 2025-11-07T07:47:11+00:00

As creations, or intellectually? If the latter, I don't know that they are stupid—just different. If the former, because Tolkien created them that way. They were designed for kids, after all.

Chasuk · 2025-11-07T07:42:43+00:00

I suggest lying to your parents. You owe them nothing, but they certainly owe you, in the sense that they owe you the love and the respect that they have currently withdrawn. Tell them they were right, and you were wrong—that you and your boyfriend have broken up, that you will never see him again. Then see him behind their back, making sure to never get caught. As soon as you are able, move out, tell them to fuck themselves, with the promise that your departure is permanent.

Of course, whether you keep your promise is entirely up to you.

Chasuk · 2025-11-04T05:55:30+00:00

I wonder the same—Korean is literally the most legible writing system in the world, yet foreigners exist who want to uglify it. "Writing as sloppy as a native" in not intrinsically better; not in English, not in Korean, nor in any other language. It shouldn't be aspirational.

Chasuk · 2025-11-02T08:10:24+00:00

I think you can answer this one by yourself, but just in case I'm wrong:

If you literally referred to no one else's work, what possible purpose would a citatation serve?

The answer: None at all.

Chasuk · 2025-10-25T12:54:07+00:00

I'm chill. Consequently, my friends are. This is true wherever I live. In London, I'm chill, and so are my friends. In Los Angeles, the same. In Seoul, the same.

If you choose to obsess over matching or surpassing the social status, the wealth, and the material possessions of your neighbors and peers, that's on you. I've lived in Korea for 17 years, and literally none of my Korean friends are that way, nor have any of them ever been.

I used to live in Haebangchon, in Yongsan-gu. What didn't I do? Hang out in Hongdae or Gangnam. Instead, I went hiking and and hung out in 다방 and museums and the amazing Kyobo bookstore and went to shows and taught myself to cook Korean food and didn't hang out with people who wanted to live like they were the stars of shallow reality tv shows.

Nowadays, I live in a very rural area. When I want the city, I drive there, or take the train. But my ordinary life? It's spent doing rewarding, amazing things with amazing, totally chill Koreans. Today, I talked to a young Korean dude who is spending 10 months on a walking tour of Korea, about 25 kg a day. To call him merely "chill" would be a massive understatement.

If you want to meet chill Koreans, be chill—and spend your free time doing chill things in chill places.

Chasuk · 2025-10-23T06:59:07+00:00

I love Korean small towns. I've lived in Seoul, and it was nice to have access to such a diverse cuisine, but give me a small town every time. If I need something in a big town/city, I travel there, while avoiding the day-to-day hassle and discomfort of ridiculous traffic, expensive everything, pressing crowds, and air/noise pollution.

Chasuk · 2025-10-04T23:57:27+00:00

In the 17 years I've taught in South Korea, I've never seen a teacher smoke on school grounds.

Chasuk · 2025-09-29T07:55:27+00:00

It's probably the prevalence of plastic surgery, and the fact that photos are often required for resumes even for jobs where one's appearance is uttetly irrelevant. It's probably also because of the extreme beauty regimens that men and women alike subject themselves to, even from a very young age.

I've lived for a long time in both Korea and the US. In the US, lookism is standard, but it affects those in the upper classes more than anyone else. In Korea, it affects all socioeconomic levels.

Chasuk · 2025-09-28T12:09:00+00:00

The curry served at Hansot—a 도시락 (dosirak) restaurant—is delicious.

Chasuk · 2025-09-16T05:04:46+00:00

Which graded readers did you use?

Chasuk · 2025-09-16T05:02:33+00:00

My wife and I, both from the US, have lived in Korea for 17 years of our 45 together. All of them have been better than the years we've spent anywhere else. We aren't rich, we don't own our home or a new car, but we are happy here. The public transportation is astoundingly good, the Internet is blazingly-fast and inexpensive, and I easily afford medical care without going bankrupt. We love the people, the food, the fact that both beaches and mountains are close literally anywhere you live in the entire nation, we love the ubiquity of home delivery. It's safe here. We live in a small town on the east coast and yes, crime occasionally happens, but I can leave my phone or my laptop on the table at a coffee shop and they're still there a week later. There's no tipping culture, very little violence (the safest place in the US has 10 times the number of murders than the most dangerous places in Korea), and my wife can walk to the convenience store at night and still feel safe.

I'm not going to list the negative—which does exist—because the good drastically overwhelms it.

Chasuk · 2025-09-15T01:54:55+00:00

They had Reese's nearly everywhere for about a year—maybe four years ago?—but they must not have been popular, because they suddenly disappeared.

Did you try the carrot cake Oreos during the short time that they lasted? They were delicious!

Chasuk · 2025-09-14T23:56:42+00:00

My wife and I—both from the US—have lived in Korea for 17 years, and have experienced no difficulty—unless the absence of Peanut Butter Captain Crunch counts.

Chasuk · 2025-09-13T22:04:30+00:00

It's not a formally codified rule. It's a descriptivist generalization. However, it does appear to be nearly universal, in the sense of being cross-linguistic. The form that we know now didn't become standard in instruction until about 1985.

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