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Today is 한글날 or Hangul Day, which is a Korean holiday dedicated to celebrating the Korean writing system and its creator King Sejong! So to commemorate I’ll go through a bit on Hangul’s history, King Sejong, and some resources on how to learn Hangul yourself.

Kbarends at English Wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Why is Hangul Day Celebrated?

The holiday is of course dedicated to the creation and history of Hangul. Because it’s one of the few writing systems where the founding date is known it is always celebrated on the 9th. On October 9, 1446, King Sejong officially released his manuscript, which introduced Hangul to the public.

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If you are feeling that you have a grip on present tense conjugation in Korean the next step is to go into the past! Past tense in Korean might seem tricky at first, but going through a few examples will help a lot. So I’ll introduce the conjugation and we can get started.

How to Make Words in Korean Past Tense?

When turning an unconjugated word into past tense you add ~ㅆ어요 on the end of your word. The ㅆ takes the place of the bottom of a verb, and depending on the verb the ㅆ brings in a vowel to turn into 았/었.

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I’ve mentioned before when introducing Sino-Korean and Hanja-based words that the English equivalent is similar to seeing “un” in a word and knowing it means “not __”, this Hanja we are looking at is almost the exact same!

不 means “not” and is very much like not, non-, un-, dis-, etc. in English! It generally appears in Korean as 불 or 부 at the front of a word. With that said Let’s get into some negative Hanja words! I’ll start out by breaking some of the words down, so you get the 2-for-1 combo~

Negative Emotional words

불 + 행복, not + happiness =
불행: unhappiness/misfortune

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Here’s another helpful typing game to pair with the Hancom typing game I’ve mentioned before! Sam, the creator, shared it with me and I really think it can be a great asset to add in when trying to master your Korean typing.

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A useful phrase to learn when starting out is “from A to B” in Korean. Describe directions and locations, time, sequences, and more by using these 3 simple particles. Now in some cases, you’ll use 에서 or 부터 but I’ll get into when to use which so let’s start!

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If you’ve been following recent Korean cultural trends you may have heard of Korean MBTI being adapted and gaining huge traction. While the trend of MBTI seems to have calmed down here, it is going strong in South Korea. With many people even making judgment calls on people based on their type!

What is MBTI?

First as an introduction, MBTI comes from the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator which is a personality quiz to sort people into 1 of 16 types; all based around a combination of 4 letters. First established around 1944, the personality typing has been refined throughout the years.

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