My Top Korean Webtoons of 2019

새해 복 많이 받으세요! Happy New Year! Wishing you a 2020 that is healthy, happy, and bright. And full of excellent webtoon obsessions.

In the aftermath of Spirit Fingers ending, it was hard to find new webtoons to pore over—but here they are. The webtoons that I spent 2019 devouring. And fortunately, many of them will continue to be released in 2020.

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From 시 to 리: Deciphering Locations in Korean

During a recent translation project for a client, I repeatedly deciphered locations in Korean for an American English-speaking audience (and got pretty good at it). This article is for other non-natives trying to understand where things are in the Land of the Morning Calm.

Korea is divided into administrative regions. They have official names and official suffixes that designate the type of region. However, some places also have older or simplified names used colloquially that are similar to the official name. This can make it confusing when you’re trying to find Chungbuk (충북) on Naver Maps, but it keeps showing you North Chungcheong Province (충청북도)…

Tip: They’re the same place.

Let’s look at the most common suffixes that identify the type of region.

Korean Administrative Region Suffixes

~도province (do)
~시city (si)
~군county (gun)
~구district (gu)
~읍town (eup)
~면township (myeon)
~동neighborhood (dong)
~리village (ri)

You may also see the following special terms.

마을village, town (maeul)*
특별시special city (teukbyeolsi)
광역시metropolitan city (gwangyeoksi)
특별자치시special autonomous city (teukbyeoljachisi)

*Did you notice that there are two different terms for village? 마을 is natural Korean, whereas almost all other words are Sino-Korean, which means they’re hanja-based. The official administrative divisions all seem to use hanja-based terms, but you’ll frequently see places called [이름] 마을.

Add in the cardinal directions and you’ll notice these are common in the names of provinces.

Cardinal Directions in Korean


Remember I mentioned North Chungcheong Province (충청도)?

북 (buk) means north, and 도 (do) means province, which is why the official English name is North Chungcheong Province. Direction markers (동서남북/east-west-south-north) in a province name usually come right before the province marker.

Korean addresses and American English addresses function in opposite directions. In American English, it’s like we start with a selfie on Google Maps Street View and then zoom out to the stratosphere. We move from the most specific place to the most general or biggest region: Person’s First Name > Last Name > Street Number > Street Name > Town/City > State > Country.

Taeri Kim
123 Place Street
Somewhere City, Michigan
United States of America

But in Korean, we move from the most general or biggest area to the most specific: Country > Province > Town/City > Street Name > Street Number > Person’s Last Name > First Name. Imagine viewing Korea on Google Maps and then zooming in with each extra tidbit of information until suddenly you see yourself walking along Haeundae Beach in Busan, living your best life.


Q: Can we try a longer example? What if you’re reading about 충청남도 논산시 부창동? What’s that in English?

The first area given in this case is a province (도/do). Some people translate this as Chungcheongnamdo Province, others as Chungcheongnam Province, and others as North Chungcheong Province.

The next is 논산시. It ends in 시, meaning city: Nonsan City.

The third and final clue is 부창. The suffix 동 means neighborhood, so this is Buchang Neighborhood.

We can write the address by flipping the order: Buchang Neighborhood in Nonsan City, North Chungcheong Province.

We can also write the address and include the suffixes as well as the English descriptors (neighborhood, city, province): Buchang-dong Neighborhood, Nonsan-si City, Chungcheongnam-do Province.

When writing a South Korean postal address in English, I recommend writing it without the English descriptors. For example: Buchang-dong, Nonsan-si, Chuncheongnam-do.

Q: Why do I sometimes see places with multiple and completely different names? And why do other places have multiple ways of being expressed in English, like Han River, Hangang River, or the Han river?

While the South Korean government has a standardized romanization system, not everyone follows it. There are many romanization systems in use, and people often create their own based on how they think a word sounds (Note: Romanization is the term for expressing words from another language in the Roman alphabet). Some people want to include the full original Korean name, like 한강, along with the English word “river” to make sure their (possibly non-Korean-speaking) audience understands that it’s a river.

There’s also a lot of historical turmoil. Korea has gone through different iterations of place standardizations and also spent decades during the 1900s under forced Japanese imperial rule, during which there was a period of forced Japanese names. In that era, not just Korean places but also Korean people were forced to use Japanese names. South Korea also recently updated its official postal address system, which is good for long-term efficiency but nonetheless has confused non-Koreans trying to send postcards and packages.

It’s me. I’m the confused non-Korean trying to send postcards and packages.

Did you get my letter?

지금 재생 중

MAMAMOO, I’ll always have a special place in my heart for you, but I have the biggest girl crush on Taeyeon these days.

야민정음: 롬곡 and the Korean Trend of Rearranged Slang

If you spend your time scrounging around comment sections for Korean webtoons, YouTube videos, and other parts of the online ecosystem, you’ve probably seen your fair share of words that you absolutely couldn’t figure out. They weren’t in dictionaries. They weren’t in Google Translate. 

But they were absolutely everywhere else. Don’t worry, you’re not crazy. You probably just encountered a word that’s been flipped around per a text-speak trend that’s been around since the 2000s.

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What is Kimbap Fashion?



The padded jacket invasion.

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How To Find Korean Reading Resources For Any Level

Increasing your reading comprehension in Korean is one of the biggest challenges that any Korean language learner faces. Why? For one, reading in a new language is undeniably difficult. And if you don’t love reading to begin with, you might be even less interested in studying in a way that you don’t enjoy.

But for students who are teaching themselves or trying to augment their in-class studies, the biggest issue actually lies in figuring out what to read — and where you can get it. Finding resources like beginner level stories to practice your Korean can be really, really hard.

It’s even harder when your Korean level isn’t high enough to search through Korean-language sites. You might not even know what you’re looking at because your vocabulary is limited. I’ve been there; I’ve done that. I’ve battled through those language learning trenches, which is why I’m here to tell you the good news: There are many different ways to find resources to increase your Korean skills through reading!

And here they are. Happy reading! Continue reading



Part II: Add money to your Kyobo Bookstore account

You should do this via a laptop or computer.  Continue reading






고백: How to confess your love in Korean


  • A plethora of misunderstandings and ill-timed arrivals
  • Quirky characters and mysterious pasts
  • Beautifully dramatic confessions of angst and love




Key Korean Prefixes: 재, 재, and 재

my daneo jjang


(as a prefix) = again


재 = 再



Key Korean Prefixes: 되

my daneo jjang



remove = to move something back or away

reverse = to go backward


