Whether you’re a fluent Korean speaker or barely capable of uttering 안녕하세요, this episode is for you! Kicking off our new series on cultural topics, K-Pod pays a visit to Young-mee Yu Cho, Rutgers University Professor of Korean Language and Culture. As co-author of the widely-used textbook series Integrated Korean, Cho has shaped how Korean language is taught in the States today. She dives into all of Catherine and Juliana’s questions, including: What are some Korean words that don’t exist in English? Why is Korean so hard for English speakers to learn? Is Han really the defining characteristic of Korean culture? Should we be spelling 떡볶이 “Dukbokki,” “tteokbokki,” or “teokbokki?” What’s up with the one-syllable names? How has the language changed from the time our parents immigrated? And finally… why are Korean mothers always telling us that we might as well kill ourselves?
The Language Episode
May 31, 2023

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Transcript
Juliana Sohn:
Hi, it’s Juliana. Before we get to our episode about language, we want to let K-Pod listeners know that we would love your input for our next episode, which is about hanbang, traditional Korean medicine, which includes acupuncture, cupping, and herbs. If you have a question about traditional Korean medicine, whether it’s about certain ailments, remedies you remember from childhood or its place in Korean culture, we’d love to feature it on the episode and hopefully have our hanbang expert answer it. You can email your questions to kpod@koreanamericanstory.org or DM us on Instagram, @koreanamericanstory. Even better, email us a voice note with your name and your question. And now here’s our episode.
Catherine Hong:
Hi and welcome to K-Pod, the podcast about Korean Americans in arts and culture from Korean American Story. I’m Catherine Hong, a writer and editor.
Juliana Sohn:
And I’m Juliana Sohn, a photographer.
Catherine Hong:
Today, we are in Princeton, New Jersey at the home of Young-mee Yu Cho, who is a professor of Korean language and culture at Rutgers University. As we’ve mentioned before, Juliana and I are doing a special series of K-Pod this season where we’re interviewing experts on cultural topics. Korean language was at the very top of our list, so thank you Professor Young-mee Yu Cho for having us today. Young-mee Yu Cho is an expert on Korean language linguistics and Korean studies, and has been extremely influential in shaping the way Korean is taught in the United States.
She received a BA in English from Seoul National University and came to the States as a graduate student in linguistics at Stanford in the 1980s. That’s where she earned her PhD and also where she started teaching classes in Korean language. Professor Cho is co-author of the textbook series Integrated Korean which is used in more than 70 universities worldwide, and Integrated Korean: Accelerated a textbook for Korean heritage learners.
We’re so delighted to be finally interviewing you. Thank you for having us, Professor Young-mee Yu Cho who I think we will call Young-mee during this interview. Forgive us the-
Juliana Sohn:
Over familiarity.
Catherine Hong:
… familiarity.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
That’s fine. We are creating a third space.
Catherine Hong:
So we thought we could just start by asking you about your path to becoming a linguist. You were born in Seoul, is that right? Or Korea?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Actually, I was born in Cheongju which is a central city with colleges, and my father was a professor there. And in mid 1960s, a lot of people our family moved to Seoul, mainly motivated by my parents, especially my mom’s desire for education. My mother had a plans ahead, so my sister will go to Ewha Girls’ High School and I’ll go to Kyunggi Girls’ High School. So when we are very young, she had this all planned and then the best way of doing that is going to Seoul.
Catherine Hong:
What year did you graduate university?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
1979.
Catherine Hong:
How did you choose your field?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Ah, good question. All through school I was very good at language, language and history and all that. So in Korea, in high school, you have to decide if you are a humanities person or you are a science person. So I went to humanities and then you are allowed to take all sorts of different courses as opposed to if I went to one department then it would be very prescribed. And then by the time we had to choose in the… I think after three semesters I chose English literature. And I love literature, I love reading. And then with the English literature you also learn a history of language.
So I know that I’m interested in language, I’m interested in… So with that background, I got interested in Korean linguistics as well. We study Korean linguistics and grammar as part of the college entrance, which is really extremely boring. I had to memorize all this parts of speech and whatnot. And so I didn’t think I would be interested in linguistics, but learning in a different framework, I began to see, “Oh, having a English linguistics is no different of studying Korean linguistics.” There’s this universal themes, what things, the cognitive aspects that or linguists should study.
And overall my experience was quite good. Well, it was a very sexist society then. We had, I think, entire faculty of our humanities probably had two women faculties out of hundreds. But then even so we were not discouraged that you will never amount to anything. So what it was was that if you go to the states and study and get PhD, then you can come back and teach.
So that thing was available… To my great surprise, it was because it was an English department. If I majored in Korean history of a Korean language or literature, I don’t think that that door was there. And then I came to States and the first day of school I couldn’t understand half of what the professors were saying. So I was in total despair. I couldn’t understand the spoken word.
Juliana Sohn:
So when you came to study in the States, were you still a master’s student in English or linguistics?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
So I was in the master’s program, but then many universities, especially Stanford, there is no separate… Some students do masters, but it is like you have to jump into PhD. While I was deciding on that, I took a course called linguistics for literature person, literature majors or something, and that was eyeopening. I knew that, “Oh, I love literature, I love reading books, but I’m not necessarily interested in doing literature analysis.” I find it too confining.
Juliana Sohn:
This is the perfect course for you.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
And my sort of exposure to linguistics was very philological. That is this is a history of this words. So there seems to be no kind of system there. But the linguistics back then in the ’80s was very Chomskian. It’s like there is a principle, there’s a parameters and you can develop any language from that universal grammar. Of course, these days there are criticism and whatnot, but they were so revelatory to me. I said, “Oh, this is perfect for me because I knew that I have some inkling of a scientist in me,” which was not able to be satisfied by doing literature or by doing old-fashioned linguistics.
So that was really perfect. So I said, “Oh, now I know that I don’t want to do literature, I want to do linguistics.” So I didn’t come to America to be a Korean teacher. I came here maybe to study English linguistics. And then maybe my goal then was to finish quickly and go home and be a professor there.
Juliana Sohn:
Of what may be?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Oh, whatever, linguistics or English linguistics, that area. So it was very clear because I’m not very good at many things, so when people think about your career, you can be a photographer, but I can never be. So when I was growing up said, “Oh, I cannot be anybody else but teacher. I cannot be anybody else but a researcher.”
Juliana Sohn:
In an interview that we watched of you, you said that you are more interested in how to incorporate culture into the language courses because language is the receptacle of culture.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Did I say that?
Juliana Sohn:
You did say that.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
It’s wonderful.
Juliana Sohn:
And I really latched onto to that and I wrote it down because that’s something that we really think about a lot and how I’ve heard that this is now not true, but that there are so many different words for snow in countries where there’s a lot of snow. But when we spoke with Catherine’s mom and Frances Cha-
Catherine Hong:
Frances Cha, the novelist.
Juliana Sohn:
They pointed out that maybe there are more words for sorrow and longing possibly in the Korean language.
Catherine Hong:
We’ll share with you this list. You can look at it briefly. Yeah, you can read it out. These were some words that, Frances, I asked her about words that don’t exist in English. And the ones that sprung to mind for her were all these sort of melancholy words. And my mom also agreed that those are the words that she wishes that existed in English.
Juliana Sohn:
Especially since the word han is getting so much publicity in the American press.
Catherine Hong:
Actually, if you could just read out the list. I think people might like to just hear the words and tell us what you think.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
[foreign language] Do you want the definition too, hazy, non-distinctive? Actually, well, this is one thing that I have trouble with translating with my students.
Catherine Hong:
Give us your quick definitions for all of these.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
[foreign language] It says feeling like something is very missing. Many times as a casual conversation it’s, “What a shame.” But then that doesn’t really convey the [foreign language]. It’s like, I wish I could do this for you, but… So circumstance doesn’t allow it. And [foreign language] bothersome. [foreign language].
So this is probably from a novelist view of things. And han and jeong everybody has affection, right? Han, I mean there’s a psychological definition of that, which I don’t want to repeat. Had a big mileage out of explaining Korean culture for the past, I don’t know, 50 years or so. So anthropologists started it. I think it’s part of Korean lexicon, part of Korean thing, but not necessarily has a deep tradition.
When you approach a culture, you approach from contemporary view. So yes, the late 19th century, the colonialism and the division and the Korean War, all those things, separated families. It’s the fertile ground to talk about han and also how the women were treated during the Joseon dynasty. Not so much in Silla or Koryo Dynasty, but Joseon dynasty can be a room for han. However, I find han and jeong very confining in defining Korean. So I can give maybe a longer list of Korean words that doesn’t have the sad connotation.
Catherine Hong:
Well, they’re flavors. My mom was telling me about tastes.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Yes. [foreign language] I can say a lot of things about-
Catherine Hong:
Which have nothing to do with sadness, it’s just a certain kind of taste or smell.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
You said a list of possible questions, right? One thing that I wanted to ask people, my son and friends was what are Korean words that’s hard to translate? I teach Korean translation, multimedia translation and literary translation, and also practical translation. And so we encounter a lot of words we find, “Oh, we never thought twice about it because it’s so natural, but how do we translate that?” And so thing that came up immediately was the taste word.
Catherine Hong:
Oh, interesting.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
And my son’s favorite as a child, he really didn’t like soggy stuff. So taco or noodles, it has to be al dente. So when ramyeon or some noodles were prepared, he said it’s [foreign language].
Juliana Sohn:
What is [foreign language]?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
[foreign language] will be soggy. But it’s more than soggy. It’s like suddenly very uninteresting. So that’s his word. And also he had the word was… It’s corresponding. He said [foreign language]. He said things should be [foreign language] not just noodles, but everything.
Catherine Hong:
What does that mean?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
[foreign language] chewy. But if you say chewy, the whole thing goes.
Juliana Sohn:
Like the texture is there’s a…
Catherine Hong:
A springiness?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Yeah. But then depending on the material, it’s different. So [foreign language] will be different from [foreign language].
Juliana Sohn:
Yes.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
So he said this is un-translatable. So he gave me a couple of food words and yeah, I mean these days if you go to YouTube, people say [foreign language] cannot be translated like a female cuteness or [foreign language] will be you pretend that nothing is the case while you don’t share your thoughts. So there’s a whole list of things and oftentimes students come up with jeong and han and I said, “Yeah, you can do it, but only so much.” Because they tend to bag everything into that fray.
Juliana Sohn:
Do you think that there is any kind of running thread in the words that are hard to translate from Korean to English?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Yes.
Juliana Sohn:
There is?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Okay. So actually there is a reason why it is the case. Korean and Japanese are big unsound symbolism called onomatopoeia. And English of course we have onomatopoeia bang or a thump. Or-
Juliana Sohn:
Vroom.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
… twinkle, twinkle little stars. But only occasionally. And also you don’t have the sound associated with the meaning. Probably the only thing that I can come up with GL, glim glitter. Some kind of light Right? And also SW, like a swell, sway. Maybe large, smooth action. You really have to crack your brain to find something. But in Korean there are thousands of words systematically related to connote meaning. But this can be sound imitating. Also, it can be man imitating or it can be psychological state.
Catherine Hong:
So what are some sounds?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Sounds where you can say [foreign language]. It means dark. There is no news from somebody. It’s kind of darkish. But if you say [foreign language] that’s going to be darker. And if you say [foreign language] it’s going to be dark, but spooky way.
Juliana Sohn:
I’m noticing double sounds.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Yeah, double sounds tense like intensity. So consonants does that. So it’s systematic. It’s not just one word, it’s the whole thing. And then vowels do that too. So the words that’s hard to translate is [foreign language] How do you translate [foreign language]?
Catherine Hong:
Savory?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Yeah. So I do it savory, but it’s late. It’s a late translation. The typical [foreign language] will be the [foreign language] the sesame oil. But then there’s [foreign language]. The vowel is different. [foreign language] is in a cute way and [foreign language] will be savory, but more blend, but still… Do you know [foreign language]? When you have a rice and then [inaudible] part and then you will boil it and then when you have it, it’s not strong, but it’s very fragrant in a different way. It’s not savory because it’s just plain rice, but because of the burnt thing-
Juliana Sohn:
Yeah, that’s my favorite taste.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
… there’s a flavor there. And also [foreign language] can be somebody’s accent. Somebody’s [foreign language] accent is kind of [foreign language]. It’s not very choppy or very fast like Seoul speech but can be a little slow and has a local flavor. Then we can say, “Oh, his speech is [foreign language].” I actually done a paper on this. There are at least 7,000, all these pairs, consonants and vowels. And this is used a lot in poetry and in rap.
If you listen to BTS, I actually do a little study and exercise in class. So students look at all the lyrics and then we identify this sound symbolic words or manner imitating words and then analyze it. In English translation, nothing happens. So [foreign language] is to say the rapid jumps. But [foreign language] is different from [foreign language].
So also advertisement uses that a lot because you don’t need to say a lot, you just say one word, then you don’t have to say the vowel. I mean, the verb. With that adverb, like a twinkle, twinkle, then you know the stars are shining. If you listen to Korean ad or poems, or children’s songs, then it’s ubiquitous. But unfortunately in educational setting we don’t tend to teach that because we think of it as kind of an extra. So students have to acquire that on their own. But if you watch K drama or this entertainment show, you see that all the time.
Juliana Sohn:
Well, that’s something we wanted to ask you about too is you’ve been teaching the Korean language for so many years. You must have witnessed the change in Korean language, at least the way it’s spoken in K-dramas. I mean we’ve always been told that the Korean language that our parents spoke when they first left Korea and still do, is so different now from the contemporary Korean that’s spoken.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Yes, language change. So before I answer that, let me talk about… So I was an accidental Korean teacher in 1986 because my linguistics classmates, they wanted to study Korean. And yes, I’m an native speaker Korean, but I was not a Korean teacher. So I got a book and then sort of put together some syllabus and started to teach. So Stanford had this program, special language program where five students request and then the class will be offered. So I started to teach it, and that was most learning experience because these people who had no knowledge of Korean wants to learn.
I mean, alphabet was the easiest part. And now when we go to grandma or the sentences, it’s impossible to teach. And back then there are some textbooks but not very good. So I got one that’s called Myongdo’s Korean. It was adequate, but then it was published by a Catholic publications. So it’s all about nun, and then father and all that. So I had to do a lot of editing. Also, I think this was published in the 1970s. I taught it in the ’80s, but it was very sexist in the state. “Oh, the woman is there,” then says, “Oh, what do you study?” “I study French” and says, “Oh, you should study home economics because you will get a better marriage prospect.”
And then there’s another one says husband and wife pair. And then husband getting mad, says, “Oh, why didn’t you polish my shoes? I have to go out now. And make sure that my wife gets back from the cleaner.” So I had to struggle with that. So that was my first experience. So I was brought on as an accidental Korean teacher. And so since then I did some research but there were no good materials.
And then my learning Japanese actually gave some idea of how to teach a language very different from English. Mid ’80s was a good time to start Korean program in colleges. Let me tell you why. So Korean language program started in the 1940s as part of the Cold War efforts as a national security thing. So Berkeley and University of Washington and Hawaii offered courses in Korean, but they were for the armed forces and mainly to be able to understand Japan and Korea.
Anyway, that’s the beginning of the… Compared to Chinese studies that studied in the 19th century, mid 19th century. Can you believe it? So they had a longer history. Korea didn’t. And then finally after the Korean War, the big universities like five of them started the Korean program. Late ’50s or ’60s. So Harvard, Columbia, Indiana, and a couple of places. And in the ’80s when I was a graduate student, suddenly there was an impetus. Number one, 1965 immigration act. So Koreans came in droves and their children started to come to college.
Catherine Hong:
I see.
Juliana Sohn:
I see.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
And they wanted to learn Korean. So the administration says even if it’s not really a regular course, please start one. Since I had the experience, I continued to teach Korean. The last 20 years was a different outlook. So when I first started, probably 60, 70, 80% were Korean Americans. Now I have about 10%, 15%.
Juliana Sohn:
Wow.
Catherine Hong:
When I took Korean as an undergrad, I remember most of the students were Korean undergrads like myself who didn’t speak Korean as kids and wanted to learn it. But then we started seeing a trickle of graduate students in law and business, white people thinking that they want to work in Asia. I’m assuming now that there are many, many business students studying Korean.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Business, I mean all sorts. Also, it’s not a monolingual English speakers. I have what we call super diversity. So students come from all kinds of backgrounds. So probably more so in the East Coast and West Coast, Hindi speakers, Mongolian speakers, Spanish speakers. We have all of them. And the heartening thing is that they already are very interested. They already know Korean in a rudimentary way, but still K-pop, K-drama. And so they come very motivated. But let me tell you, the first year you can have class with students who are interested in K-pop.
But in order to have the full degree program or full development of proficiency, K-pop is not enough. Well, interested in TaeKwonDo is not enough. Having a Korean girlfriend is not enough. What matters is that they have to know that they’re progressing. I think that’s one of your questions that why is it so hard? I am sorry to tell you it is very hard scientifically proven because-
Juliana Sohn:
To learn Korean.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
To learn Korean, if you’re an English speaker.
Juliana Sohn:
More challenging.
Catherine Hong:
What is the difficulty for people?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
All right. So empirically State Department did a long term 45, 50 year research on how long does it take to train diplomats to send to these countries? So they came up with four different levels of language. Level one, you need about 24 weeks of class time to be able to… That level that you can function. And French, Italian, Spanish. And the second group is you need maybe, I don’t know, 36 hours. Third group, maybe 40 hours. And the last group, group four, you need 88 hours. So we need four times more time.
Catherine Hong:
Three is in the last group.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
I mean there are not too many languages there. It’s Chinese either Mandarin or Cantonese, and Russian, and Arabic, and Korean.
Catherine Hong:
I had no idea. I feel better now because I didn’t do very well in that class. But what is it?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
And the same is true for Koreans learning English too because if it’s hard for you. But as my experience tells me as a Korean speaker, learning Japanese is so easy. So in three years I was able to do this or I read the books and these poor American students, they’re extremely bright students, but they were struggling.
Catherine Hong:
What do you think are some of the reasons?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
All through Korean history for a millennium, Koreans learning Chinese was difficult, but they did it not for speech purposes, but to study the classics. And upper class men were able to handle that. So all the Joseon Dynasty, beautiful history books that I have here are all written in beautiful Chinese classical.
So English and Korean are very different. Number one, because they’re not genetically related. Number two, they’re not typologically similar. So typologically similar means that even though you’re not related, you may have similar features. For instance, Chinese and English, you have subject first an object and a verb, right? You say Mary loves John. And the order tells you who is the subject, who is the object, where is the verb? But in Korean we don’t do that. We do Mary, John Love. It’s not all. That’s those simple syntax. We get rid of subject, we get rid of object. So when you say annyeonghaseyo, where is you? But how do I know it’s addressed to you? Because you look at honorifics se. Then you answer will be, [foreign language] The subject will be I. We never say you or I.
So all this, what do you call, zero pronominal? Pronominals are not expressed, but they’re not random. So if you look at that, a lot of things are missing there. So this is a discourse oriented language. You can recover by speaking, but it’s not written in English. It’s so redundant. I go to school, I do this. So in some old-fashioned journal writing I is missing, like went to school, met this person. But in Korean, if you keep on repeating those, that’s not Korean, that’s really very bad.
So how do you recover? There are cues. So in the AI translation, English Korean is much easier than Korean to English because Korean, there are many information that’s not there that you have to recover from the context. Honorifics is one good way to know that it’s about you rather than me.
Catherine Hong:
This is so interesting to me because I was chatting with my mom to prepare for this interview and I realized this is why she and I often get into these conversations where I’m so frustrated. I said, “Mom who said that?” She’s telling me a story and I’m constantly, “Who are you talking about?” And I always thought it was just her way of telling a story. And it’s definitely because in Korean you don’t have to specify who is saying what he or she, “I did this.”
Young-mee Yu Cho:
It’s there.
Catherine Hong:
I mean, I’m confused. When she’s speaking English to me, I felt much more… I could understand.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Much more forgiving.
Catherine Hong:
Completely.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
As a linguist what inspires me that none of this is random. There’s a reason why it is done. These are recoverable information. So in a way it’s more efficient. You don’t have to say every time I, right?
Catherine Hong:
Right.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
And more recently I published a book in Korea and I had an interview with a Korean newspaper and it was in Korean. My son’s probably Korean abilities about intermediate level. So he wanted to Google translate and he thought, “Mom, it says…” So I was talking about my mom and myself and he says, “Your mom went to Saul National and it says you invented the Korean alphabet in the translation because there’s no subject.” Because Korean sentences are also very long and winding. You have to know what’s the main clause and what’s the subject of that.
So many times the mistake is that they cut it off and they translate that bit without paying attention to the last bit. So the verb is the most important part in Korean because it has all the information., it has honorifics, it has past tense, it has passive. Whatever information is there. So you can speak only with the verb but not with other things. And then verb endings are so complex. So there are about 150 and I feel pity for my students because in our first and second year students we say, “Ah, these are all you need to know.” But then in real life they go out and there are so many different endings. They have to negotiate.
Juliana Sohn:
So I do have a question about Korean names. Even though I find myself to be an advanced beginner, probably I have a really hard time remembering Korean names. The two syllable. I remember hearing that the actor, Hyun Bin, he shortened his name to two syllables because it would be much simpler for people outside of Korea to remember him. And it’s actually true because I can remember his name. Whereas other Korean actors that I admire, I have a hard time remembering the three syllables. But the Korean name, I think is really interesting because if you look at the AP style book, North Koreans write their name differently than South Koreans. There’s a hyphen in South Korean names, but there isn’t for North Koreans.
I know Westerners have a really hard time because the last name comes first in Korean, but there’re also lots of Korean names with only two syllables. I had asked my mother about this why is it that most Korean names have three characters, but some Korean names only have two? And she said, “Oh, it’s because some people couldn’t afford the third character.” I couldn’t tell if this had something to do with cast or if she was just joking.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Yeah. This is a topic that I really am very interested in and through the personal names, let’s talk about it. By Korean dynasty, let’s say the 10th century, 11th century, only royal families and aristocrats had family names. So people had probably names that also there are no family register per se. Especially women’s names were kind of ignored. So they would be given a flower or this or that. And even now women’s names also sometimes guys’ names are not called. You are not called a person by the name many times. So in a way it’s a taboo.
Catherine Hong:
We should explain for people like-
Juliana Sohn:
Unnie or-
Catherine Hong:
… someone’s mother like their role. My mom is not… Her friends call her Cathy’s umma or something.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
That’s right. And it’s all because of the more East Asian collective collectivism in a way because your individual name is not that important and you are somebody’s daughter, you are somebody’s wife, especially for women. And so one time there was this little movement by housewives says, “We want to have a name card with our name on it because we are never being called by my name.” So I think that was kind of a reflection of that. And so typically it’s a three syllables because the last name which is surname, family name is one syllable and then original Korean family names are very few like Park and Kim and Suk and not very few like a Silla Dynasty.
Then gradually people started especially started to take the name because a lot of these things came from China. They look at China, the higher civilizations, “Oh, this is how they do administration. This is how they do it. So why don’t we also try it.” So they got a lot of Chinese family names. They’re not necessarily Chinese, no, but they got those names and then a lot of times they said I’m the first in this clan. So if you look at it, except for a few in our royal families in Silla, a lot of clan initiator originated in Koryo Dynasty for instance.
Juliana Sohn:
What would be the rough date for that?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Koryo Dynasty will be 1910 through 1392.
Juliana Sohn:
Okay.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
So we are talking about 10th century, 11th century, 12th century around the time. So gradually people are conscious of having a status, meaning you have to have a family name. The same is true in Europe. And so in the Joseon Dynasty things got a little bit more tight because it’s a neo-Confucian society where it’s more centrally governed. And there men, especially the yangban men, they get their name for sure. And it’s not any random name. They had to have followed the Korean tradition.
So there’s your family name first and then it is a generation name. So family is different. So in my family it sweeps. So it’s the first level or it’s the last level depending on the generation. It’s already given there. In my family, I remember looking at 60 names already given. It’s not randomly given, it is based on five elements of Asian philosophy. So for instance, my name Young-mee, Young has this character water in it. Young is eternal and mee is beauty. And sort of not everybody gives generation name to girls because they think girls will be married up, you’re not part of our family.
But starting in the early 20th century, my mother’s family who was a kind of yangban, they decided to give girls family names too. So my mom and all the sisters have the names, the family names.
Juliana Sohn:
Can we clarify what do you mean by family name? Is that the last name or is that the generation-
Young-mee Yu Cho:
I’m sorry, family name is your surname but you have generation name. All your brothers, typically brothers or paternal cousins share. So you will see [inaudible].
Juliana Sohn:
And that is a generational name.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
I call it generation name. In Korean it’s [foreign language]
Juliana Sohn:
[foreign language] And so they didn’t give-
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Women.
Juliana Sohn:
Women [foreign language]?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
At all.
Juliana Sohn:
Okay.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Because it was not necessary. If you look at the old genealogy book, women are identified as a second daughter of Mr. Kim from Asia. Korea is probably one of the few countries where women don’t adopt the husband’s name when married. So it was only the elite class, but then toward the end of the Joseon Dynasty, it spread everywhere.
Juliana Sohn:
I see.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
And then it was very popular but not so much these days. In 1948 when South Korea had a new law of the naming and marriage, they allowed non-Chinese names too. So they started giving name like a Korean word like [foreign language] So oftentimes that’s also two syllable. However, not always. I remember in the ’80s, probably ’90s, there was a tragic incident of a little girl kidnapped and her name was [foreign language] seven syllable which the government allowed. So because these are all Korean words.
Juliana Sohn:
That’s incredible.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Yeah. [foreign language] It’s a very beautiful name. But I was told that she’s often called Nadi by the last two syllable rather than that. But then I had a record somewhere. But in the mid early ’90s maybe, the government says, “No, this is too much. So we are going to stop giving you so much space. We are very as stingy about computer space, so you are allowed to have only five slots.” I may be wrong, five slots in your given name. So it’s not any rule. But if you look at people were born in the ’70s, ’80s, still you see like 14-syllable names. But it has meanings in it.
Juliana Sohn:
So if we run across somebody with just two characters in their name, more than likely they’re an older female do you think?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
No.
Juliana Sohn:
No?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
That is single syllable given name that has a special status. For one thing, royal families will have a single syllable name. All the Joseon Dynasty kings of 26 people, they have single syllable name. Of course you’re never allowed to call them by their proper name. They would be called King Sejong in status, right?
Juliana Sohn:
Mm-hmm.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Anyway, the reason is that if royal family have certain characters, nobody ever, ever is allowed to use that character as part of your name or as part of any speech. It’s sacrilegious to use that.
Juliana Sohn:
Wow.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
So if the king has two syllable names, that’ll be even harder for commoners to-
Juliana Sohn:
I see.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
So they have that. I also heard that there’s a [inaudible] so E. The royal family Lee, they often have monosyllable given name. And another family I know is Ho. This is the royal family name of Silla Dynasty. And this Ho, this maybe a legend, is a princess traveled from India and became the queen of Silla King. And her name was probably something else, but it’s Ho. A lot of Ho I know they have single family names, sort of maybe they want to keep that royal line there. But it’s not just three syllables. Some there are about, I think about 10 double syllable family names like [foreign language].
Catherine Hong:
Oh, I’d never heard of a double syllable family name.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
So in that case people can choose two syllables. So they can end up with four syllables or they can be just Nam-gu Wan who is an actor, Nam-gu Wan. Then people will not know whether his fa family name is Nam or Nam-gu. They are kind of rare but it’s there. So you see typically four syllable names if their names are like that. But these days, if I look at the… I also teach something about Korean naming practice and there we had about 300 family names. Given the population, it’s very small. Japanese has about 700 different family names and Chinese is even more. But even counting for the population, it’s really extremely small.
Catherine Hong:
I’ve always been confused by Korean spelling. Or transliteration. So you can spell tteokbokki with T-T-E-O-K-B-O-K-K-I i or D-U-K-K-B-O-K-K-I. I mean, there’s no consistency on the internet clearly.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Yes.
Catherine Hong:
But I know that there have been-
Young-mee Yu Cho:
It’s been systematized.
Catherine Hong:
There’s been systematization. But can you just give us a nutshell explanation of why is it so confusing and how we should be spelling things now?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Well, I cannot teach you that, but I can tell you why it’s so confusing because Korean consonants and bowels, we have a lot more than the English alphabet 26 will allow. So for instance, Japanese translation easier because they have fewer numbers of consonants and vowel. [foreign language] system, which devised in the 1930s and ’40s still a standard for scholarly publication. So library congress has that, but it is clumsy because you have to have a special symbol on top.
Catherine Hong:
And give us an example of that kind of spelling.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
If you want to have an O vowel, then you have the O and a half circle on top. And for all the literary, I mean, scholarly production, you see that. It’s not perfect, but it worked. The ideal system is that whatever you see in [inaudible] should be represented differently, right? For instance, Chun and Chun, those are two different family names, but oftentimes it’s C-H-U-N, C-H-U-N. It’s the same even though they’re different.
And there’s a tragic story during the Korean War, the 1950 some, ’52. US bombed a lot South and North Korea. And the pilot was instructed to bomb Cheongju. In Korean it would be Cheongju, but they bombed Cheongju, which is my hometown. I was not born then. But because the map should have Cheongju with a C-H-E-O-N-G maybe and the Cheongju with an apostrophe on top. But in that small map, apostrophe is hard to see. And the [inaudible] system, apostrophe is a bother. So Southern North Korea had their own system, which is not… It has its advantages and disadvantages.
So for instance, Joseon Dynasty, Koryo Dynasty, [inaudible] system will be CH or K. But in the Korean pronunciation, it’s not really K, but it’s not really J either. Joseon. It’s Cho, but it’s not Jo either. It’s in between. So South Korea decided, “Well still, it may not match perfectly, but we don’t want to have a less confusion.” So Joseon will be J-O-S-E-O-N rather than C-H-O-S-O-N. And then there want to get rid of the symbols because typing is difficult.
So vowels are really, really difficult in the South Korean system because if it’s odd then it’s EO. I grew up in Yeouido in Seoul, and Yeouido will be, I don’t know, I have to think how to Y-O-I-U-I-E. If you have a little hyphen on top, in a way… As a scholar I find it easier to handle, but if you have to spell out or linearize all the vowels, you don’t know where the vowel ends and then with the next syllable.
So it is a problem because of the sounds of the language. So there will be no improvement. So you have to live with that. But the good thing is that these days, even if you talk in various ways, it leads you to the right place. So I can do the Korean and it leads you to the right place. So if you look at the Library of Congress cataloging system, many languages has one page Romanization. Some languages are four pages, six pages. Korean is the only language that has 60 pages.
Juliana Sohn:
Oh my gosh.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
So I always insist on anybody learning Korean alphabet. If you learn Korean alphabet, it’s easy. You don’t have to think twice. Once I was asked to write Dummies for Korean. I was looking at it.
Juliana Sohn:
You mean Korean for Dummies?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Oh yeah, I’m sorry. But I sort of did the first chapter and then I decided not to do it because they insist on Romanization.
Juliana Sohn:
I see.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
So I said Hangul is the easiest thing. Anybody can learn it because when Sejong invented that, it was so easy that all the scholars there says, “It’s too easy, it has no value.” And then one person said, “Oh, it is easy for the commoners. You can learn it. If you are a decent man, you can learn it in a half a day. Even if you are slow and even if you are a woman, you can learn it in three days.
Juliana Sohn:
I took a Korean class on 32nd Street when I was in my 20s and the instructor said, “Even a monkey could learn how to read Korean.”
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Actually, that’s like a pet hobby. Anybody who goes to Korea, I offer free Zoom alphabet lesson. So I said, “If I give you two hours, you can master anything.”
Catherine Hong:
Back to the spelling, when you see a certain spelling you know which system they’re using?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Yeah.
Catherine Hong:
So let’s say back to food, dwaeji. I see like pork, D-W-A-E-J-I. There’s that and then there’s D-A-E-J-I. Which one is a modern, DW?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
The first one is more the South Korean system. And North Korean, South Korean system, there are certain differences, but you can actually know by looking at a C. So South Korean, North Korean is not the alphabet per se, but because of dialects. Phyong’yang has retained certain consonants. The South Korean disappeared.
Juliana Sohn:
I see.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Originally the family name E was Lee. It came from the Chinese carrying the plum tree and gradually in the 18th century, L disappeared. But in North Korea still, Lee. So there’s a movie called [foreign language] So you know immediately if it’s written in North Korea by looking at some of those things.
Juliana Sohn:
So the Korean spoken in North Korea is probably much more traditional. Correct. Because it hasn’t been globalized, right?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Yeah. I don’t know whether it’s traditional, but they call it [foreign language] cultured language. South Koreans call it standard language [foreign language]. And both have similar aims. When the liberation came, we wanted to get rid of Japanese expressions. So I remember as a young child and my mother said, “Oh, here’s your bento.” And then I got so mad. I said, “Mom, you should never use a Japanese word.” For her, it was kind of natural. So I said, “No, no, no.” So I was a little patriot and says, “So actually they invented a new word like [foreign language].”
Juliana Sohn:
Yes.
Catherine Hong:
Korean lunchbox.
Juliana Sohn:
Which also sounds very Japanese to be honest.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
No, that has nothing to do with us.
Juliana Sohn:
That’s something we wanted to ask you as well. I think a lot of Koreans like me who have Korean speakers parents at home, we grew up using just the words we learned from them and never having attended Korean school. And then in my 30s and 40s, I was so shocked to hear that I was using Japanese words.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Like [foreign language].
Juliana Sohn:
[foreign language]
Young-mee Yu Cho:
[foreign language] right.
Juliana Sohn:
[foreign language]
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Oh, depends on… I mean where are your parents from? People from southern parts like Busan and then also the southwestern part, they got more influenced by Japanese, so they tend to use more. So in my family, in the central region, yes, my mother used bento, but mostly the not too many Japanese were used. But when I go to a friend’s house, I was so amazed the amount of Japanese words that they were using.
Catherine Hong:
My mom said the [foreign language].
Young-mee Yu Cho:
[foreign language] yeah.
Catherine Hong:
That is a word you would use if you were from the south?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
It is actually the Japanese word adopted from English like running. Right? So I think it was one time everybody’s thing. So if you have that kind of [foreign language] Young people I don’t think will use that.
Juliana Sohn:
Right, no. But do you know why not all the… You would think after the occupation that people were so eager to purge all the Japanese language. I know it’s hard when you’re used to a certain thing to get rid of it, but why is it that some of these words persisted?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Actually, it persists more in the American setting, in the immigrant setting than in Korea. I don’t hear [foreign language] anymore in Korea. And then my students come without words and then I laugh because I know where it came from. So they said, “Oh, I say takuan.” I says, “Oh no, you shouldn’t takuan, you say danmuji.
Juliana Sohn:
Okay. I’d never even heard of danmuji. We always use takuan still.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
But you shouldn’t blame yourself. That’s part of the thing. And then many people don’t know that it’s even Japanese. Sort of the attempt to purge was more like top down. But certain expressions I had to study like 400, five different kind of Japanese influenced expressions. So words like [foreign language] you pay attention to something. They said, “Oh this was brought up by Japanese so we shouldn’t be using that.” But I said, “No, I’m so used to that, I have to use that.”
Juliana Sohn:
Wait, why does it have roots in Japanese?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Because before that we didn’t have that expression. We may have expression like [foreign language] was not part of Korean expression. There are so many of them because Japanese came with modernization. So telephone, movie, democracy.
Juliana Sohn:
Railroads.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
If you get rid of all those, these are all Japanese made up words.
Juliana Sohn:
I see.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
So at some point you really have to compromise.
Juliana Sohn:
Because it is a part of the culture in history.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Like it or not, I think so. Because we had a Mongolian occupation of 150 years. A long time compared to 35 years of Japanese. We have some remnants still. But now people don’t have this anti-Mongolian feelings. It’s so much part of the thing. So things like [foreign language] those are all like [foreign language] like the hawk. These are all Mongolian words imported during the Koryo Dynasty. But nowadays who cares? Who knows? So it has become part of that.
So I think gradually all this will be part of Korean and some will be purged. Because when you’re conscious you don’t use that. But not so much language. But I am disturbed personally by the amount of influence, Japanese influence on street food. So if I go to Korea, not so much when I was young, but these days, street food, casual food, I would say about 80% are Japanese influence.
Juliana Sohn:
Oh really?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
It’s a Korean fusional aspect. But something like odeng, you shouldn’t say odeng. Did you know that? You have to say eomuk.
Juliana Sohn:
No, I did not know that.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
It’s ubiquitous. Now people think it’s Korean. And you know what all this… I mean you name it. Except for tteokbokki none of these originally Joseon Dynasty Korean.
Juliana Sohn:
How about soondae?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
I think that’s Korean.
Juliana Sohn:
Okay.
Catherine Hong:
What about honorifics? We mentioned that in Korean honorifics are very important. When you learn to speak, you speak differently to an adult, to your peer. Not only the context, but even the vocabulary you might use. Is that right? But I’m curious to know the same way that in the States we’ve had-
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Sorry, man.
Catherine Hong:
Right. We’ve had a loosening of that type of speech where sometimes a kid might call their dad, bro. I mean that might be extreme, but is there a loosening of that.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
My son’s friends does that.
Catherine Hong:
Right. Has there been that type of loosening in Korea where that says-
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Loosening, yes, but then it’s not going to go away at all. Honorific is so much part of the Korean system, so not so much paying deference or honorific, but because it’s so much part of the grammar. So I told you that we don’t say subject and object because the seo is there. So it is ingrained in verbs. So it’s not like we’ll stop saying sir or ma’am anymore. It’s much more complicated. And that’s the characteristics of Japanese and Korea. I have never seen any language which has a more complex honorific embedded in the language.
So you cannot speak a single word without worrying about what kind of ending am I going to use or how am I calling this person? So it’s very difficult area, but the not so much loosening. But young people find it difficult to navigate. So what they do is in service sector, they always put [foreign language] In Starbucks, in Korea they said [foreign language] So coffee came out honorifically.
So that’s really ungrammatical. But everybody’s using it now because the honorific was only restricted by the subject. If you’re going, “I am talking to you, then I’m going to…” Coffee is the subject in the case, but still this coffee is intended for you, the customer. Then everything is going to be seo. So 10 years ago I was complaining. Now I don’t complain because I know that in 50 years time everybody will be speaking that way because it’ll be easier.
So massively apply honorifics, that’ll be easier. On the other hand, in the family members and friends, that has been loosened quite a bit. So in my time I used non-language honorifics to my mother. So I said [foreign language] and then people may frown upon that, your mom or especially your grandmother, how can you say that [foreign language] impolite language.
But these things are not polite and unpolite. Actually it’s a negotiation between deference and solidarity. So you want to express familiarity. That’s why among family members you want to get rid of that. I’ve seen these days a lot of young people using [foreign language] to their fathers. And in my time I couldn’t do that. Still with my father I would use [foreign language]. But with my mother it was easier to you to drop yu.
So it’s changing. So it’s not looked down upon that much. And also people help them make own their choices in certain ways. And especially terms of address, how do I call you? I got disturbed when I was young that people who went to same college but who I don’t know, they come to me and suddenly start to call me Unnie or Noona. And then I get offended. I don’t want to be called by their family names. But calling close friends by family names… Pseudo family name is so common that if you don’t allow it, you put distance between the two of you. So oppa now is translated oppa in K-drama.
Catherine Hong:
As boyfriend, which was shocker to me.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Boyfriend or even husband. So about 20 years ago I had an assistant, a young person who just got married and moved here and wanted to help with my class. So I traveled with her to school for a semester and halfway into semester when she talks about oppa, I didn’t realize that she was talking about her husband. I was always thinking why would she be so talking about oppa, older brother in Korea? But it turns out that it was… Now I know, and now I know. So I get disturbed, but then that’s the word. As a linguist, we shouldn’t be prescriptive. We cannot tell people this is not how you do it because it’ll change.
Catherine Hong:
I have a question. So I have a husband who’s not Korean. He’s white. When he met my parents, he didn’t know what to call them. How would a son-in-law address his parents?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Good question. Korea is in fluctuation. We have two sets of system. What women should call the in-laws versus what men should call the in-laws. And recently it’s a big issue because it’s extremely sexist. So women always call [foreign language] like honorific forms, but guys always call like [foreign language] even though the older siblings of your wife is still not properly that. And then nowadays the people said, “Oh, use names in English if you’re the same generation.” For your case you have to ask your parents.
Catherine Hong:
Well, I’m just curious what you would say because… So they told David, and they love him. They said, “Oh, call us [foreign language] So that’s what he calls my parents.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
So that’s your parents prefer.
Catherine Hong:
I didn’t know any better. That’s what he calls them. And then I think we had a family gathering with some other friends and they heard him [inaudible] They laughed. They thought it was so funny. Is that a very proper kind of old-fashioned way? They thought, “Oh, good job. You tricked him into addressing that you like.”
Young-mee Yu Cho:
That’s very proper, but probably because his non-Korean using that word might have caused that good response. But a little bit more familiar [foreign language] So rather than umma, abeoji, So do you call your umma, appa?
Catherine Hong:
No, I call him mom and dad. Mommy, daddy.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Ooh.
Catherine Hong:
Yeah. [inaudible].
Young-mee Yu Cho:
I now said you can speak English but you can never call me mommy or a mom. You should call me umma. I insist on that.
Catherine Hong:
Actually, I love it. I tried to get my kids for not even 100% to call me umma and they did a little bit and I loved it.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Yeah.
Catherine Hong:
Yeah. So I revered it.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
That’s something that I cannot negotiate. But if I were your parents, I would have my son-in-law call me [foreign language] And some more progressive family they call umma too.
Catherine Hong:
Right. He’s very proper in this sense.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Yes. I mean, in a way being more proper is safer than being, you’re always more… You err on the side of being overly polite. So politeness can be a hurdle for communication.
Juliana Sohn:
Absolutely.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
‘Cause it’s hard to… Especially my kids when they meet relatives, they’re not very familiar. They froze because they don’t know how to address them, how to talk. And then everybody kind of says, oh, they didn’t learn [foreign language] very well. So that’s the first comment they hear from Korean relatives because this is that important. If somebody calls me, say without the proper ending, it’s like, it’s so shocking. It’s different from other grammatical errors. Grammatical errors I can tolerate. But that’s like almost insulting you. So I said, at the time when anti-American feelings, especially toward the military was a big in Seoul, one of the cause was that American guys, they learn Korean in their base and then come to city and the downtown and on the subway and they want to engage there. They want to use practice their Korean, but they do it with [foreign language] .
Juliana Sohn:
Yeah.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Then that can be the sure start of any fight. So never do that. So actually by the end of the second year I don’t teach [foreign language]
Juliana Sohn:
Because it’s so dangerous.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Even though it’s awkward, it’s always good to use, yo.
Juliana Sohn:
So going back to the word han, there are some scholars who say that this is a Japanese invention used to keep the Koreans down in sorrow and despair. Do you have any thoughts on that?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Well, it has a complicated history. Yes, the concept like Han existed even before Japanese colonial period. But during the Japanese colonial period, especially this art historian looking at the Korean [inaudible] he had a beautiful writing about, “Oh, this race is really about the line and the line is so sorrowful and it embeds all the hardships that Koreans have on the God.” So yes, there is a theory that I’m aware of that.
Juliana Sohn:
That was a Japanese art critic?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Yes. And that has been popular and been kind of accepted by Koreans without criticism. And then I think now we want to have a more balanced view. But my own view is that we cannot reject it completely. For one thing we had Han in the Joseon Dynasty. If you look at all the stories, there’s just a lot of han and especially Christian story. If you die as a virgin, then you come back. And also stories that really about [foreign language] We have all kinds of things that we should interpret as han, yes.
But then kind of essentializing han as the Korean characteristics is wrong. On the other hand, growing up after the liberation, if you look at the long history of Korea, there is han of course, but we had also a long period of prosperity and that has been all dismissed. And then as much as han, hung is another concept that Korea is very familiar with.
Juliana Sohn:
Oh, what is this?
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Hung is like, oh, being very… I don’t know how to translate it. So if you look at BTS jumping around, that’s hung. So if you look at the Koryo Dynasty of this kingdom, they have the engraving on the tombs and they’re like dancing these K-pop stars. Exactly. Now Koreans in the Japanese history are known as people who love to sing and dance. So if it’s all about han, of course we would not be the number one [foreign language] people in the world.
Juliana Sohn:
We need to popularize hung now. We need to. A counterbalance.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
When I went to actually Korea as a sabbatical though, one thing that I wanted to was learn pansori. Pansori was an old Korean opera. And I always thought of pansori as something very sad and full of han. When I actually learned that, no, there’s so much humor, so much things going on. And in the end everything is a happy ending. So it’s not really about han. There’s a han element there. You have to suffer a lot to be able to deserve some goodness in the end. Especially [foreign language] there’s so much kind of comical element there. So you could laugh for hours, for instance.
Catherine Hong:
When I was a kid, I remember thinking how harsh it was when my mother would say to me in English, “You might as well go kill yourself.” She would say that because she was translating the Korean expression.
Juliana Sohn:
[foreign language]
Catherine Hong:
Thank you. We talked about it recently and we laughed about it because she understands how in translation, especially to a kid like me growing up, very Americanized, what kind of mother says that to your kid? But in Korea, that’s a common expression.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Yeah.
Juliana Sohn:
I just wanted to add that one of our guests that we had previously on K-Pod, Daniel K. Isaac has a whole web series.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
About his mother, right?
Juliana Sohn:
Yes. It’s called According to My Mother. These mean things that his mom has said. He’s gay. Just the things that, “It’s a good thing that your grandma is not alive to witness this.” I had read some of his translations of what his mother said and I thought, “Oh my gosh, this is so harsh.” I was a little taken aback at just how mean she could be. And then I think the second time I went to look at it, I thought, “Oh, if you translate it into Korean, my mom says this stuff to me all the time.”
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Yeah. First of all, [foreign language]
Juliana Sohn:
[foreign language]
Young-mee Yu Cho:
So common. I mean I think it’s almost devoid of death there. So that’s one common expression. And Korean mothers being mean. Okay, what should I say about that? I think your parents probably experienced the Korean War?
Juliana Sohn:
Yeah.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
And probably getting education was hard. Korean family dynamic is that you can… I’m sure there are also bad parents, but most regular parents would could say mean things, but then kids don’t necessarily act up. They think, “Okay, maybe this is the way it is.” And then my son, he was very critical in high school, and I now understand being a Asian boy here, probably two other Asian boys in Princeton High School was kind of hard for him. So when he left, he said, “Mom, you are always into grades and stuff, and I want to give you an A, but I think as a mother, I think you are B minus.” And he said, “Probably that’s the worst grade you got in your entire life.”
So I said, “That’s all right. I didn’t say that least.” And then the end of the freshman, he came home and says, “Mom, I was so cruel to you. You are very understanding. And you gave me freedom, not like other mothers.” He went to a school in LA area and said, “There are so many tiger moms.” They just said, “You have to go to law school, you have to go to…” And you didn’t say anything. And then one day he said, “Mom, do I have to date only Korean girls?” That was the question. And I said, “This is the 21st century. I mean, this is America who said, you have to only date Korean girls. I mean, do whatever.”
By the time he graduates, he says, “Mom, I’m giving you an A.” So it’s a happy ending. So anybody who has difficulty with high schoolers… Because I had difficulty. Another word that he says a lot is, “You are so rude.” And I said in Korean, I cannot be rude to my children. That’s not possible. Rude is only when you talk to the higher people.
Juliana Sohn:
Doesn’t exist in Korea.
Catherine Hong:
Thank you so much Young-mee for having us to your home and for answering our hundreds of questions about language, culture and rude mom.
Juliana Sohn:
Family. If anyone would like to learn more about Professor Young-me Yu Cho or learn more about the books that she’s coauthored, Integrated Korean, you can find her, you can Google her and find her on the Rutgers website.
Young-mee Yu Cho:
Gamsahabnida. I’m doing this for my son and his children, Yarum, Ulbia and Pomnai. Thank you.
Juliana Sohn:
Thanks again to Professor Young-mee Yu Cho. And if you have a question about traditional Korean medicine, the topic of our next episode, we’d love to feature it and hopefully have our hanbang expert answer it. You can email your questions to kpod@koreanamericanstory.org or DM us on Instagram @koreanamericanstory. Even better, email us a voice note with your name and your question. We look forward to hearing from you.
Credits
Co-host, Producer, Photographer
Juliana Sohn @juliana_sohn
Co-host, Producer, Editor
Catherine Hong @catherinehong100
Audio Engineer
AJ Valente
Executive Producer
HJ Lee
Production Manager
Kimberly YoungSun