Korean Voice Over Agency

Everything you never needed to know about speaking Korean

Spoken Korean
Korea is spoken in the Republic of Korea in the south and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the North. You’ll also hear Korean spoken by some people who live in the Northeast of China.

Hangui
Hangui is the name for the Korean alphabet which has 24 letters. There are 10 vowels and 14 consonants. The letters B and F are pronounced the same in Korean and so are the letters B and V. T. There is no letter J or letter R.

It’s your first birthday
When Koreans are born they celebrate their first birthday, so they are one years old when they are born. If you are looking up to see the age you will have to add a year from their birth year to the current year to get their Korean age.

A strange superstition
Korean people believe that if you leave an electric fan running through the night with your windows and doors open you could die. This means when they use fans to cool themselves at night they always have an automatic shut-off feature to make sure the fan is off for part of the night.

Korea has two valentine days
In South Korea on valentines day (February 14th) the men receive sweets from the girls. Then a month later on March 14th they have what is called white day. On this day it is the girls turn to receive sweets and chocolates from the men.

Avoid the number 4
Like the Chinese Korean’s are superstitious about the number 4. It is often avoided. If you get into a lift in Korea and you want the 4th floor you may see it has been replaced with a letter from the alphabet instead.

Octopus legs
The Korean’s love a tasty bowl of Octopus, but they prefer to eat it whilst it is still alive. The tradition is to cut of pieces from the octopus legs while it is still moving. They then take the body and cook it in a stew.

Remember Gangnam style?
Popular music is Korea is called K-Pop and a famous song from Korea is Psy’s Gangnam Style. This song became a hit all over the world and made Psy, the singer famous. It’s been ten years since the song was a hit and Psy now has his own music label and is looking for a new generation of hitmakers.

Exam luck
The Koreans believe if you eat rice cakes before you take an exam you will get good luck. Rice cakes in Korea are a desert. They are sweet and come in different colours and shapes. A traditional rice cake is white and filled with red bean paste.

Robots in jail
In South Korea some of the prison guards are robots. The guards are used along with a human guard to patrol the corridors and they are controlled by a human with an ipad. The robots can spot trouble and alert human controllers so they can act quickly.

A short history on the Korean language

Little is known about the early origins of the Korean language, although it is commonly assigned to the Altaic language family of central Asia, which includes Turkish and Mongolian.

Korean shares many linguistic features with Japanese, another language commonly – though by no means definitively – said to be part of the Altaic family. It was also influenced by Chinese (with many Chinese characters incorporated into the written language), although this belongs to a separate language family.

Han’gul, the Korean writing system used today, was devised during the reign of King Sejong (1397-1450). Its purpose was to overcome the restrictions of using Chinese to express the Korean language, by providing the Korean people with their own accessible, phonetic script.

There were, and still are, a number of regional dialects in Korea. After the capital was moved to Kaesong in the 10th century, the Kaesong dialect became the national standard. Although there are minor differences in the dialects spoken in North Korea and South Korea, both countries essentially adhere to the standards set out by the Korean Language Society in 1933.

Which countries have Korean as a national language?

Korean is the official language of both South Korea (Republic of Korea) and North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea). It is also one of two official languages in China’s Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture.

How many people speak Korean as their first language?

It is estimated that over 75 million people speak Korean as their first language, including 48 million in South Korea, 24 million in North Korea, two million in China, one million in the United States and 500,000 in Japan and Russia.

There are other significant Korean-speaking communities in Singapore, Thailand, Guam and Paraguay.

Did you know…

• South Koreans have a hybrid writing system which uses both Chinese characters (for words derived from Chinese) and han’gul (for Korean words). North Koreans have completely removed Chinese characters from their writing system and write everything – even Chinese-derived words – in han’gul.
• Han’gul is said to be one of the most scientific phonetic alphabets ever devised. It comprises 40 characters, including 14 consonants, five double consonants, 10 vowels and 11 dipthongs. Korean is not a tonal language – there is little variation in pitch and phrases are evenly stressed.
• Korean – along with Chinese, Japanese and Arabic – is ranked as one of the hardest languages in the world to learn.

The South Korean economy

South Korea’s market economy is the 15th largest in the world by nominal GDP. It is one of the G-20 major economies, and in 2010 Korea was the seventh largest exporter and 10th largest importer in the world.

South Korea is one of the Four Asian Tigers – countries with high-growth economies – together with Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. It is a member of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The North Korean economy

North Korea remains largely isolated from the world, which makes its economy difficult to assess. It is one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world.