
When you learn Korean, at some point or another, you'll come across Korean idioms. That's because every language has idioms. They come in all shapes or sizes, and theyโre often funny or interesting.
In case youโre unsure, an idiom is a collection of words in which the meaning isnโt clear from the words alone.
Imagine hearing the English idiom โbreak a legโ without having it explained to you. You would have no idea it actually means โgood luckโ.
Learning Korean idioms is a wonderful experience. You get a window into the culture of the language, as well as its history.
Korean idioms also offer one of the best returns on investment when learning. Thatโs because once youโve learned them, youโll find so many situations in which you can use them. And native speakers will absolutely love that you took the time to learn them too.
Also, as you progress in a language, theyโll help you to learn new Korean vocabulary. Korean idioms tend to be more memorable than the average sentence, and often contain unique and versatile language.
By the way, if you want to learn Korean fast and have fun while doing it, my top recommendation is Korean Uncovered which teaches you through StoryLearningยฎ.
With Korean Uncovered youโll use my unique StoryLearningยฎ method to learn Korean naturally through storyโฆ not rules. Itโs as fun as it is effective.
If youโre ready to get started, click here for a 7-day FREE trial.
An Example Korean Idiom

Letโs explore that with the first of our 49 Korean idioms:
- ์๊ฐ์ด ์ ์ด ๊ฐ๋ค
- Literal: Time is like an arrow
- Meaning: Time flies
This is a really useful idiom to know in Korean. For one, youโll be able to use it in many different situations.
Additionally, it will help you to learn several words:
- ์๊ฐ (time). This one speaks for itself. A very useful word to know.
- ๊ฐ๋ค (seems like). This is a word that youโll use all the time in Korean.
- ์ (arrow). Through this idiom, youโll be able to memorise a unique word that you otherwise might struggle to remember. And you likely wouldnโt have encountered it otherwise.
Youโll find this all the time with Korean idioms. Youโll get a collection of useful and unique words, basically for free!
So without further ado, letโs look at some Korean idioms! Iโll always give the literal meaning as well as the closest English meaning or idiom.
Occasionally, it might seem like the Korean idioms, the meaning, the comparable English idiom, and the example are all a little different. Thatโs because sometimes, it can be tough for the meaning of idioms to translate precisely between languages.
In these cases, Iโve tried to convey the overall sense of the idiom without being too literal.

#1 ๊ฟฉ ๋จน๊ณ ์ ๋จน๊ณ
- Literal: Eat a bird with an egg in its belly
- Meaning: Killing two birds with one stone
Birds get a bit of a raw deal linguistically, donโt they? Weโre always flinging stones at them in English. And Koreans are wantonly eating them โ and their unborn children! What did they ever do to us?
- ์น์ฝ์ ์ฌ๋ฉด ์นซ์์ ์ฌ์ํ์ผ๋ก ์ค๋ค๋ ๊ฟฉ ๋จน๊ณ ์ ๋จน๊ณ ๋ค (I bought toothpaste and they gave me a free toothbrush. Two birds one stone!)
#2 ์์ธ์์ ๊น์๋ฐฉ ์ฐพ๊ธฐ
- Literal: Like trying to find Mr. Kim in Seoul
- Meaning: Like finding a needle in a haystack
A personal favourite. 20% of all Koreans have the surname Kim. The implication is that there are so many Mr. Kims in Seoul, finding just one in particular is like trying to find a needle in a haystack!
- ์ ํ๋ฒํธ๋ ๋ชจ๋ฅด๊ณ ์ฐพ๋๋ค๋ ์์ธ์์ ๊น์๋ฐฉ ์ฐพ๊ธฐ๋ค (Trying to find someone without their phone number is like looking for a needle in a haystack!)
#3 ๋์ด ๋งต๋ค
- Literal: Spicy eyes
- Meaning: Your eyes are hurting
Pretty simple, but useful. You can use this to describe your eyes if they are hurting for any reason.
- ๋ฏธ์ธ๋จผ์ง ๋๋ฌธ์ ๋์ด ๋งต๋ค (My eyes are hurting because of the pollution!)
#4 ์ ์ด ์ฌ์ฌํ๋ค
- Literal: Bored mouth
- Meaning: Feeling peckish
Another simple, useful idiom. Use it if youโre feeling peckish!
- ๋ญ๊ฐ ๋จน๊ณ ์ถ์๋ฐ ์ ์ด ์ฌ์ฌํ๋ค (Iโm peckish but I donโt know what I want.)
#5 ์ ์ด ๊ฐ๋ณ๋ค
- Literal: Having a light mouth
- Meaning: Canโt keep a secret
Similar in sound to the previous idiom, but very different in meaning. If someone has a light mouth, they canโt help talking and are prone to giving away secrets.
- ์ง์์ ์ ์ด ๊ฐ๋ฒผ์ด ์ฌ๋์ด๋ค (Jieun just canโt keep a secret!)
#6 ํผ๋ ๋๋ฌผ๋ ์๋ค
- Literal: No blood or tears
- Meaning: To have no mercy/to be merciless
You can use this to describe someone who is without mercy. Itโs is also the name of a Korean movie from 2002, called No Blood No Tears in English.
- ๋ ๊ฐ์ ๊ฑธ๋ ธ๋๋ฐ ์ฌ์ฅ๋์ ๊ทธ๋๋ ์ถ๊ทผ ํ๋ผ๊ณ ํ๋ค. ์ฌ์ฅ๋์ ํผ๋ ๋๋ฌผ๋ ์๋ ์ฌ๋์ด๋ค. (I said I was sick but the boss said I had to come in anyway. He is merciless!)
#7 ์ด๊นจ๊ฐ ๋ฌด๊ฒ๋ค
- Literal: Heavy shoulders
- Meaning: Feeling the pressure
One of the more self-explanatory idioms. These kinds of idioms are quite useful as they demonstrate that Korean can be used metaphorically in a very similar way to English.
- ํ์ฌ๋ฅผ ์ฑ ์์ง๋ ์ฌ์ฅ์ด ๋์ด ์ด๊นจ๊ฐ ๋ฌด๊ฒ๋ค (The responsibility of running the company is weighing heavily on me.)
#8 ์์ด ๊ทผ์ง๊ทผ์ง ํ๋ค
- Literal: Itchy hands
- Meaning: Ants in oneโs pants
If you have itchy hands in Korean, it means that youโre really keen to get started on something, or youโre excited.
- ์ผํ๋ ๋์ ํธ๋ํฐ ์ฌ์ฉ์ ๊ธ์ง ๋์ด ์๊ธฐ ๋๋ฌธ์ ์์ด ๊ทผ์ง๊ทผ์ง ํ๋ค (I canโt touch my phone all day at work, I canโt wait to use it.)
#9 ์ ์ด ๊ทผ์ง๊ทผ์ง ํ๋ค
- Literal: Itchy mouth
- Meaning: You want to spill the beans
If your mouth is itchy in Korean, it means you canโt wait to tell a secret thatโs on your mind. These last two are easy to remember together as they share the same word for itchy and a somewhat similar meaning.
- ๋น๋ฐ์ ๋งํ๊ณ ์ถ์ด์ ์ ์ด ๊ทผ์ง๊ทผ์ง ํ๋ค. (I just want to tell everyone this secret!)

#10 ๊ทธ๋ฆผ์ ๋ก
- Literal: Rice cake in a picture
- Meaning: A pipe dream
This one is easy to understand. If something is described as rice cake in a picture, it means that itโs a pipe dream, something that you canโt actually have.
As you progress more with Korean, youโll notice that rice cake comes up quite often. It holds a similar meaning to โbread and butterโ in English.
- ํฌ๋ฅด์ ์ฐจ๋ ๋์๊ฒ ๊ทธ๋ฆผ์ ๋ก ์ด๋ค (The thought of buying a Porche is my pipe dream.)
#11 ๊ฐ์ฌ๋ ๊ฒ ํธ์ด๋ค
- Literal: The lobster and the crab are friends
- Meaning: Birds of a feather flock together
The lobster and the crab are similar, so they are friends. Another simple, useful idiom for you to add to your Korean repertoire!
- ๊ฐ์ฌ๋ ๊ฒ ํธ์ด๋ผ๊ณ ์๊ตญ์ ๋ฏธ๊ตญ ํธ์ ๋ ๋ค (England and America are allies like the lobster and the crab.)
#12 ๋ ์ฝ ๋ฐ์ ์๋ค
- Literal: Canโt open your eyes or ears
- Meaning: Rushed off your feet
Youโre so busy you donโt have the time to look or listen to anything. It can be paired with the word for busy, or just used alone.
- ๋ง๊ฐ๋๋ ๋ ์ฝ ๋ฐ์ ์์ด ๋ฐ์๋ค (Iโm so busy because the deadline is so close.)
# 13 ์์ ์ฃฝ ๋จน๊ธฐ
- Literal: Like eating porridge
- Meaning: Easy as pie/piece of cake
Porridge is soft and easy to eat. If something is like eating porridge, it just means that it is really easy to do.
- ๊ทธ ๊ฒ์์ ์์ ์ฃฝ ๋จน๊ธฐ๋ค (That game is too easy.)
# 14 ๋์ด ๋ค์งํ๋ค
- Literal: Eyes facing backward
- Meaning: Seeing red
This means that youโre so angry that youโre seeing red, or you canโt think. It is interesting that like English, the idiom is related to sight, even though itโs different in its execution.
- ๋จ์์น๊ตฌ๊ฐ ํ ๋์ ํ์์ ๋๋ ๋์ด ๋ค์งํ๋ค (I canโt believe he cheated, Iโm so angry!)
# 15 ํ๋ ํ๋ค
- Literal: Sell one eye
- Meaning: Cheat on a spouse
If someone sells one of their eyes, it means theyโve been unfaithful in a relationship..
- ๋จ์์น๊ตฌ๊ฐ ํ ๋ ํ์์ ๋๋ ๋์ด ๋ค์งํ๋ค (I canโt believe he cheated, Iโm so angry!)
# 16 ๋ฐ๋ฑ์ ๋ถ์ด ๋จ์ด์ง๋ค
- Literal: Fire coming off your feet
- Meaning: Rushed off your feet
If someone has fire coming off their feet, it means they are moving quickly.
- ๋ง๊ฐ์ด ์ฝ ์์ด๋ผ ๋ฐ๋ฑ์ ๋ถ์ด ๋จ์ด์ก๋ค (The deadline is so soon Iโm so busy!)
# 17 ๊ฐ์ด์ ๋ชป์ ๋ฐ๋ค
- Literal: To hammer a nail into the heard
- Meaning: Break someoneโs heart
If you drive a nail into someoneโs heart, it means that you hurt them emotionally.
- ๋น์ผํธ์ ํค์ด์ง์๋ ๋ง์ ๋ด ๊ฐ์ด์ ๋ชป์ ๋ฐ์๋ค (He said he wanted to break up with me and it broke my heart.)
# 18 ์ฌ๋์ ๋ถ์๋ฅผ ์์์ผ ํ๋ค
- Literal: You need to know your limits
- Meaning: Donโt try to keep up with the Joneses
While it seems a little negative, youโll see this in subtitles as a translation for not keeping up with the Joneses. So while the direct translation seems a little defeatist, the idiomatic meaning is a little different, more about knowing yourself than not shooting for the stars!
- ์ฌ๋์ ๋ถ์๋ฅผ ์์์ผ ํ๋ค๊ณ ๋์ด ๋ง๋ค๊ณ ๊ท์กฑ์ด ๋์ง๋ ์๋๋ค (Just because you have money doesnโt make you royalty.)
#19 ์ผ๊ตด์ด ๋๊ป๋ค
- Literal: Having a thick face
- Meaning: shameless
If someone has a heavy face, it means they are shameless.
- ๋น์ผํธ๋ ๋ฐ๋ํผ๊ณ ๊ฑฐ์ง๋งํ๋ ๊ฑธ ๋ณด๋ ์ผ๊ตด์ด ๋๊ป๋ค (Vincent cheats and he lies but he just doesnโt care.)

# 20 ๊ทธ๋ฅ ์์ด
- Literal: Just is (existing)
- Meaning: Doing nothing
If someone asks what youโre doing, and you arenโt really doing anything, you can reply with this. It just means that youโre simply being, or existing, not doing anything.
- ์ ํฌ ๋ชจํด? (What are you doing Jeonghee?)
- ๊ทธ๋ฅ ์์ด! (Iโm just sitting around!)
#21 โ ๋์ด ๋ฉ๋ค
- Literal: Going blind
- Meaning: to be blinded by something
If you go blind in this way, it means that something is causing you to lose sight of whatโs right.
- ์์ฌ์ ๋์ด ๋ฉ๋ค (Going blind with greed.)
#22 โ ๋ณด๋๋ ์์ด
- Literal: To not have eyes for something
- Meaning: Having a bad sense of something
If you donโt have eyes for something, it means you have terrible taste in that thing.
- ๋น์ผํธ๋ ๋์ ์ฌ์๋ง ๊ณ์ ๋ง๋๋ ๊ฑธ ๋ณด๋ ์ฌ์ ๋ณด๋ ๋์ด ์๋ค (He always has such bad relationships, it seems like he doesnโt have a sense for them.)
#23 ๊ฐ์ด์ ์ธ์ด๋ด๋ฆฌ๋ค
- Literal: Rubbing on the chest
- Meaning: Feeling relieved
If youโre experiencing this feeling, it means that youโre feeling relieved.
- ๊ตํต์ฌ๊ณ ๊ฐ ๋ ๋ปํ์ง๋ง ๋ค์น์ง ์์์ ๊ฐ์ด์ ์ธ์ด๋ด๋ ธ๋ค (I narrowly avoided a car crash and felt so relieved!)
#24 ๊ฐ์ด์ด ๋๊ทผ๊ฑฐ๋ฆฌ๋ค
- Literal: Having an itchy chest
- Meaning: Feeling anxious
If you have an itchy chest it means that youโre feeling anxious.
- ๊ฑฐ์ง๋ง์ ๋คํฌ๊น๋ด ๊ฐ์ด์ด ๋๊ทผ๊ฑฐ๋ ธ๋ค (Iโm worried theyโll figure out I lied.)
#25 ๊ท์ ๋ชป์ด ๋ฐํ๋ค
- Literal: Having a nail hammered into your ear
- Meaning: Being/feeling nagged
If you feel like youโre having a nail hammered into your ear, it means that youโre feeling harangued or nagged.
- ์ฐ์ ๋ฅผ ๋ฐ๋์ ์ปต์ ๋ฐ๋ผ ๋ง์๋ผ๊ณ ์๋ง์๊ฒ ๊ท์ ๋ชป์ด ๋ฐํ๊ฒ ๋ค์๋ค! (Mum never shuts up about me using a cup when I drink milk, itโs like a nail in my ear!)
#26 ์ฐฌ๋ฌผ์ ๋ผ์น๋ค
- Literal: Throw cold water on it
- Meaning: To spoil the mood
This means to make the atmosphere cold. If someone does this, theyโve ruined the mood.
- ์ํ๋ฅผ ๋ณด๋๋ฐ ์๋ฉ์ ๋งํด์ ์ฐฌ๋ฌผ์ ๋ผ์น์๋ค (Right before we saw it, someone spoiled the ending and ruined the mood.)
#27 ๊ผฌ๋ฆฌ๋ฅผ ์น๋ค/ํ๋ค๋ค
- Literal: Wagging or shaking tail
- Meaning: Flattering/temptation
If youโre doing this, it means that youโre flattering or tempting someone.
- ๊ทธ ์ฌ์๋ ๋ด ๋จ์์น๊ตฌ์๊ฒ ๊ผฌ๋ฆฌ๋ฅผ ์ณค๋ค (Sheโs always flirting with my boyfriend!)
#28 ๋์ด ๋๋ค
- Literal: High eyes
- Meaning: High standards
If someone has high eyes, it means that they have very high standards.
- ๋๋ ๋จ์๋ฅผ ๋ณด๋ ๋์ด ๋๋ค (Iโm very picky when it comes to relationships.)
#29 ๋ฐ๋์ ๋ฃ๋ค
- Literal: Blow wind
- Meaning: Motivate
This can be positive or negative. It simply means to motivate someone to do something, which could be good or bad.
- ์น๊ตฌ๋ ๊ณ์ ์ ์ฐจ๋ฅผ ์ฌ๋ผ๊ณ ๋์๊ฒ ๋ฐ๋์ ๋ฃ์๋ค (My friends are always going on at me to buy a new car!)

# 30 ๋ฐฐ๊ฐ ์ํ๋ค
- Literal: Painful stomach
- Meaning: Envy
If someone is experiencing this, it means that they are feeling envy. This is contextual, however. If you were experiencing physical pain in your stomach, this is exactly how you would describe it.
- ๋๋ณด๋ค ์ข์ ๋ชธ๋งค์ ์ฌ์๋ฅผ ๋ณด๋ ๋ฐฐ๊ฐ ์ํ๋ค (Iโm jealous of her figure.)
#31 ํ๋ฆฌ ๋ ๋ฆฌ๋ค
- Literal: Flies around
- Meaning: A business doing badly
If a business has flies around it, it means that there are no customers, or that itโs doing badly.
- ๋ฝ๋ค์ด ๋๋ฌธ์ ์ฅ์ฌ๊ฐ ์๋์ ๊ฐ๊ฒ์ ํ๋ฆฌ๊ฐ ๋ ๋ฆฐ๋ค (So many businesses are struggling because of the lockdown.)
#32 ์ ๋์ ์๊ฒฝ์ด๋ค
- Literal: Glasses in your eyes
- Meaning: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
Even trivial things might look good through your glasses.
- ์ธ๋๋ ๋ธ๋๋ํผํธ๊ฐ ์์ฒญ ์์๊ฒผ๋ค๊ณ ํ๋๋ฐ ๋๋ ๊ทธ๋ ๊ฒ ์๊ฐํ์ง ์์๋๋. ์ธ๋๋ ์ ๋์ ์๊ฒฝ์ด๋ผ๋๋ ๋ผ๊ณ ๋งํ๋ค (My sister thinks Brad Pitt is so good looking but I just donโt see it. She says that beauty is in the eye of the beholder!)
#33 ์์ ๊ณ ์ถ๊ฐ ๋งต๋ค
- Literal: The small pepper is spicy
- Meaning: Good things come in small packages
This one is another fairly simple idiom with plenty of applications.
- ๊ทธ ๋จ์๋ ํค๋ ์์ง๋ง ํ์ด ์์ฃผ ์ธ๋ค (Heโs small but heโs really strong.)
#34 ๊น์นซ๊ตญ๋ถํฐ ๋ง์์ง ๋ง
- Literal: Donโt drink the kimchi soup first
- Meaning: Donโt count your chickens before they hatched
This comes from a longer, more old-fashioned idiom. ๋ก ์ค ์ฌ๋์ ์๊ฐ๋ ์๋๋ฐ ๊น์นซ๊ตญ๋ถํฐ ๋ง์ ๋ค. Remember how we said rice cake comes up often in Korean?
Basically, the old idiom was about drinking kimchi soup in anticipation of a rice cake that never comes. Kimchi soup is consumed to avoid choking on that rice cake.
These days, the section about the rice cake is omitted.
- ์๊ธ๋ ์์ง ์ ๋ฐ์๋๋ฐ ๋ฒ์จ ๋์ ๋ค ์ฐ๋ค๋ ๊น์นซ๊ตญ๋ถํฐ ๋ง์์ง๋ง (I havenโt even been paid this month and Iโve already spent everything.)
#35 ๋ฅ ๋ฌป์ ๊ฐ๊ฐ ๊ฒจ ๋ฌป์ ๊ฐ ๋๋ฌด๋๋ค
- Literal: Dog covered in poo complains at the dog covered in chaff
- Meaning: The pot calling the kettle black
This is more or less identical to the English idiom, although perhaps a little more amusing.
- ๋ฅ ๋ฌป์ ๊ฐ๊ฐ ๊ฒจ ๋ฌป์ ๊ฐ ๋๋ฌด๋๋ค๊ณ ์ ์น์ธ๋ค์ ์๋ก ์ ์น๋ฅผ ๋๋ฐ๋ก ํ๋ผ๊ณ ์ธ์ด๋ค (Politicians sling mud at each other but theyโre all the same.)
#36 ์์์ด ๋ฐ์ด๋ค
- Literal: The beginning is half
- Meaning: Well begun is half done
This is basically just saying that itโs important to plan and make good decisions.
- ์์์ด ๋ฐ์ด๋ผ๊ณ , ์ด์ ๋ฉดํ๋ฅผ ๋ฐ๊ธฐ ์ํด์ ํ์๋ถํฐ ๋ฑ๋กํ๋ค (Well begun is half done. If you want to learn to drive you need to start with lessons.)
#37 ๊ฐ๋ ค์ด ๊ณณ์ ๊ธ์ด ์ฃผ๋ค
- Literal: Giving a scratch to an itchy place
- Meaning: You read my mind and solve the problem
This is used when someone does something for you without you asking them first. If they brought you a cup of tea, just when you needed it, even though you hadnโt said anything.
- ๋์ด ๊ธํ๊ฒ ํ์ํ๋ฐ ์น๊ตฌ๊ฐ ๋์ ๋น๋ ค์ฃผ์๋ค (They lent me some money right when I needed it.)
#38 ๋๋ค๋ฆฌ๋ ๋๋ค๊ฒจ ๋ณด๊ณ ๊ฑด๋๋ผ
- Literal: Check the first stone before you jump
- Meaning: Look before you leap.
This is another fairly self-explanatory idiom, and very similar to the English saying.
- ํฌ์๋ฅผ ํ๊ธฐ ์ ์, ๋๋ค๋ฆฌ๋ ๋๋ค๊ฒจ ๋ณด๊ณ ๊ฑด๋๋ผ๊ณ ํ์ธ๋ถํฐ ํด์ผ์ง (Think carefully before you invest money.)
#39 ๋ฐฉ๊ท๊ฐ ์ฆ์ผ๋ฉด ๋ฅ ์ธ๊ธฐ ์ฝ๋ค
- Literal: If you keep farting, eventually youโll soil yourself
- Meaning: Coming events cast their shadows before
As ridiculous as it sounds, weโre assured that this is a real idiom. It is basically an amusing warning not to ignore warning signs.
- ๋ฐฉ๊ท๊ฐ ์ฆ์ผ๋ฉด ๋ฅ์ธ๊ธฐ ์ฝ๋ค๋๋ ์๊พธ ์ค์๋ฅผ ํ๋ค๊ฐ ๊ฒฐ๊ตญ ํฐ ์ฌ๊ณ ๋ฅผ ์ณค๋ค (If you keep making mistakes, youโll have a big problem.)

#40 ๊ผฌ๋ฆฌ๊ฐ ๊ธธ๋ฉด ์กํ๋ค
- Literal: If your tail is long someone will catch it eventually
- Meaning: If you keep doing something, eventually youโll get caught
I'm not really aware of a comparable English idiom for this one. It is basically a warning against bad behavior.
- ๊ผฌ๋ฆฌ๊ฐ ๊ธธ๋ฉด ์กํ๋ค๋๋ ๊ณ์ ๋ฐ๋ํผ๋ค๊ฐ ์ฌ์์น๊ตฌ์๊ฒ ๋ค์ผฐ๋ค (If you keep cheating, sheโs going to figure it out!)
#41 ๊ฐ์ด ๋ฐฐ ๋ฐ์ผ๋ก ๋์ค๋ค
- Literal: Liver comes out from the belly
- Meaning: Someone is fearless, perhaps recklessly so
Koreans associate liver with bravery โ so someone with a large liver would be considered brave. If someone wears their liver outside their body it means they are fearless. This could be used in a positive or negative capacity.
- ๊ฒฝ์ฐฐ์ฐจ๋ฅผ ํ์น๋ค๋ ๊ฐ์ด ๋ฐฐ ๋ฐ์ผ๋ก ๋์๋ค (They stole a police car, how reckless!)
#42 ๋ฐ์ด ๋๋ค
- Literal: Having wide feet
- Meaning: A very social person/having lots of connections.
If someone has wide feet, it means that they have good connections or a wide circle of friends. If you found out that someone is friends with a celebrity, you might use this to describe them.
- ๊ทธ๋ ๋ฐ์ด ๋์ ์ฌ๋์ด๋ค (Heโs very well connected.)
#43 ๋ชฉ์ด ๋น ์ง๊ฒ ๊ธฐ๋ค๋ฆฌ๋ค
- Literal: Your neck becoming longer from staring
- Meaning: Watching paint dry
If youโre feeling this, it means that youโre really bored.
- ํ๋ฐฐ๊ฐ ๋์ฐฉํ๊ธฐ๋ง์ ๋ชฉ์ด ๋น ์ง๊ฒ ๊ธฐ๋ค๋ฆฐ๋ค (Iโm so sick of waiting for this delivery.)
#44 ๋ฏธ์ญ๊ตญ์ ๋จน๋ค
- Literal: You ate seaweed soup
- Meaning: To fail a test
Seaweed soup is slippery. Koreans often describe failing a test as โslipping offโ the test. So if you say you ate seaweed soup youโre saying you failed, or think you failed, an exam.
- ๋๋ ๋ํ ์ ํ์ ํฉ๊ฒฉํ์ง ๋ชปํ๊ณ ๋ฏธ์ญ๊ตญ์ ๋จน์๋ค (I failed the university entrance exam.)
#45 ์์ ์ป๋ค
- Literal: Wash your hands
- Meaning: To absolve yourself of something
As we mentioned earlier, Korean as a language functions figuratively/metaphorically in a very similar way to English. If you wash your hands of something, it means the same as that expression in English. You might wash your hands of a situation, or a relationship.
- ๊ทธ ์ฌ๋์ ์ด์ ๋๋์ง์์ ์์ ์ป์๊ฑฐ๋ค (He was a criminal but he washed his hands of that life.)
#46 ๋ฐ์ ๋ป๋ค
- Literal: Stretch your legs
- Meaning: To give up/relax
If you give up or stretch your legs, it means you gave up on something and decided to relax instead, or simply finished and relaxed.
- ๋ฌธ์ ๊ฐ ํด๊ฒฐ ๋์ผ๋ ๋ฐ ๋ป๊ณ ์ ์ ์๊ฒ ๋ค (I solved the problem so I was able to relax.)
#47 ๋ฐฉ๊ท ๋ ๋์ด ์ฑ๋ธ๋ค
- Literal: The person who farted is the angriest
- Meaning: Unwilling to admit when youโre wrong
You can use this to describe someone acting angrily because they donโt want to admit that they are wrong.
- ๋ฐฉ๊ท ๋ ๋์ด ์ฑ๋ธ๋ค๊ณ ๋ฆ๊ฒ ์ผ์ด๋๊ณ ์ ์ ์๊นจ์ ๋๊ณ ํ๋ธ๋ค (You woke up late but blamed me for not waking you!)
#48 ์ธ๋ฉฐ ๊ฒจ์ ๋จน๊ธฐ
- Literal: Cry and eat wasabi
- Meaning: Rip off the plaster
This is used when you have something difficult to do, or a difficult situation to face. Itโs just like ripping off the plaster! You just cry, eat wasabi and get on with it.
- ์ถ๊ทผํ๊ธฐ ์ซ์๋ฐ ์ธ๋ฉฐ ๊ฒจ์๋จน๊ธฐ๋ก ํ๋ค (I donโt want to go to work but I just get on with it.)

Korean Idioms To Help You Become The Life Of The Party
So that was 49 Korean idioms. I hope youโll get plenty of use out of them!
Theyโll help you to learn the language while also being really useful in a variety of situations.
If you think you have an appropriate idiom for a situation when speaking in Korean, go for it! Youโll stand out as someone who has gone the extra mile with their studies.
And native speakers will always be really happy that someone is trying to learn their language no matter what.
Korean idioms are fantastic because theyโre a source of common and unique words for you to learn. And a great way of remembering them too!
So start using Korean idioms to spice up your Korean today! If you want to pick them up easily, immerse yourself in Korean by reading short stories in Korean or by listening to K-pop. As you make daily contact with the language, you'll pick up idioms in no time.
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Olly Richards
Creator of the StoryLearningยฎ Method
Olly Richards is a renowned polyglot and language learning expert with over 15 years of experience teaching millions through his innovative StoryLearningยฎ method. He is the creator of StoryLearning, one of the world's largest language learning blogs with 500,000+ monthly readers.
Olly has authored 30+ language learning books and courses, including the bestselling "Short Stories" series published by Teach Yourself.
When not developing new teaching methods, Richards practices what he preachesโhe speaks 8 languages fluently and continues learning new ones through his own methodology.