안녕하세요, it’s Ari, your friendly Korean source and your weekend reminder🎉 Today’s newsletter is about a photo uploaded by BTS, South Korean presidential election and a bibimbap recipe. Let’s start!
🎧 You can listen to this newsletter and practice speaking Korean sentences on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or other your favorite podcast platforms.
👄 I voted!
During South Korean presidential election, many Koreans including celebrities uploaded after-voting? photos on social networks. People uploaded a face selfie like RM of BTS taken at a polling place (right) or a fist shot with a red voting stamp mark like J-Hope of BTS (left). In Korean, there’s a word for these photos: 인증샷. It means a photo that shows or proves that you did something. If it’s voting that you did, it’s 투표(voting) 인증샷. Let’s learn today’s sentence using this word,
RM이 투표 인증샷을 올렸어요. RM uploaded a photo that proves he voted.
🎶 How K-Pop nation's presidential election looks like
As I’m writing this newsletter, South Korean presidential election is less than two days away. Candidates are busy touring around the country and giving last-time speeches. When they go on a tour, they bring a team of dancers. After a stage is set up at a location, music starts and the dancers start dancing while the crowd is dancing along ☝ and waiting for the candidate. It’s very much like a K-Pop concert or rock festival.
The music is not random songs. Each candidate has their own campaign songs. Most of them are existing songs, but lyrics are replaced with the candidate’s name and his/her campaign slogans. Lee Jae-Myung, the candidate of Democratic Party, the ruling & liberal party, released 10 campaign songs including BBoomBBoom by Momoland, a K-Pop girl group, and Journey to Atlantis by LABOUM, a K-Pop girl group. Only popular songs are picked as campaign songs.
South Korean elections are all about colors. We have two big parties, Democratic Party and People Power Party. Democratic Party’s color is blue while People Power Party’s color is red. When you see the Democratic Party’s tour ☝, the crowd is holding blue balloons. On the election day, people show their political affiliation with colored clothing, accessories, and even nails. K-Pop fans guess which candidate their idols voted for based on the color of their clothings or shoes or both in their 투표 인증샷s.
This Wednesday was the election day but we had early voting days last Friday and Saturday. During the early voting, we can go to vote at any polling places in the country regardless of our address. This year, the record number of Koreans, about 37% of the total voters, participated in the early voting. I did my first early voting too. When I went to a polling place in my neighborhood, there were about 40 people lining up. I waited about 10 mins. When I entered, I checked my temperature and sanitized my hands before wearing a disposable glove. I showed my id card to a staff and scanned my finger print for identification. (When South Koreans become 17-year-old, we register our finger prints to get an id card.) When the scan was approved, a printer printed out a ballot paper for the voter. I entered a voting compartment and stamped next to the name of the candidate that I support on the paper. As I get out of the place, I heard an old man shouting, “I don’t believe in early voting! It’s a scam!” Some old Koreans believe early voting conspiracy that early voting votes are manipulated.
The result must’ve been out by the time of uploading this newsletter. Maybe some of you already know it. I hope the best for my country. Update) The conservative & red party candidate won.
🍚 Spicy white radish bibimbap
When you visit a Korean food restaurant, you get served with many different veggie side dishes including kimchi. Spicy white radish or 무생채 is one of those side dishes. It’s a shredded white radish kimchi made simple. It’s spicy and sweet at the same time. If you put 무생채 and fried egg on rice and mix them, it becomes a bibimbap! If you’re a fan of bibimbap, try it and thank me later 😎 Watch the cooking video 👆 and turn on subtitles.
Before I go…
My virtual McDonald’s where you can order in Korean moved to Twitter. From now, it’ll be McDonald’s drive-thru on Twitter Space, an audio chat room feature of the platform. Don’t worry about your bare face anymore :D Just bring a little bit of confidence and your voice. When there’s no customer, we’ll talk about Korean culture or news or anything fun. Follow my Twitter below! Opening hours: 4:30 - 5:30 pm Sunday EST.
Thanks for reading! If you liked my newsletter, ❤ or share it to make my day :D Leave your 2 cents about this week’s newsletter in comments. See you next week, 안녕 👋
🏃♀️ Working on my second Korean exercise book. My first book, Korean Vocabulary Exercise Book - Pick a side! is available on my online shop (e-book) and Amazon (paperback).
또 감사합니다 아리 선생님!
The voting process in Korea is similar to ours in the US, but the whole thing with the election songs seems really cool, we don't have that here! Does it make election season seem more festive in SK? We also don't do finger prints in order to vote, all you need is to be over eighteen and register beforehand. Have a nice day!