(I published following newsletter yesterday but somehow it didn’t reach to inboxes of many subscribers. So I publish again. Sorry if you got this email already)
안녕하세요, it’s Ari, your friendly Korean source and weekend reminder 🎉 Today’s newsletter is shorter than usual. I was working on an article inspired by Olivia Rodrigo who spoke up about the shocking Roe v. Wade ruling. But I guess I picked a too difficult topic for me to write in English 🤯 so I got stuck in the middle and I couldn’t finish it. I also didn’t have time to prepare Mic Drop and record my podcast since I spent too much time trying to save the article to no avail 🫠
But if I share a summary of my unfinished article, it was about Korean celebrities who can’t speak up for social or political issues freely. When I watched Olivia Rodrigo ☝ calling out members of the U.S. Supreme Court before singing F**k You, I thought this will never happen in my country. There are many reasons for this including the history of past conservative governments blacklisting “liberal” artists and media harassment against celebrities who speak up (this part is where I got stuck since there are complicated historical & political backgrounds to explain about Korean media).
No Mic Drop today, but we can’t stop learning Korean! Recently, a video clip from a recent Seventeen concert in Seoul went viral 👇
During the concert, there was a time when a camera captures fans’ funny slogans like,
From 0:52 in the video: Choi Seung-cheol, your face is brighter than my future.” 😂 (최승철 이목구비 내 미래보다 밝다)
From 1:06: Congratulations for Kim Min-gyu’s chest being included in World Heritage list (경축 김민규 갯섬팍 세계문화유산등재)
👩🏻🏫 Words in slogans,
이목구비 means “face.” The each syllable represents things on a face, 이(ears) 목(eyes) 구(mouth) 비(nose).
갯섬팍 is a slang meaning “chest” which is popular between K-Pop fans. Standard language meaning “chest” is 가슴.
Finally and thankfully, I managed to find a summer Korean food recipe 😋
🍜 Miyeok Naengguk
Today’s food is what every Korean eats during hot summer, 냉국 or naengguk. It literally means “cold soup.” It’s a vegetable salad in iced water. The taste of this food could be very exotic for you. It tastes sour, spicy, and sweet because the food has vinegar, sugar, and chopped hot pepper. Koreans make different naengguks with different ingredients. The most popular ones are cucumber with onion (my favorite!) and miyeok, a kind of seaweed, with onion. It could be a healthy summer salad or, if you add thin noodle, it could be a healthy meal. Watch the cooking video above and try for yourself!
Thanks for reading!
This week’s voice messages will be included in the next week’s podcast. Stay hydrated during hot summer! ☀️ Take care & see you next week with a full newsletter. 안녕!
great newsletter! Just finished The Witch: Subversion by the way, it was very good. Excited to watch Part 2 once it is available here in Canada