Get Your Korean-101 On With a Little Help From BTS

What is a side benefit of speaking Korean or slowly but surely learning Korean? you will become a a lot of Better at following BTS lyrics. But luckily for all of us, four members of the iconic K-pop band recently joined Fashion Teach a little Korean 101…trust us, we’re taking notes.

The boys are well aware that quirky idioms don’t always translate. RM recalled, “Around 2018, at one of our US concerts, a crew member said to me, ‘Yo, break a leg.'” That was before we even got on stage, so I was like, ‘What? Break a leg? These are subtle differences in the language and difficult to understand. ” Still, the band gamely soldiered on through the course, guiding the audience through common Korean words and phrases like і보자고 or “gabojago” (“Let’s go!”) and 치맥 or “chimaek” (Korean cooking combination of fried chicken and beer).

There are some Korean terms that don’t have a one-to-one equivalent in American English (although some of them—like 눈치 or “nunchi,” which means “socially aware” or “reading the air,” definitely should!), but BTS’s patient explanation and contextualization of a lot of them proves that they’re not only genre-defining musical artists, but also very good teachers.

Director: Yin Yaohan
Editor: JY Chun

Producer: Chase Lewis
Associate Producer: Leah Donenberg
Production Assistant: Li Jiebi

Production Coordinator: Tania Jones
Production Manager: Christine Helmick
Producer: Natasha Soto-Olbers

Assistant Editor: Andy Morrell
Post-production coordinator: Holly Frew
Supervising Editor: Cameron Key
Post-production supervisor: Alexa Deutsch

Global Entertainment Director: Sergio Kletnoy
Executive Producer: Rahel Gebryes
Senior Director Digital Video: Romy van den Broeke
Senior Director of Programming: Linda Gittleson
Vice President of Video Programming: Thespena Guatieri

Special thanks to: SECONDLIVE