My AMAs Reaction, Scream, Bulgogi

🙃 Seriously, what's happening??

안녕하세요, it’s Ari, your friendly Korean source and your BTS L.A. concert reminder🎉 (It starts tomorrow!) Today’s newsletter is about my reaction to American Music Awards, language preparations for a K-Pop concert, and a super easy bulgogi recipe. Let’s start!

🎧 You can listen to this newsletter on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or other your favorite podcast platforms.

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👋 What Up Korea?

It’s much bigger than I thought

First of all, let me congratulate on BTS’s winnings at American Music Awards including Artist of the Year🥳☝ I thought I’m used to see K-things and Korean stars being loved around the world lately. But seeing BTS winning Artist of the Year, the greatest honor, at an American awards, was something else. I thought I knew BTS is big in the U.S. and the world, but I guess I actually had no idea of it🙃 I always thought, even though BTS is big in other countries, they’re loved the most here in my (and their) country. But I was wrong.

Squid Game star, Jung Ho-yeon, recently said that when she arrived at the L.A. airport, an immigration officer recognized her and asked her for autograph. Again, I knew Squid Game is the Netflix’s biggest show ever but I was surprised to hear her story. Even though Squid Game is a big-hit in South Korea just like in other countries, it’s unlikely that many Koreans will recognize her. To your surprise, it’s also unlikely that many Koreans will recognize a member of BTS on the street in Seoul. A lot of my friends know BTS but they don’t know a face or name of each member, except for my ARMY friend. K-Pop is a big part of Korean music but also it’s a niche market¹. Squid Game is a sensation mostly between about 4 million Netflix subscribers in the country.

I’m slowly learning Korean culture is seriously loved around the world, perhaps even more than in its origin country reading your comments and related English news articles². I often get amazed by your love for K-Drama, K-Pop and Korean language. It makes me curious about why you love them or why Korean culture is so popular recently. If you have any 2 cents about this, let me know in comments or Q&A on Spotify.

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📢 Learn Korean to scream at BTS concert!

(In case you missed Butter Live at the AMAs☝) Finally, like many of you know, BTS’s first live concert since the outbreak of the pandemic starts this weekend in Los Angeles, the U.S.🎉 And other K-Pop groups including NCT and TWICE are starting world tours as well. So I thought you should prepare some Korean words to scream in case you go to (😱 IF YOU DO, LET ME KNOW IN COMMENTS, PLZ) or stream one of their concerts. Are you ready to scream? Here are the sentences,

1. 보고 싶었어! I missed you!

2. (김석진), 사랑해! (Kim Seok-jin), I love you!

3. 기다릴게! I’ll wait for you!

If you’ve been learning Korean, you must’ve noticed that all the above sentences are casual. When you scream out of excitement during a concert, it’s okay or even normal to use casual Korean. So feel free to be casual :D

Replace 김석진 (my BTS bias💜) with your bias! You can practice speaking or shouting the above sentences with my podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or other podcast platforms.

🎤 Scream your Korean

Send me your Korean voice message! If you’re a beginner Korean learner, speak the three sentences you learned today. You can change a bracketed word to make a different sentence. If you’re a more advanced learner or adventurous, send me your voice message about today’s newsletter (your opinion about WUK stories, etc.) or whatever.

Send it by next Tuesday KST, then your voice will be on the next podcast episode. If you want my feedback for your Korean speaking, leave a comment after submission. I’m all ears!

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🍳 Soy Sauce Bulgogi

If you’re a K-food lover, you must’ve heard about bulgogi. It’s marinated slices of beef or pork grilled on a barbecue. It tastes sweet and it’s not spicy so many kids love this food. Koreans often enjoy bulgogi with leafy vegetables. We wrap the meat with vegetables like cabbage leaves and put seasoned soybean paste sauce (ssamjang) and raw or cooked garlic slices in it. It’s a healthy way of enjoying meat. While traditional bulgogi is quite hard to make with a long list of ingredients, soy sauce bulgogi is a breeze and it tastes really good! Check out the list of ingredients 👇, watch how-to-cook video, and treat yourself and your loved ones.

• 600g Pork or beef (any tender parts are like rib eye or top sirloin are fine)

• 1/2 Onion

• 30g Chopped green onion

• 6 Tablespoons soy sauce

• 2 Tablespoons sugar

• 1 Tablespoon minced garlic

• 1 Tablespoon sesame oil

• Pepper powder

Thanks for reading! I’m blessed to have the most generous subscribers on earch who put up with my farrrr-from-good English every week. 사랑해요, 여러분! Leave a comment to say hi, ❤, or share this newsletter! You can also leave your song/drama/What Up Korea? request in comments. See you next week! 안녕👋

📚 Ari’s self-Korean-playbook-publishing project update. I signed up for Amazon’s self-publishing platform last weekend🎉 (It took hours to decipher words in tax information form🙃) I’m working on my first book about vocabulary. I’ll finish in 2 weeks if everything goes right. Plz look forward to it!

1. I mean, K-Pop as a whole is very big but each group, especially each member is mostly only known to its fans or K-Pop fans.

2. Korean media don’t really talk about this for political reasons. So many Koreans don’t really know about this.