Listening to music, especially the internationally popular K-Pop (Korean pop music) or Korean Wave can be a fun way to learn vocabulary and conversational Korean.
It’s easy to learn the lyrics to songs as you sing along, and this is the first step to learning proper pronunciation. It’s also helpful to learn how to speak Korean with K-Pop because you will pick up common Korean phrases, as well as metaphors and slang.
To begin, find your favorite K-Pop songs and look up lyrics that are transcribed in both Hangul and English. You can listen to the song and follow along with the translation. Write down or highlight any words you don’t understand.
An easy way to find the lyrics is to do a Google search with the band name, song title, and “hangul” at the end of your search.
Here are four songs that will help you learn Korean with K-Pop.
1. Roy Kim “Bom Bom Bom”
Roy Kim’s song “Bom Bom Bom” is great for beginners because the lyrics are easy to follow.
If you listen to the song with the lyrics and translation, it will be easier to find each phrase and highlight the words that you want to look up later.
2. BigBang “Fantastic Baby”
BigBang uses several easy Korean phrases in their hit “Fantastic Baby.”
Translated literally; ha-na (one) bu-teo (from) yeol (10) kka-ji (until) means “from one to 10,” but translated from slang to English it means “from start to finish.”
Kpop songs are great to learn these types of everyday phrases.
3. Super Junior “This is Love”
Super Junior is one of the more popular KPop groups, and a lot of their songs can be found on YouTube with accompanying translations.
4. Psy “Gangnam Style”
No list of K-Pop songs would be complete without Psy’s international hit “Gangnam Style.” with over one billion YouTube views, the viral video brought worldwide attention to Korean pop music.
Many non-Korean speaking people wonder what the title and lyrics mean. “Gangnam” refers to an area in the southern region of Seoul, Korea. The area is known for being fancy, so “Gangnam style” means a kind of swag or fanciness that the people from the region exude.
Other phrases you’ll find throughout the song include nom or “dude,” an informal term that you should use cautiously, because it can be offensive, nal-da which means “to fly,” and ttwi-da which means “to run,” which explains many of the dance moves in Psy’s video!
Make sure to write down any words in the songs that you don’t understand so you can go over them with a Korean tutor. The internet makes it simple for you to learn Korean with K-Pop, with a combination of YouTube videos and translations, you’ll be able to sing along and understand the lyrics in no time!
Want to learn more about K-Pop? Here’s everything you need to know about the biggest K-Pop stars!
Maile Proctor