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Annyong haseyo! you say, and gently nod a greeting to your new, han-guk ch'in-gu, who comments on how well you speak Korean. You modestly reply chal mot'aeyo.

　　With this phrasebook, you can chat with your hosts in the minbak, let your hair down and sing along in a noraebang, or enjoy the stories of friendly farmers and mysterious monks as they guide you around. With a few words in the local language, you'll be savouring Korea's disarming hospitality at its best.

　　This phrasebook includes extended sports coverage on traditional Korean activities, a section on food terms to ensure confident menu-ordering, and a common-sense grammar section to make understanding the Korean language just that little bit easier. New Korean spelling reforms are included.

　　－all the words and phrases for a great stay in Korea

　　－a heaped serving of food terms ensures confident menu ordering

　　－buy knick-knacks at the market in the local language

　　－all there is to know about Korean etiquette and body language

　　－easy to use phonetic transliterations of the Hangul script throughout

　　－plenty of phrases to join in the friendly fun at soccer games

　　Korea

　　A peninsula and former country of eastern Asia between the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan. Site of an ancient civilization dating to the 12th century B.C., the peninsula was united as a kingdom in the 7th century A.D. and despite a Mongol invasion (13th century) remained unified until the Japanese occupation of 1910 to 1945. After World War II the Soviet- and U.S.-occupied territories formed separate republics, and a North Korean invasion of the south led to the Korean War (1950–1953). The peninsula is now divided between North Korea and South Korea.

　　the Korean Language

　　Official language of North Korea and South Korea, spoken by more than 75 million people, including substantial communities of ethnic Koreans living elsewhere. Korean is not closely related to any other language, though a distant genetic kinship to Japanese is now thought probable by some scholars, and an even more remote relationship to the Altaic languages is possible. Korean was written with Chinese characters to stand in various ways for Korean meanings and sounds as early as the 12th century, though substantial documentation is not evident until the invention of a unique phonetic script for it in 1443. This script, now called Hangul, represents syllables by arranging simple symbols for each phoneme into a square form like that of a Chinese character. Grammatically, Korean has a basic subject-object-verb word order and places modifiers before the elements they modify.