What is 야민정음? | Korean Language Trends Ep. 2

Does anyone remember “1337?” How about “h4x0r,” “pwn,” or even words like “n00b?” These are all examples of what’s called “leet speak” in English, and this type of writing has existed for as long as the internet’s been around. Fortunately (for me being able to understand), it’s only limited to the internet, but in Korea some of their “leet speak” (called 야민정음) has been getting more popular in actual spoken Korean, so I wanted to make this video to show some of those examples.

Although it’s not likely you’d ever encounter someone speaking “8kㅗㅜㅏ” to mean “양파” (take a moment to figure that one out… it gave me a headache), you might come across people using 롬곡, 커엽다, 댕댕이, and many others these days. Here’s a video explaining this recent phenomenon called 야민정음.