Korean workplaces lean heavily on polite and formal registers. This guide gives you 20 phrases for email openings, meeting moments, and phone calls โ the polite-speech sentences that help you fit in at a Korean office.
Choose ๊ณต์ ๋๋ฆฝ๋๋ค vs ์๋ด๋๋ฆฝ๋๋ค for email/Slack with CC-safe openers, tone ladders, and rewrite drillsโlearn
Use ๊ฐ๋ฅํ์ค๊น์ and ์๊ฐ ๊ด์ฐฎ์ผ์ธ์? to schedule meetings politely in Korean with templates and time drillsโlearn
Korean workplaces run on polite and formal registers. The default speech level is ํ์ญ์์ค-์ฒด or ํด์-์ฒด, never casual banmal unless you've been explicitly invited into it. Below are 20 phrases, grouped by scenario, that cover 80% of what you'll say at a Korean office in your first months.
์๋
ํ์ธ์. โโํ โโโ์
๋๋ค.annyeonghaseyo. โโtim โโโipnida. โ "Hello. This is โโโ from the โโ team." (email opener)๋ฐ์์ ์ค์ ์ฐ๋ฝ๋๋ ค ์ฃ์กํฉ๋๋ค.bappeusin jue yeonrakdeuryeo joesonghapnida. โ "Sorry to contact you during a busy time."์๋์ ๊ฐ์ด ์๋ด๋๋ฆฝ๋๋ค.araewa gati annaedeuripnida. โ "I'd like to inform you as follows." (bullet points below)ํ์ธ ๋ถํ๋๋ฆฝ๋๋ค.hwagin butakdeuripnida. โ "Please confirm."๊ฐ์ฌํฉ๋๋ค.gamsahapnida. โ "Thank you." (closer)โโโ ๋๋ฆผโโโ deurim โ "Sincerely, โโโ" (literal: "given by โโโ")ํ์ ์์ํ๊ฒ ์ต๋๋ค.hoeui sijakhagetseupnida. โ "Let's begin the meeting."์๊ฒฌ ์์ผ์ ๋ถ ๊ณ์ ๊ฐ์? โ "Does anyone have thoughts?"์ฌ๋ณด์ธ์.yeoboseyo. โ "Hello?" (answering a call)โโํ โโโ์
๋๋ค.โโtim โโโipnida. โ "This is โโโ from โโ team." (self-identification)์ง๊ธ ํตํ ๊ฐ๋ฅํ์ธ์?jigeum tonghwa ganeunghaseyo? โ "Are you available to talk now?"๋์ค์ ๋ค์ ์ฐ๋ฝ๋๋ฆฌ๊ฒ ์ต๋๋ค.najue dasi yeonrakdeurigetseupnida. โ "I'll contact you again later."์ฃ์กํ๋ฐ, ํน์ ๋ถํ ํ๋ ๋๋ ค๋ ๋ ๊น์?joesonghande, hoksi butak hana deuryeodo doelkkayo? โ "Sorry โ could I ask a small favor?"๋ฆ์ด์ ์ฃ์กํฉ๋๋ค.neujeoseo joesonghapnida. โ "Sorry I'm late."์ ๊ฐ ์๋ชปํ์ต๋๋ค.jega jalmothaetseupnida. โ "I was in the wrong." (formal apology)
์ ์๊ฒฌ์ ~์
๋๋ค.je uigyeoneun ~ipnida. โ "My opinion is ~."์กฐ๊ธ ๋ ์ค๋ช
ํด ์ฃผ์๊ฒ ์ด์?jogeum deo seolmyeonghae jusigesseoyo? โ "Could you explain a little more?"๋ค, ์๊ฒ ์ต๋๋ค.ne, algetseupnida. โ "Yes, understood."๋ค์ ์ฃผ ์์์ผ๊น์ง ๋ง๋ฌด๋ฆฌํ๊ฒ ์ต๋๋ค.daeum ju woryoilkkaji mamurihagetseupnida. โ "I'll finish it by next Monday."์ค๋ ํ์๋ ์ฌ๊ธฐ๊น์ง์
๋๋ค.oneul hoeuineun yeogikkajiipnida. โ "That's all for today's meeting."