Music is my Life…

Street Food in Seoul is very popular – a result of the ppalli, ppalli mindset

This is a follow up to Hallyu Word of the Day #1 wherein I had mentioned that 빨리 is one of the first words Korean learners come to know. Maybe it is the incessant ‘빨리,빨리!’ heard around – in restaurants particularly, or the famed Korean need for haste – but 빨리 is definitely registered quickly in the non-Korean’s dictionary.

So, what exactly am I talking about? 빨리 means quickly, literally – and is used as a standalone phrase (similar to 사랑해 in that respect) to mean ‘Hurry Up!’. Pronounced as Ppa-lli (where the L sound is between an L and an R really), this is often repeated – 빨리, 빨리! has a better effect than the solitary 빨리, I am told…

Korean haste is famed – and critiqued much too – and it’s so-called ‘ppalli, ppalli’ culture draws a lot of reactions from bloggers all over the world. In fact, I found a lot of interesting reads based on the ‘ppalli, ppalli’ mindset of Korea.

Some I enjoyed reading are:

• South Koreans call it ppalli ppalli (“hurry hurry”) – doing everything quickly, from leaving planes to eating, walking and driving…. “Ppalli ppalli was the main driving engine behind the nation’s rapid industrialization,” said Yoo Suk-choon, a sociologist at Seoul’s Yonsei University. South Korea was reduced to ashes during the 1950-53 Korean War, but has built itself into the world’s 11th-largest economy.
  However, government officials and social critics blame ppalli ppalli for many ills: traffic jams, corruption, slipshod construction and the reckless expansion by corporations on borrowed money, which proved a disaster during Asia’s 1997-98 financial crisis. Today, after decades of rushing, there are calls for a more leisurely lifestyle.

From Timesizing News.

• I really like this one :
  The Race is On (with apologies to George Jones)
• I found this one’s take on ‘ppalli, ppalli’s effect on safety to be very interesting:

Ppalli, ppalli is appalling.

Disclaimer : The views represented in the above blogs may not neccesarily reflect the views of the author of this blog.