Let's Learn Korean - 인연 and 악연

Total words: 169

인연 [因緣]
[명사]
1 사람들 사이에 맺어지는 관계. see 연고 緣故
2 어떤 사물과 관계되는 연줄.

anybody with a korean boy or girlfriend has heard these uncommon words. I found out that 인연 doesn’t mean a good meeting or a bad meeting either. 악연 does mean a bad meaning, however. 인연 simply means meeting somebody. It’s like a Buddhist thing about a fateful meeting.
I just was wondering if I could verify this. If you are getting along well with the person, you can say 좋은 인연. So you can tell your girlfriend or boyfriend, if things are going good lately, 우리가 만나는 게 좋은 인연인 것 같아요. My korean may have a mistake in it. You can also say 나쁜 인연. Once again, 인연 simply means meeting, and isn’t neither good nor bad, unlike 악연.

here is a quote from naver news : during an interview:
intervewer: 아무래도 노 대통령과는 악연인 것 같습니다. Working with President No was bad for everybody.
interviewee: “그렇지도 않아요. “ No, not really.

Posted by joesp on Wednesday Mar 21, 2007 in Korean Writing | |

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트랙백:

Somehow 인연 just doesn’t seem correct translated as meeting. 인연 (因緣) is like a connection that occurs and ties people together (hence the expression “인연을 끊다” or “sever ties.") It’s closely tied to fate. A common expression you’ll hear in Korea is “옷긴만 스쳐도 인연이다.” An expression that implies that even just brushing against someone is enough to form a connection.

You will find a lot of words in Korean that talk about the bonds between people and the fate that brings us all together.

Posted by 제비군 on Wednesday Mar 21, 2007 at 01:56 PM
If you translate it as “fate” that doesn’t work, though. It’s not fate. It’s just a connection, the meeting, there’s no sense of “having something which must happen” which is ‘fate’ in English. If anything, it would be ‘important meeting’. And, ‘fate’ is usually meant to mean the end of something was foredained from the beginning. How can you say “end the fate” “인연을 끊다 is better translated as ‘ending meeting somebody’. I thought it meant ‘fate’,too, but. I know something is lost in translation, but ‘fate’ doesn’t make it up well enough.

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ezcorean.com

Posted by joesp on Wednesday Mar 21, 2007 at 05:55 PM
I never advocated translating it as fate. I simply said it has a relationship with fate. If I had to translate it I would probably have to call it “relationships,” “relations,” “ties” or something depending on the context.

Posted by 제비군 on Wednesday Mar 21, 2007 at 06:01 PM
I asked my wife about it and she said that these words mean good relationship & bad relationship. She further clarified by saying that 인연, could be used for almost anything, but 악연, is only for a “wrong” relationship.

Thanks for the new vocabulary and Joel the phrase is seems really good as well.

Joel, just so you know, you can change your profile to add an avatar so your posts won’t have the mystery silhouette next to them.

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호랑이 굴에들어가야 호랑이 새끼를 잡는다

Posted by 王音癡 on Wednesday Mar 21, 2007 at 08:53 PM
It’s a confusing word. Like Tiger’s wife, my Korean friends can’t really explain 인연. They say there is good and bad 인연. yet, it’s more than relationshp and meeting, it’s “closely tied to fate”. How the same word can be used to mean “a relationship which was destined to happen” when that anything can be either good, bad, or nothing (옷긴만 스쳐도 인연이다) .... makes it a mystical word, it has no decent translation because it really has no meaning beyond mysticism. Budhist mysticism or Confucian mysticism.

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ezcorean.com

Posted by joesp on Thursday Mar 22, 2007 at 09:21 AM
makes it a mystical word, it has no decent translation

Posted by kirkeherring on Monday Mar 26, 2007 at 07:00 PM
It’s such a good topic. It brought us some kind of discussion and everybody learn something new.

Bye the way, my dictionary does have the meaning of ‘fate’

1. 운명에 의하여 맺어진 관계
which is literally translated to ‘relationship that is tied by fate
인연이 깊다
신랑과 신부는 성직자 앞에서 부부의 인연을 맹세하였다
우리는 인연인 것 같아

2. (불교에서) 어떤 관계를 맺도록 본래부터 정해진 것
(in buddhism) some kind of relationship that is determined to be met/tied/related by nature
인연이 있으면 언젠가 또 만나게 되겠지

3. 사람들 사이에 서로 맺어지는 관계
any kind of relationshop between people

common expressions with 인연
인연을 끊다
인연을 맺다
인연이 멀다
인연이 없다

-it’s from ‘외국인을 위한 한국어 학습 사전’ which 왕음치님 once introduced here.

Posted by future-kteacher on Sunday Apr 1, 2007 at 10:11 PM
Just to show that I’m not ragging on Korean here, I want to point out this french sentence from Le Parfum (the book from which the new movie was taken)

She also had a soul closed to the world.....

I don’t think anybody could explain “soul” but that does give the sentence a powerful feeling, somehow… somehow!

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ezcorean.com

Posted by joesp on Monday Apr 2, 2007 at 06:27 PM