The Law of Korean Time

Seung Hyun Nam

Have you ever heard of the saying “Korean-Time”? A word made by Korean teens, meaning, it is never wrong to add up half an hour in any meeting estimated time for everyone to arrive. To elaborate, if you are about to meet one of your Korean friends at 7 P.M. for dinner or whatever, it is very likely that your friends will show up somewhere between 7:20 ~ 7:30.

For all my 12(6+3+3) school year life time during my teen ages, this so called The Law of Korean-Time, was never wrong, sometimes worse. We make appointments to meet at 12 P.M., then the actual time everybody arrives is about 12:30.

Some people might think this as an occasional factor, but you are totally wrong about it. No exceptions are made by teens in Korea so if you are planning to meet any of your friends you should keep this Law in mind or else it will hurt your feelings.

But don’t misunderstand the point I am trying to make. You should be there on time even though your friends are late!

As writing down my article, I realized I’ve been overly hyper-reactive about the issue. Please read my article as a fun “happening” that most of Korean teens might have experienced once in their life time. But still I fully agree to this law no matter what.