Poetic Korea.

Here in Korea, English is inexplicably HUGE. It is quite possibly the most successful merchandising tool for just about everything from clothes to music (bands are considered more talented if they throw in a few English lines)to school stationary. 


If its got English on it, they have got to have it. What seems unimportant is the actual meaning behind the English, for example, theres a brand here named 'Morning Glory' which makes stationary. Now, you and I both know the first thing to mind when hearing such words. However when my sweet third grade student shows me their pink, adorable, fluffy pencil case brandished with the words 'Morning Glory' and asks teacher 'What?' 


As you can imagine what follows is a description of a beautiful morning, the sun shinning, its warm, birds chirping....


This is by no means the most surprising use of the English tongue, I've heard stories about students in clothing with swear words, walking along naively with their little tiger back packs and telling the world to 'do one'.


Whats worse is the utter nonsense plastered on everything, a great example of this is:

'Listen I told you how I love you. You are the moon and I am the sundrops (not bad hey?!). Always my eyes watch your condition.'

As displayed on a 10 year olds pencil case.


There are endless images you can find online illustrating either Konglish (Korean+English combined, used to describe either a wrong pronunciation such as copee, as coffee is known in Korea, or a word made from Korean and English) or just hilarious English phrases. Also I'm sure theres a fair few of us foreigners that buy items with Korean on and have no idea what it says, I only hope the Koreans enjoy it as much as we do!