Learn Korean History Terms with Pronunciation and English Meaning
Whether you’re studying Korean history, visiting historical sites, or just love history, this list will help you speak and understand essential Korean historical terms.
๐ Basic History Vocabulary in Korean
| Korean | Pronunciation | English |
|---|---|---|
| ์ญ์ฌ | yeok-sa | History |
| ์ญ์ฌํ | yeok-sa-hak | History (as a subject) |
| ์ญ์ฌ์ | yeok-sa-jeok | Historical |
| ์ฌ๊ฑด | sa-geon | Event |
| ์ฐ๋๊ธฐ | yeon-dae-gi | Chronology |
| ์๋ | si-dae | Era, period |
| ๊ณ ๋ | go-dae | Ancient times |
| ์ค์ธ | jung-se | Middle Ages |
| ๊ทผ๋ | geun-dae | Modern era |
| ํ๋ | hyeon-dae | Contemporary era |
๐ Historical Eras in Korea
| Korean | Pronunciation | English |
|---|---|---|
| ๊ณ ์กฐ์ | go-jo-seon | Gojoseon (Ancient Korea) |
| ์ผ๊ตญ์๋ | sam-guk-si-dae | Three Kingdoms Period |
| ๊ณ ๊ตฌ๋ ค | go-gu-ryeo | Goguryeo |
| ๋ฐฑ์ | baek-je | Baekje |
| ์ ๋ผ | sin-ra | Silla |
| ํต์ผ์ ๋ผ | tong-il-sin-ra | Unified Silla |
| ๊ณ ๋ ค | go-ryeo | Goryeo Dynasty |
| ์กฐ์ | jo-seon | Joseon Dynasty |
| ๋ํ์ ๊ตญ | dae-han-je-guk | Korean Empire |
| ์ผ์ ๊ฐ์ ๊ธฐ | il-je-gang-jeom-gi | Japanese colonial era |
๐ฟ Key History Terms & Concepts
| Korean | Pronunciation | English |
|---|---|---|
| ์ | wang | King |
| ์๋น | wang-bi | Queen |
| ํฉ์ | hwang-je | Emperor |
| ์ ํ | sin-ha | Vassal, retainer |
| ๊ถ์ | gung-jeon | Palace |
| ๋ฌด๋ค | mu-deom | Tomb |
| ์ ๋ฌผ | yu-mul | Artifact |
| ์ ์ | yu-jeok | Historical site |
| ์ ์ | jeon-jaeng | War |
| ๋ ๋ฆฝ | dok-rip | Independence |
๐ฐ๐ท Modern Korean History Terms
| Korean | Pronunciation | English |
|---|---|---|
| ํ์ผํฉ๋ฐฉ | han-il-hap-bang | Annexation of Korea by Japan |
| ๊ด๋ณต | gwang-bok | Liberation (from Japan) |
| ๋ํ๋ฏผ๊ตญ | dae-han-min-guk | Republic of Korea |
| ํ๊ตญ ์ ์ | han-guk jeon-jaeng | Korean War |
| ๋ถ๋จ | bun-dan | Division (North & South Korea) |
| ๋จ๋ถ๊ด๊ณ | nam-buk-gwan-gye | Inter-Korean relations |
| ๋ฏผ์ฃผํ | min-ju-hwa | Democratization |
| 5ยท18 ๋ฏผ์ฃผํ ์ด๋ | o-il-pal min-ju-hwa un-dong | Gwangju Democratization Movement |
| ์ญ์ฌ ๊ต์ก | yeok-sa gyo-yuk | History education |
| ์์๋ถ | wi-an-bu | Comfort women |
๐ฌ Useful Expressions & Phrases
| Korean | Pronunciation | English |
|---|---|---|
| ํ๊ตญ์ ์ญ์ฌ๋ ์์ฃผ ์ค๋๋์ด์. | han-guk-ui yeok-sa-neun a-ju o-rae-dwaet-seo-yo | Koreaโs history is very long. |
| ์กฐ์ ์๋์ ๋ฌด์จ ์ผ์ด ์์์ด์? | jo-seon si-dae-e mu-seun il-i iss-eoss-eo-yo? | What happened during the Joseon Dynasty? |
| ์ด ์ ๋ฌผ์ ์ผ๊ตญ์๋์ ๊ฒ์ ๋๋ค. | i yu-mul-eun sam-guk-si-dae-ui geo-sim-ni-da | This artifact is from the Three Kingdoms period. |
| ๋ ๋ฆฝ์ด๋๊ฐ๋ค์ ๊ธฐ์ตํด์ผ ํด์. | dok-rip-un-dong-ga-deul-eul gi-eok-hae-ya hae-yo | We must remember independence activists. |
| ํ๊ตญ ์ ์์ 1950๋ ์ ์์๋์ด์. | han-guk jeon-jaeng-eun cheon-gu-baek-o-sip nyeon-e si-jak-dwaet-seo-yo | The Korean War started in 1950. |
๐๏ธ Practice Time!
Try these history-focused questions in the comments:
1๏ธโฃ What is the Korean word for โartifactโ?
2๏ธโฃ How do you say โliberationโ in Korean?
3๏ธโฃ What does โ์กฐ์ โ mean?
๐ Want to Learn More?
โ๏ธ Geography in Korean
โ๏ธ Chemistry in Korean
โ๏ธ Biology in Korean
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