Lesson 112 gave you 있어요 and 없어요. This lesson gives you the words that go in front of them.
Vocabulary: 위치 — position
All of these attach to a noun and take 에: 책상 위에, 의자 밑에.
left안에inside오른쪽에
right아래에 / 밑에 — under
| 앞에 | in front of | 안에 | inside |
| 뒤에 | behind | 밖에 | outside |
| 위에 | on, above | 가운데 / 중간 (中間) | in the middle |
| 아래 / 밑에 | under, below | 옆에 | next to, beside |
| 오른쪽에 | on the right | 왼쪽에 | on the left |
아래 and 밑 are near-synonyms. 밑 tends to mean directly underneath and touching; 아래 is the more general below.
Compass directions
| 동 東 (동쪽) | east | 남 南 (남쪽) | south |
| 서 西 (서쪽) | west | 북 北 (북쪽) | north |
쪽 means side or direction, and it is what turns the bare Sino-Korean character into a usable word.
These two come loaded: 남한 is South Korea and 북한 is North Korea. In practice South Koreans call themselves 한국 사람, not 남한 사람 — 한국 on its own means the South. 북한 사람 is the term for a North Korean.
The frame
N이/가 N에 있어요 / 없어요.
subject where is / isn'tLocation first, verb last — SOV, as always.
A: 책(이) 어디에 있어요?
Where is the book?
B: (책이) 의자 위에 있어요.
It's on the chair.
B: (책이) 책상 밑에 있어요.
It's under the desk.
B: (책이) 책상 서랍 안에 있어요.
It's in the desk drawer.서랍 is drawer. Note how the last one stacks: 책상 서랍 안에 — desk drawer inside. Korean builds these outside-in, the opposite of English.
At work:
A: 가방이 어디에 있어요?
Where's the bag?
B: (가방이) 의자 위에 있어요.
It's on the chair.
A: 책임님이 회의실에 있어요?
Is the 책임님 in the meeting room?
B: 아니요, (책임님이) 회의실에 없어요. 집에 있어요.
No, they're not in the meeting room. They're at home.책임님 is the HMGICS title from lesson 106 — and note it takes 이 as its particle, because 님 ends in a consonant.
Strictly, a senior person’s location should use the honorific verb 계시다 rather than 있다 — 책임님이 회의실에 계세요. The deck keeps 있어요 throughout because the grammar being drilled is 있다/없다, but 계세요 is what you would actually say about a manager to another colleague.
Work culture: the table
What is on it
| 밥 | rice |
| 국 | soup |
| 반찬 | side dishes |
| 수저 | spoon and chopsticks (as a set) |
| 숟가락 | spoon |
| 젓가락 | chopsticks |
반찬 arrive unordered, in quantity, and are shared. They are refillable free of charge in most restaurants, which is what the next section is for.
Asking for more
| ___ 주세요. | ___, please. |
| ___ 더 주세요. | More ___, please. |
| ___ 조금 주세요. | A little ___, please. |
| ___ 조금만 더 주세요. | Just a little more ___, please. |
주세요 is the workhorse request form — please give. 더 is more, 조금 is a little, and 만 is only, which is what makes 조금만 더 politely modest rather than merely quantitative.
식사 예절 — table manners
1. Wait for the seniors to start.
Nobody eats until the most senior person at the table has begun. Before your first bite:
잘 먹겠습니다.
I'm going to eat well. → Thank you for the meal.2. Things not to do.
| Don’t | Why |
|---|---|
| Lift the rice or soup bowl off the table | Unlike China or Japan, Korean bowls stay down. You bring the spoon to your mouth, not the bowl |
| Stand your chopsticks upright in the rice | This is how rice is offered to the dead at 제사, a memorial rite. At a dinner table it reads as very bad luck |
| Eat noticeably faster or slower than the table | Pace is collective — finishing far ahead leaves everyone else feeling rushed |
| Talk with your mouth full | |
| Cough, sneeze, or blow your nose at the table | Excuse yourself and step away |
The bowl rule is the one that catches people who have eaten in Japan, where lifting the rice bowl is correct. Korean uses a spoon for rice — that is why 숟가락 is part of the standard 수저 set and chopsticks alone are not enough.
3. Stay until the seniors have finished.
Leaving the table before the most senior person is finished is rude, even if you have finished eating. When the meal ends:
잘 먹었습니다.
I ate well. → Thank you for the meal, I enjoyed it.잘 먹겠습니다 and 잘 먹었습니다 are the same phrase in different tenses, and the difference is the -겠- from lesson 110. 먹겠습니다 is I am about to eat; 먹었습니다 is I ate. Said in the wrong order they are nonsense, so it is worth hearing the difference rather than memorising two unrelated sounds.