According to Yonhap News on January 7, the December 2024 dictionary update also included other Korean terms such as “noraebang,” “maknae,” “jjigae,” “tteokbokki,” and “pansori,” bringing the total to seven new additions.
This marks the first inclusion of words of Korean origin in the Oxford English Dictionary in three years, following a significant update in September 2021.
The Oxford English Dictionary has incorporated around 20 Korean words in 45 years, starting with “kimchi,” “makgeolli” and “ondol” in 1976. However, the 2021 update alone saw a surge of 26 new terms, reflecting the global impact of Korean pop culture.
This phenomenon is in line with the global success of Korean OTT content such as “Squid Game” and “Hellbound” and the growing interest in Korean culture, fueled by K-pop, leading to an increase in Korean language learners at the global.
Among the 2021 additions were “aegyo,” “banchan,” “bulgogi,” “chimaek,” “daebak,” “dongchimi,” “fighting,” “galbi,” “hallyu,” “hanbok,” “japchae “, ” K-“, “K-drama”, “kimbap”, “Konglish”, “Korean wave”, “manhwa”, “mukbang”, “noona”, “oppa”, “unni”, “PC bang”, “samgyeopsal”, “skinship”, “tang soo do” and “trot”.
The dictionary describes “dalgona” as “a Korean dessert prepared by adding baking soda to melted sugar, typically sold by street vendors in the form of a flat disc with a simple shape such as a heart, star, etc., carved on its surface“.
An example sentence comes from a 2022 Boston Globe article: “Netflix had just released “Squid Game”, the huge Korean hit that made fans flock to Dalgona candy.”
