Bags becoming 'babies': Korea's strange honorific twist

Korea Herald

22-02-2025

Struggling with honorifics, obsessed with propriety, Koreans show respect to everything from coffee to vitamins
When is an object referred to as if it were alive — like a person, a baby or a friend?
In Korean, a cup of latte served at a cafe is personified and respected with honorifics, and a vitamin supplement sold via a home shopping channel is referred to as a "child devoted to filial duty," with sellers encouraging potential customers to "adopt" the items and "bring them home."
Personification, once mostly confined to the realm of poetic license in literature, is spilling over into every speech in Korea, baffling both Korean language experts and learners alike.
Trying to sound polite?
One of the areas where this bizarre, if not outright incorrect, twist of the Korean language's honorific system is most commonly observed is in places where people are trying to sell items to customers, such as home shopping channels, shops, cafes and restaurants.
On home shopping channels, bags or jewelry items are often personified and referred to as "baby" ("agi" in Korean), "friend" ("chingu"), or "kid" ("ayi").
On YouTube and other social media platforms, celebrities, influencers and even ordinary people refer to their possessions as "baby," which has practically become a trend.
Some online sellers describe health supplements like collagen and vitamins as "hyoja," a Korean term referring to children who are devoted to taking care of their parents, encouraging customers to buy them, or using the Korean verb "daeryogada" for the act of taking someone somewhere.
The "misuse" of honorifics for inanimate objects is also common at customer service points, such as cafes, restaurants and markets, where staff use them when serving orders or addressing customers about products or services. For instance, when informing a customer that their ordered coffee is ready, staff use honorifics to refer to the coffee.
To be grammatically correct, honorifics should be used when addressing the customer, not their order.
Kim Rena, a 22-year-old Korean Canadian who studies Korean language at Ewha Womans University's Korean language institute, was confused by this use of honorifics at coffeehouses.
'I've used verbs with the honorific suffix 'si' when talking to my grandmother, but I didn't know Koreans use honorifics to refer to objects,' she said.
Some employees in the service industry admit to the bizarre language rampant in the industry, attributing it to an obsession with politeness.
Song Yeon-jeong, 27, a manager at a franchise restaurant in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, said, "I believe many customers here tend to view employees as being below them and expect unconditional service.'
"The prevalent mindset that customers should be treated like royalty has made this incorrect language usage a habitual practice."
Too materialistic?
Experts lament the recent shift in the honorific system, which is a key feature of the Korean language.
According to the National Institute of the Korean Language, honorifics should be used for the person being addressed, not for objects. Such usage is only appropriate for the body parts, thoughts or words of the person to be addressed with honorifics.
The widespread technical misuse of honorifics in the service industry may reflect the speaker's intention to sound polite and show respect, but it is clearly in error grammatically, they point out.
'Honorifics in Korea are an important part of the country's language culture, conveying politeness, formality and social hierarchy. Using honorifics for inanimate objects disrupts the Korean language,' said Jung Hee-chang, a professor of Korean language and literature at Sungkyunkwan University.
The professor called for a culture that honors and respects the rules and principles of the Korean language, particularly as the Korean language is drawing new learners globally with the influence of the Korean Wave.
Some experts see an influence of materialism in the trend of treating products as if they were people.
'The materialistic culture, where people tend to judge each other based on their possessions, places excessive value on goods and changes the language used to describe them,' said Lim Kyu-gun, a professor of business administration at Hanyang University.
While individuals freely give nicknames to their belongings, Lim added that the practice of indiscriminately personifying products, when introduced by trendsetters and public figures, reinforces materialism, and is not educationally beneficial.