다 이루어질 지니 포스터 촬영 비하인드
B1 Korean listening practice · Korean · Curated for intermediate learners
What does “sseokso” mean in Korean?
썩소 is the smile that isn’t one: one corner of the mouth lifted, nothing warm behind it. It shortens 썩은 미소, “rotten smile,” with 소 being the Sino-Korean 笑, “laugh.” The word spread in the early 2000s as the counterpart to 살인미소, the “killer smile,” so calling a face a 썩소 says the charm has curdled into a smirk.
In the clip the actor playing 가영 explains that her character barely knows how to smile, so what comes out is always a 썩소 — blank by default, and a crooked half-grin when she gets excited about smashing a lamp. A related put-down is 썩은 표정, the face of someone who has visibly given up.
Vocabulary frequency
How common is the vocabulary in this B1 Korean listening practice listening practice?
General Korean frequency
Words above this video’s level
Quick glosses for vocabulary that goes beyond this video’s B1 level.
Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general). Buckets approximate; exact ranks not stored.