What does “ssaeppajige” mean in Korean?
기억을 잃은 여자와 자칭 남자친구
B2 Korean listening practice · Jeolla Korean · Curated for upper-intermediate learners
쌔빠지게 comes from 혀가 빠지다, “for the tongue to fall out,” worn down in the southern dialects into 쌔빠지다. It marks effort pushed past exhaustion: 쌔빠지게 고생했다, “I worked myself into the ground.” It is colloquial and a little rough, so keep it for friends and complaints rather than anything official.
The clip is a drama steeped in Jeolla speech, where a neighbour tells an amnesia patient that the man claiming to be her boyfriend 쌔빠지게 쌔빠지게 찾아다녔다 — hunted for her until he dropped. The scene is full of regional markers: 그짝 for 그쪽, 기둘려봐 for 기다려봐, sentence endings in -는디 and -벼. Dictionaries list the word as 새빠지다; the tensed 쌔- spelling is how people write it.