🇰🇷 Lesson 21: Reading Written Korean: 한다체, News & Headlines

Open any Korean news app and the first thing you see is a headline like 물가 또 올라 or 정부, 내년 최저임금 동결하기로. No 요, no 습니다, particles missing, sentences that seem to stop halfway. Tap the article and every sentence ends in a bare -다: 올랐다, 밝혔다, 보인다. You have spent twenty lessons learning to talk to people. This lesson is about the voice Korean uses when it talks to nobody in particular — the voice of newspapers, textbooks, diaries, essays and the TOPIK writing paper.

The good news: this is mostly a recognition skill, and it is far more regular than spoken Korean. Once you know about a dozen endings and a handful of news formulas, pages that looked like a wall of text start to open up.

🧠 The Mental Model: The Voice of the Page

Every Korean speech style you know encodes a relationship: 해요체 for polite strangers, 합니다체 for formal audiences, 반말 for close friends. Written Korean needs a style for a situation with no specific listener — a reporter writing for millions, a student writing an essay, you writing in your diary. That style is the plain style, usually called 한다체 ("the 한다 style", named after how 하다 looks in it).

You already hear this style in speech in one situation: talking to yourself. When a Korean steps outside and mutters 아, 춥다 or looks out the window and says 어, 비 온다, that is 한다체 — a remark addressed to nobody.

🧩 Building the Present Tense

The present tense is the only part with real choices, and the choice depends on one question: is it an action verb or a descriptive verb (adjective)? Note that the 한다체 present is often not the dictionary form, even though both end in -다.

Notice the irregular verbs: -는다 starts with a consonant, so ㄷ- and ㅂ-irregulars stay unchanged (듣는다, 돕는다) — the same rule of thumb you learned for -고 and -지만. Only ㄹ-stems change, because ㄹ always drops before ㄴ.

⏳ Past, Future, Questions & Suggestions

Everything except the present is easy: take the tense you already know and end it in -다.

Two things to notice. First, formal writing keeps forms "uncontracted" more often than speech: 하였다 beside 했다, 되었다 beside 됐다, 것이다 rather than spoken 거다. Both appear in newspapers; 하였다 simply feels a notch more formal. Second, written questions like -는가 are usually rhetorical — an essay or editorial asks 무엇이 문제인가? and then answers it. Nobody is expected to reply.

한다체 vs 반말: Which One?

Learners who studied 반말 in Lesson 1 often mix the two, because both drop 요. They are different levels with different jobs:

Honest note on speech: some close friends (especially men, and people talking online) mix 한다체 statements into casual chat — 나 지금 간다! — for a punchy, blunt feel. Recognise it, but don't write your essays in 반말 or your text messages in 한다체.

💬 Dialogue: What Is This Headline Saying?

📰 Headline Style: Korean in Telegram Mode

Headlines follow their own grammar, tuned to fit the most meaning into the fewest characters. The single biggest trick is to end on a Sino-Korean noun — a verbal noun that would normally take 하다 or 되다 — and let the reader supply the rest.

Also watch for the endings that turn up at the end of headlines again and again: 예정 (scheduled), 전망 (expected), 추진 (being pushed forward), 검토 (under review), 우려 (concern that…), 논란 (controversy), 비상 (emergency). 정부, 증세 검토 = "Government reviewing tax increase".

🗞️ The Language of Articles: Formulas Reporters Love

News writing is highly formulaic, which is great news for readers: the same dozen patterns carry most articles. Several of them are old friends in formal clothing — reported speech from Lessons 2–3 turns into -다고 밝혔다, and the passive from Lesson 15 shows up everywhere.

Which one? "It will…" in the news

🔍 A Reading Strategy That Works

1. Headline first. Rebuild it into a full sentence in your head — add the particles and the missing -했다.
2. Lede (first sentence) second. Korean articles put who/what/when/where in sentence one. If you only understand one sentence, make it this one.
3. Jump to the end of each sentence. Korean saves the main verb for last. Find it (올랐다? 밝혔다? 보인다?) before untangling the middle.
4. Chop at the connectors. Long news sentences are chains joined by -며, -고, -아/어 and -(으)나. Split them and read one link at a time.
5. Spot the source. 에 따르면 and -다고 밝혔다 tell you whose claim it is — the reporter's or someone else's.
6. Guess, then check. Unknown words in news are mostly Sino-Korean compounds. Guess from parts you know before reaching for the dictionary.

🇰🇷 Culture note: Korean schoolchildren keep a 그림일기 (picture diary) and later an ordinary 일기 for homework, always in 한다체 — so for Koreans the style feels personal and everyday, not just "newspaper language". Many adults still keep diaries or write personal blogs in it. If you start a Korean diary, one to three sentences a day in 한다체 is one of the best habits you can build at this level.

📰 Reading: A Heat-Wave Report

Look at how the article uses this lesson's toolkit: the headline ends on a bare -아/어 (빨라); the lede begins with 에 따르면; the third sentence is a chain joined by -며; the official's words are wrapped in -고 밝혔다; the forecast is hedged with -(으)ㄹ 것으로 보인다; 이에 따라 introduces the city's response; 한편 switches to a side topic.

✏️ Practice

🧠 Check Your Understanding

❓ Common Questions

Reading the news in a foreign language is one of the classic points where a B1 learner feels they have hit a wall — it is slower and denser than anything in a textbook. That feeling is normal and temporary. Pick one short article a day, rebuild the headline, read the first two sentences carefully and stop. In a month, the formulas in this lesson will jump out at you before you have consciously looked for them.

🔮 Looking Ahead

Now that you can read the voice of the page, it's time to write in it. In Lesson 22: Opinion & Argument you'll learn to state and defend a view — in speech with 저는 … 다고 생각합니다, and on paper with 따라서, 반면에 and -아야 할 것이다 — and you'll plan a full TOPIK-style 600–700-character essay in 한다체.