🇰🇷 Lesson 15: The Past Tense (-았/었어요)

Up to now you could say what you do: 가요, 먹어요, 공부해요. But most conversations start with what already happened — "How was your weekend?", "Did you eat?", "I went to Busan last year." Good news: if you can build the present tense from Lesson 7, you already know 90% of the past tense. Korean uses the same vowel-harmony rule and the same contractions. You just add one extra piece.

🧠 The Mental Model: One Extra Block

Think of a Korean verb as a train of blocks: stem + (honorific) + (tense) + ending. In Lesson 7 you built stem + 아요/어요. The past tense slides a tense block, 았 / 었, between the stem and the ending, and after that ㅆ the ending is 어요 every single time. So the whole job is choosing 았 or 었 — using the very same vowel check you already do for 아요 and 어요.

English does something similar: walk → walked. The difference is that English "‑ed" has dozens of exceptions (go → went, eat → ate). Korean's past marker is almost perfectly regular. The only "exceptions" are the irregular verb classes you'll meet in Lesson 21 — and even those follow their own clear rules.

Pronunciation tip: the ㅆ carries over into the next syllable, so 갔어요 sounds like [가써요] and 먹었어요 like [머거써요]. That strong "ss" sound is the audible signal of the past — listen for it.

📖 Stems With a Final Consonant (No Contraction)

When the stem ends in a consonant (받침), nothing merges. You just check the vowel and attach 았어요 or 었어요.

Notice that adjectives work exactly like verbs: 좋다 → 좋았어요 "was good", 재미있다 → 재미있었어요 "was fun". Korean has no separate word for "was" — the adjective itself goes into the past.

🔗 Stems Ending in a Vowel (Contraction)

When the stem ends in a vowel, the vowels squeeze together — exactly the same squeezes you learned for the present in Lesson 7. If you know the present form, you know the past.

🪪 Nouns in the Past: 이었어요 / 였어요

In Lesson 5 you learned 학생이에요 / 의사예요. The past works the same way: choose the form by whether the noun ends in a consonant.

🚫 Saying What You Didn't Do

All the negation tools from Lesson 10 still work. Only the final verb changes to the past; 안 and 못 stay where they were.

Remember the 하다-verb rule from Lesson 10: 안 goes between the noun and 했어요 — 공부 안 했어요, 청소 안 했어요. With 못 it's the same: 운동 못 했어요 "I couldn't work out".

⏰ Past Time Words

Past sentences usually come with a time word, placed near the start of the sentence (after the topic, if there is one).

The rule of thumb from Lesson 9: words that are relative to today — 어제, 오늘, 내일, 아까 — don't take 에. Words built from a unit of time — 지난주, 지난달, 작년, 토요일 — do. To say "ago", put 전에 after an amount of time: 두 시간 전에 "two hours ago", 삼 일 전에 "three days ago", 5년 전에 "five years ago".

🎩 Past + Honorific + Formal

Lesson 13 gave you the honorific block -(으)시- and the formal 합니다 style. They combine with the past block in a fixed order: stem + 시 + 었 + ending. 시 + 었 merges into 셨.

Because the past block ends in ㅆ (a consonant), the formal ending is always -습니다, never -ㅂ니다: 갔습니다, 왔습니다, 이었습니다, 였습니다. Formal questions end in -습니까?: 식사하셨습니까? "Have you had your meal?" And don't forget the special honorific verbs: 먹다 → 드시다 → 드셨어요, 자다 → 주무시다 → 주무셨어요.

💬 Dialogue: Monday Morning

Minjun and Sujin are coworkers catching up before work.

Notice 잘했어요 at the end — literally "you did well". It's the all-purpose past-tense compliment: "Well done!", "Good call!", "Nice work!" You'll hear it constantly in classrooms, too, so every time you get something wrong in the exercises below, remember that the mistake is just the step before 잘했어요.

🌏 Culture Note — 밥 먹었어요? (Did you eat?): One of the most common greetings in Korea is a past-tense question: 밥 먹었어요? It isn't really about food — it's a way of saying "Are you doing okay?" that grew out of harder times when having a meal wasn't guaranteed. A simple 네, 먹었어요. 수진 씨는요? is the perfect answer, even if you only had a coffee. With an elder or your boss, the honorific version is 식사하셨어요?

✏️ Practice

🧠 Check Your Understanding

❓ Common Questions

🔮 Looking Ahead

In Lesson 16: Directions & Transportation you'll learn to get around a Korean city — buses, subways, taxis and asking the way. The past tense comes straight along: 지하철을 탔어요 "I took the subway", 길을 잃었어요 "I got lost", 몇 번 버스를 탔어요? After that, Lesson 17 turns the clock the other way with wants, plans and the future.