How to Say 'You' in Korean: Skip 당신, Use a Name or Title

Look up "you" in a Korean dictionary and you get 당신 (dangsin). Say it to a stranger in Seoul and you have started an argument.

That's not the dictionary being careless. Wiktionary's entry for 당신 notes that the word shows up constantly in translations from other languages as a generic second-person pronoun, and in dictionaries as a placeholder, despite how little Koreans actually say it. Somebody had to put something in the "you" slot. 당신 was the least-bad option available.

So the honest answer to how to say "you" in Korean is that mostly you don't say it. Korean has no word to swap in. What it has is a system that fills the slot with something else: nothing at all, a name, a job title, or a family word aimed at a total stranger. This is the other half of Korean social calibration. The speech-levels guide covers how to end your verbs; this covers what to call the person you're ending them at.

당신 is a real word, and it's almost never aimed at a person

우리는 당신밖에 모른다 (urineun dangsinbakke moreunda), "we know no one but you," is a perfectly normal Korean sentence. It's also the kind of sentence that lives in a song lyric or an advertisement, addressed to nobody in particular.

당신 has four habitats, and a stranger's face isn't among them.

Married couples use it with each other, affectionately: 당신이 내 아내라서 정말 행복해 (dangsini nae anaeraseo jeongmal haengbokhae), "I'm so happy you're my wife." Songs, poems, prayers, ads and translated text use it for a faceless generic reader. Talk To Me In Korean puts it plainly: 당신 is common in songs, novels and emotional writing, and can come across as rude the moment you speak it. It also works as an honorific third-person pronoun for an absent superior, a use Wikipedia's Korean pronouns article records.

The fourth habitat is a fight. 당신 지금 뭐 하는 거예요? (dangsin jigeum mwo haneun geoyeyo?) isn't "what are you doing?" It's closer to "just what do you think you're doing?" So is 당신 때문에 일이 이렇게 됐어요! (dangsin ttaemune iri ireoke dwaesseoyo!), "because of you, things turned out like this."

One thing here is worth getting exactly right. 당신 isn't a formal or polite pronoun. Wiktionary glosses it as plain, the non-polite grade, and pointing a plain pronoun at a stranger is the whole problem. "Never use 당신" is still too strong, though. Aim for a narrower rule. Almost never at a person standing in front of you.

The default answer is to say nothing at all

어디 가요? (eodi gayo?) is a complete Korean sentence, and it means "where are you going?"

Nothing was omitted there. Korean drops subjects when context makes them obvious, so the "you" was never in the sentence to begin with. Wikipedia's Korean pronouns entry lists this null-subject habit first among the strategies Korean uses in place of second-person pronouns, ahead of names, kinship terms and titles.

This is the move to reach for before any of the others. If you're looking at someone and asking them a question, they already know you mean them.

It stops working when context gets crowded. Three people at a table, and 뭐 먹을 거예요? (mwo meogeul geoyeyo?), "what are you going to eat?", could be aimed at any of them. That's when you need the next three sections.

When you do need to name them, the name is the pronoun

지나 씨 언제 퇴근해요? (jina ssi eonje toegeunhaeyo?) translates to "when do you get off work, Jina?"

Notice what happened. English needed "you" and got a vocative "Jina" for free. Korean spent the name instead. The grammar backs this up: in 희진 씨가 이것 좀 도와주실래요? (hijin ssiga igeot jom dowajusillaeyo?), "could you help with this, Heejin?", the subject particle 가 attaches directly to 씨. The name isn't tacked onto the front of the sentence. The name is the subject of it. (If you want the particle behind that, the 은/는 vs 이/가 guide covers which one to pick.)

씨 (ssi) is the polite suffix that makes this work between peers. Attach it to a given name (석민 씨) or a full name (이석민 씨). Both are fine, and the full name is the one to reach for when you've just met.

Don't attach it to a surname alone. Wikipedia's Korean honorifics article states that 박 씨 (bak ssi) to someone's face can come across as quite rude, because it signals you consider yourself higher-status than they are. Talking about an absent person that way is fine: 김 씨예요 ("he's a Mr Kim") passes without comment. The rudeness is specific to address.

That mistake is easy to make in exactly one way. You learn that 씨 is the polite suffix, you see 박 on a name plate, and you say 박 씨 to the man standing behind it. Nothing visible happens. Korean rarely tells you when you've been rude, which is why this particular error survives for years in a learner's speech.

The other suffix you'll hear is the vocative -아/-야 (민수야, 지수야). Same article, same blunt warning. It works only between close friends and only horizontally or downward. On a stranger it's extremely rude.

Your boss doesn't have a name

부장님, 보고서 읽어보셨나요? (bujangnim, bogoseo ilgeobosyeonnayo?) means "have you read the report?" You don't call your boss by name in Korean. Not the bare name, not the name with 씨.

The division of labour is clean. 씨 attaches to names and marks level respect. 님 (nim) attaches to titles and roles, and it looks up: 부장님 (department head), 과장님 (section chief), 교수님 (professor), 기사님 (driver), 선생님 (teacher). Wikipedia's honorifics entry ranks 님 above 씨 outright. It also raises kinship terms into their formal versions (형님, 이모님, 선배님). Online, the same 님 gets attached to usernames as a matter of forum convention rather than documented rule, so a poster called 민지 becomes 민지님.

선배 (seonbae) and 후배 (hubae) run on tenure rather than age. Somebody two years younger than you who joined the company first is your 선배. When you can't work out whether someone counts, 이름 + 씨 is the safe default.

Here's the honest limit. The 부장 / 과장 / 팀장 ladder varies between companies, and plenty of Korean firms have been flattening it. Learn the shape, then learn your specific office.

What to actually call a stranger in Korean

The woman running the 김밥 place is 사장님, the taxi driver is 기사님, and the twenty-year-old who just dropped his phone is 학생. Here's the rest of it. These are defaults rather than rules. 국립국어원, Korea's National Institute of Korean Language writes its address-terms guidance as consideration rather than prescription, and that's the right way to hold this table.

From the other side of the counter, you're 손님 or 고객님. That's what the staff will call you. Worth recognising, so you know when you're the one being addressed.

Cafés, convenience stores and delivery couriers are missing from that table on purpose. No source I could find names a settled title for them, and guessing one would defeat the point of having a table.

For those, and for every other case where you can't read the room, there's 저기요 (jeogiyo). 저기요, 여기 물 좀 주세요 (jeogiyo, yeogi mul jom juseyo), "excuse me, could I get some water?" Its cousin 여기요 works the same way. People will tell you 저기요 is for someone across the room and 여기요 is for summoning someone to your own table. Treat that as a tendency at most. Both are fine.

실례합니다 (sillyehamnida) is a different tool. It's genuinely formal, and it's for interrupting someone or squeezing past them. Using it to flag down a waiter sounds stiff.

사장님 won, and the survey numbers say why

In 국립국어원's own survey, 46.6% of respondents said being called 아줌마 or 아저씨 was unpleasant. Among women, that figure was 58.4%.

Those numbers surfaced when the institute published its address-terms guide in 2020, built on survey work from 2017. The same research found 저기요 and 여기요 drew the least objection, at 33.9%, and the institute's diagnosis of why is worth sitting with. Gendered address terms tend to get used in ways that treat the person on the receiving end as a subordinate.

Its recommendation follows from that. Address restaurant staff as 사장님 or 종업원님 regardless of their rank or gender, and call an unfamiliar adult 선생님, according to the recommendation 이데일리 reported in 2018. The principle underneath both is to pick the term with the least gender in it.

The shift is visible over four decades. A 2024 feature tracing the history of restaurant address terms runs it as 아줌마 and 아저씨 in the 1980s, 여기요 through the 2000s, and lands on a flat verdict: 오늘날 가장 많이 들리는 호칭은 '사장님'이다, "the title heard most often today is 사장님." Its explanation is social distance. More people now find it comfortable to use a title that keeps some space between them.

이모 presumes you're a regular

이모님, 여기 반찬 좀 더 주세요 (imonim, yeogi banchan jom deo juseyo), "could we get some more side dishes?", is something you'll hear constantly in Korean restaurants. 이모 (imo) means "maternal aunt," and it's long been the warm default for the woman running a casual place.

Learners tend to get this backwards. 이모 isn't old-fashioned and it isn't a mistake. The two real costs are that it's gendered and that it assumes a familiarity you might not have earned, and 사장님 carries neither. If you eat somewhere weekly and the owner knows your order, 이모님 is a lovely thing to say.

오빠 depends on your gender, not theirs

The same 27-year-old man is 오빠 to a woman and 형 to a man. The word encodes who is speaking, which is why coming to Korean through K-dramas produces such a specific mistake.

A male learner who absorbed 오빠 from subtitles will eventually aim it at an older Korean man. He wanted 형.

오빠 also carries a romantic charge between a woman and an older man she's close to, which is why the switch to 오빠 is a recognised K-drama beat for a relationship turning romantic.

What nobody can give you is a threshold. There's no rule about how many meetings earn you 오빠, and any number you've been given was invented. What the evidence actually supports is thinner than a threshold. These words require actually being close, and reaching for one announces that you think you are. No source gives a threshold for when that's true, so use their name with 씨 or their title and let the other person set the pace. If they joined your school or company before you, 선배님 is safe. If you can't tell, 이름 + 씨 is.

우리 엄마, and why Korean says "our mom"

우리 엄마는 간호사예요 (uri eommaneun ganhosayeyo) means "my mom is a nurse." Not our. Mine. An only child says it the same way.

우리 (uri) means "we" or "our," and Korean uses it where English reaches for "my": 우리 학교 (my school), 우리 회사 (my company), 우리 집에 놀러 와요 (uri jibe nolleo wayo), "come over to my place." 우리나라, written as a single word, is how you say "my country."

This is the same instinct that keeps 당신 out of everyday speech. Korean prefers naming the relationship over staking the claim. "My" is a possession word. 우리 is a belonging word, and the thing you belong to does the work.

You may have heard that Koreans say 우리 와이프, "our wife," and that Koreans themselves find it odd. Half right. 국립국어원 has published on the phrase, but its objection is aimed at 와이프, an English loanword the institute describes as spreading fast among young husbands while giving strong offence to older adults. Its recommended alternatives are 아내 and 집사람, and both take 우리 exactly the same way. The "our" was never the problem.

The one thing to change tomorrow

Take the last three Korean sentences you wrote with 당신 or 너 in them and delete the pronoun. Most of them will still be complete sentences. The ones that fall apart are the ones that needed a name or a title, and now you know which is which.

This doesn't remove the guessing. Doing arithmetic on a stranger's age in a Korean café is an uncomfortable thirty seconds, and no table fixes that. If you want somewhere low-stakes to practise picking a term, an AI conversation partner like Conversa lets you get it wrong a few times before it counts. What the system does is shrink the number of things you might get wrong, and hand you 저기요 for the rest.