Although the Korean language existed over a thousand years, it was not until the 15th century that the alphabet was formalised. Prior to that, Chinese characters were used to write the Korean language. Seoul the South Korean capital, is a major metropolitan hub with more than 10M people speaking Korean day in and day out. In the Korean language, Seoul simply means “the capital city.”

There are many ways of mastering the language. All of these ways include achieving a decent level of fluency if not proficiency in the four primary skills of every language. These are speaking skills, reading skills, listening skills and writing skills. An individual is expected to practise and master all four of these skills perfectly in order to essentially achieve proficiency in the entire language. With that said, many individuals tend to either get scared of specific skills or underestimate them and therefore do not practice them enough. With that, we can start to analyse as to why you can clearly understand Korean but can’t seem to speak it well. Speaking and writing skills are the two most practical skills out of all four of them. These two skills cannot be practised Without actually utilising them. Speaking skills require you to engage actively in conversations or any other situation which requires you to utilise that language. Without actually engaging in any such situation, you honestly cannot expect to master the skill. If you do not actively engage, you might be able to understand what you’re saying because you are still practising your listening skills but you will not be able to speak.

So your question as to why you can understand Korean but cannot seem to speak it well, the answer is pretty simple. You just haven’t practised that skill enough. You might have practised your reading and listening skills perfectly and therefore understand the language to a level of expertise. But since you never happened to practise the speaking skills enough or at least to the same level as you did with your reading and listening skills, you just don’t seem to be able to speak Korean. There are many ways that you can still learn how to speak Korean. One of the major ways of practising your speaking skills would be to simply read aloud. Since you already seem to understand the language well, it wouldn’t be very tough for you to practise your reading skills along with your speaking skills. Apart from that, you can try watching Korean movies, K dramas, listen to K pop or podcasts in Korean and try to imitate what they say.

Just like all other South Eastern languages such as Japanese, Chinese etc. the Korean language is built on pillars of a complex honorific system, that involves various verb endings and vocabulary depending on your relationship with the person you are speaking with. In North Korea, the greatest honour is specially reserved for the Great Leader, who ends up with his own verb,(«op»).