Interacting in Korean: Register, Relationships and Spoken Strategies
Speech levels and address terms
Korean interaction is organised around relationship and setting, not grammar alone. Before speaking, decide three things: who the listener is (age, status, familiarity), how formal the setting is, and what you want to achieve. These choices determine your speech level - 합쇼체 (-습니다/ㅂ니다) for formal public talk, 해요체 for polite everyday talk, and 해체/반말 for close equals or juniors - as well as your address term (선생님, 사장님; 씨 only after a full name and only to equals or juniors; 님 as a suffix) and your request strategy.
Interactional grammar
You must control honorific -시-, humble verbs (드리다, 뵙다, 여쭙다), indirect requests (-아/어 주시겠어요?, -아/어도 될까요?), permission and refusal formulas, and response tokens (네, 맞아요; 글쎄요; 아, 그렇군요). Turn-taking matters: back-channelling (응, 그렇구나) signals listening, but overusing it in formal talk sounds casual.
Traps
The commonest errors are register mixing within one turn (starting 합쇼체 and sliding into 해요체 or 반말), using 반말 with a stranger because the sentence feels short, attaching 씨 to a teacher, and confusing subject honorification with addressee politeness. Another trap is treating a -는데 prompt as a direct question; -는데 often invites a response rather than asking one.
Worked example
Task: ask a teacher for a deadline extension. Weak: “선생님, 숙제 못 해요. 시간 좀 줘요.” Strong: “선생님, 죄송한데 숙제를 금요일까지 제출해도 될까요?” The strong version uses an address term, a softening preface (죄송한데), an indirect permission request (-아/어도 될까요?), and consistent 해요체.
Rule of thumb
Choose one speech level per turn and hold it; when unsure, go one level more polite, not less. Use indirect forms for requests and refusals, and let -시- mark the person you are respecting.