Sociolinguistic Artifacts

Koreans are increasingly using the English loanword 'wife', due to it lacking many of the social and cultural connotations that are encoded in its native Korean counterparts. This blog post by Dom & Hyo provides brief breakdown of several Korean terms for 'wife'. As women's status in Korean society has evolved, the younger generations are moving away from some older and more formal Korean terms, including one that literally translates to "home person" or "person that stays at home".