#learn korean

집으로 돌아가요. → I’m going back home.

출발점으로 돌아가자. → Let’s go back to the starting point.

돌아오다 — to return here ("come back")

Return to where the speaker currently is.

집에 돌아왔어요. → I came back home (and I'm here now).

여기로 돌아오세요. → Come back here. (request)

Tip: You can think of it like 가다 is to go while 오다 is to come/came.

A common confusion:

Using 집에 갔어요 to say “I got home" or "I went home (and am now here)" isn't correct.

Actually, you want to say:

집에 왔어요 “I came home (I’m home now).”

The other two:

들어가다 — to go in / to enter (go into a place)

Think: you are outside → you go in there. But it can also not be so literal, like getting into a university, going into the workforce, etc.

Examples:

가게에 들어가요. → I’m going into the store.

방에 들어갔어요. → I went into the room.

들어오다 — to come in / to enter (come into where the speaker is)

Think: someone else is outside → they come in here.

Examples:

여기 들어오세요. → Please come in (to where I am).

친구가 집에 들어왔어요. → My friend came into the house.

A good example that makes the difference pretty clear (I think?):

Scenario 1: The teacher is inside the classroom, the students are outside, she says: 들어오세요.~ Come in, please.

Scenario 2: The teacher is outside the classroom, and the students are also outside. She says: 들어가세요.~ Go in, please.

It has to do with where the speak is, so in this example the 선생님.

Copy and paste into a document to save/annotate your own copy. Also, feel free to practice in the comments (or point out any inaccuracies)! We’re all learning here.

아마도 저는 한국어로 웹툰들을 찾고 있었던 것 같아요.

(이제부터 영어 쓸게요)

After looking around this website, which is entirely in Korean, my guess is that it was some sort of online forum like Reddit. And that seems to be true.

Research tells me Bobaedream is basically a huge Korean online community forum, mixed with various discussion boards and posts on cars, gossip, news, personal stories seeking advice, humor, etc. Apparently, it originally was a place to sell cars???

Either way, I am sharing this because I think it would be a good place to practice Korean reading and increase vocabulary, because it has so many miscellaneous topics. Likewise, reading the comments is good practice too.

I'm not at this high a level of Korean yet to easily navigate the website, but from that initial illustration "돈이 없다의 기준" I am in the humor/issues/GIF section of the board, which is probably right where I want to be. If you press the next button ("다음"), it'll take you to the next post, which seems to vary quite widely, no matter what category you are in.

Here is a direct link to the little comic about money: 사람마다 갈린다는 '돈이 없다'의 기준 - 보배드림 신유머/이슈/움짤.

Also, here is the translated menu list of topics:

Anyhow, I just wanted to share this with you all as a potential reading practice resource. You can literally click through any category and just hunt for a post that looks like your level and try reading/translating it. It's quite fun.