Bags becoming babies South Korea s strange honorific twist

When is an object referred to as if it were alive – like a person, a baby or a friend?

In Korean, a cup of latte served at a cafe is personified and respected with honorifics, and a vitamin supplement sold via a home shopping channel is referred to as a “child devoted to filial duty”, with sellers encouraging potential customers to “adopt” the items and “bring them home”.

Personification, once mostly confined to the realm of poetic licence in literature, is spilling over into everyday speech in South Korea, baffling both Korean language experts and learners alike.

Trying to sound polite?

One of the areas where this bizarre, if not outright incorrect, twist of the Korean language’s honorific system is most commonly observed is in places where people are trying to sell items to customers, such as home shopping channels, shops, cafes and restaurants.

On home shopping channels, bags or jewellery items are often personified and referred to as “baby” (“agi” in Korean),“friend” (“chingu”),or “kid” (“ayi”).

On YouTube and other social media platforms, celebrities, influencers and even ordinary people refer to their possessions as “baby”, which has practically become a trend.

Some online sellers describe health supplements like collagen and vitamins as “hyoja”, a Korean term referring to children who are devoted to taking care of their parents, encouraging customers to buy them, or using the Korean verb “daeryogada” for the act of taking someone somewhere.

The “misuse” of honorifics for inanimate objects is also common at customer service points, such as cafes, restaurants and markets, where staff use them when serving orders or addressing customers about products or services. For instance, when informing a customer that their ordered coffee is ready, staff use honorifics to refer to the coffee.

To be grammatically correct, honorifics should be