I Am Mad / Angry in Korean

Hi guys, it’s your Korean teacher Jun. First of all, if you got pissed off and googled how to say ‘I’m mad’ in Korean? Calm down and take a deep breath and hold your anger a bit and learn this phrase and scream it to the person who you are mad at. Anyway, I don’t know what happened to you but there there… I’ll be on your side. So… You want to know how to say ‘I am mad / angry’ in Korean huh?

Cool Down Your Brain

Let’s be cool even if you are mad right now and try to write ‘I’m mad / angry’ in Korean on your mind in 5 seconds and scream it.

How To Say I Am Mad / Angry in Korean

저 화났어요

[jeo hwa-nasseoyo]
I’m angry / mad

Basic form : 화(가) 나다
반말(informal non-honorific) form : 화나
Negative form with 해요 speech style : 안화났어요

You must understand 화나다 is a verb, not an adjective. 화나다 describes an action like any other verbs. Since it’s a verb, even you said it in the past tense : 화났다, it shows the present status. You have to use the pluperfect (past perfect) tense to say ‘I was mad’

This vocabulary is quite interesting and funny because 화 is from a chinese word 火 which means ‘fire’ and 나다 is a pure Korean vocabulary which means ‘occur’, ‘happen’ or ‘grow’. So, the literal meaning of 화나다 is ‘fire grows’ lol.

Ahhh Natural-☆

To make ‘I am mad’ in Korean sound really really really natural, You should avoid to use any subject / topic markers and the proper pronoun is 저 almost time. Why?

1st. the real subject in this phrase is ‘화(fire)’ : 화(가) 나다.
2nd. I don’t know, 저는 or 제가 sounds super weird to the native’s ear.

저는 화났어요 (wrong)
I am mad

저 화났어요
I am mad

How To Use

A: 왜 그래요?
What’s wrong?
B: 진짜 화나요
I’m really mad

A: 저 하나씨한테 화났어요
I’m mad at you, Hana
B: 제가 뭐 잘못한거 있어요?
Did I do something wrong?

사람들을 화나게 하는 방법은 두가지가 있는데,
There are 2 ways to make people angry.
하나는 말을 끝까지 하지 않는 것이고
The first is not finishing the speech and
* popular joke in Korea lolol

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Other Ways To Say

화난다 is matched to ‘angry’ in English. Of course, Korean has other vocabularies for being mad. However, 화난다 is a most common word that you can use in any time and other vocabularies are a bit tricky to use because it sounds really rude depend on how to use it. Anyway, Others are like this.

빡친다
[ppakchinda]
= It’s a slang that especially young people use. You should avoid to use it when the subject is not ‘I’.

성질난다
[seongjil-nanda]
= it’s also a slang I guess? Old people use it often and they pronounce it as 승질난다[seungjil-nanda]. And please, avoid to use it when the subject is not ‘I’.

Vocabulary Note

왜 [we] : why
진짜 [jinjja] : really
한테 [hante] : to / at (indirect object)
뭐 [mwo] : what
잘못하다 [jalmot-hada] : to do wrong / to make a mistake / to misbehave
거 [geo] : thing
있다 [itdda] : to have / to be (in place)
사람들 [saram-deul] : people
화나게 하다 [hwa-nage hada] : make someone angry
방법 [bangbeob] : method / way
하나 [hana] : 1 (to count)
말 [mal] : speech / language
끝 [ggeut] : end / last
까지 [ggaji] : until / to
-고 [go] : and