Yes even some words are similar to certain Chinese dialect like hak-seng in Korean and hak-seng in Hokkien/Fujian (Chinese Dialect). It means the same thing, which is student.

Some people do, but the older generation know more usually. Like my father in law knows many, but Hugh only knows some. Newspapers will sometimes clarify the meaning of a word by putting the Chinese character in brackets after it.

Can people still read Chinese characters there…? Or is it a thing of the past, known to a selected few? 🙂

Yup in Korea there are often 2 words for things – one is Pure Korean and one is Sino Korean – Sino Korean words are from Chinese. So people usually know which words are pure Korean and which words came from China. A lot of influence from China in regards to culture and language throughout the history of Korea.

And when you mentioned that among other things “bae” might mean “baby”, it totally cracked me up, because it’d be quite similar to its Chinese equivalent – “bao bei”, sometimes – “bei bei” :))

The more I hear Korean, the more I am astonished at the number of words that sound similar to Chinese. Sometimes almost one to one! Even the country’s official name comes across as almost exactly the same as when you read it in Chinese Cantonese: 大韓民國 (Daehan Min-guk).
Surely, so much similarity in a language could not be just a coincidence?

ADORBS. I’m so jelly.