Saying goodbye is hard to do

When traveling to another country, many people try at the minimum to learn how to say three things (in addition to basic counting): hello, goodbye, and thank you. It's not hard to learn a few polite phrases, and it can go a long way toward smoothing your interactions.

For most languages this is pretty easy, if you're not too hung up on perfect pronunciation.

Mandarin Chinese: nǐ hǎo, zàijiàn, xièxiè. (6 syllables)
French: bonjour, au revoir, merci. (7 syllables)

But for Korean it's a different story.

"Thank you" isn't actually that bad: gamsahamnida. It's a bit long at five syllables, but it's perfectly serviceable in most situation.

"Hello" is somewhat trickier. You can get by with just one form, annyeong haseyo (5 syllables), but you will hear people say annyeong hasimnikka to you, so you've got to be ready for that one. And to kids you should really just say annyeong, but annyeong haseyo won't be a disaster, after all they're just kids, what do they care?

The real problem is goodbye. This is where the different level of politeness and formality, and a wide variety of different farewell contexts, create a genuine challenge of monumental proportions. There is simply no one way to say goodbye that you get away with in all contexts.

Here are different situations that all require a different form of goodbye:

1. You are leaving, the addressee is staying.
2. You are staying, the addressee is leaving or you are both leaving, but in different directions.
3. You are leaving, but plan on coming back later.
4. The addressee is leaving, but planning on coming back later.

Each of these five must be properly modulated, and in some cases radically transformed, depending on the relative social status of the two people involved and the degree of formality and politeness that the situation calls for.  The chart below gives just a subset of the possible utterances.

Situation	polite	non-polite (to inferior)	polite formal	literally
1	annyeonghi kyeseyo	jal isseo	annyeonghi kyesepsio	stay peacefully/well
2	annyeonghi kaseyo	jal ka	anneyonghi kasipsiyo	go peacefully/well
3	tanyeo ogesseoyo	tanyeo olkke	tanyeo ogesseumnida	I will go and come back
4	tanyeo oseyo	katta wa	tanyeo osipsio	Go and come back

But there are many other variations too.

So what should you do if you are traveling to Korea? You can manage in most cases with the first two polite forms, annyeonghi kyeseyo and annyeonghi kaseyo. It's tricky, though, because they differ by only one vowel, and you have to keep the two straight.

My advice would be to mumble the fourth syllable, smile, and bow. Bow deep if you are young, and just incline your head a bit if you are old.