The Authors

From idea to inspiration to something worth printing. It took years of effort to take the piss this well.
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A Bad Attitude

Gotta be irreverent & argumentative to mess with language like this, and willing to fight for every turn of phrase. A hangover will do that!

Caffeine

The best writing always goes on in a coffeeshop – wired and writing… Mongo need coffee. Coffee good.

A Pen

A pen! A pen to write the damn book! How else are you going to… oh, or a computer. Yeah, I guess that’ll do.

Time

To write shit, you need a helluva lot of time. Time and money – how else are you going to buy the fuckin’ coffee?

Where it came from

Always thought that the phrasebooks to learn Korean were a bit of a miss, and if I was going to really learn the language, I had to study the word on the street. Then I thought, what the hell, I might as well spread the word. Planned and prepped, but didn’t really get going till I found an intrepid co-author in my philosophy student.

  • How well I think I know Korean… 83% 83%
  • How well I really know Korean… 61% 61%
  • Repetoire of slang at my disposal… 97% 97%
  • Ability to piss people off with a simple phrase… 100% 100%
PETER N. LIPTAK

PETER N. LIPTAK

Author

An avid traveler and poet, Peter lives and writes in Seoul and draws on Korea’s people, language and culture as a source of inspiration, linguistic and otherwise. Keen on dialect and borrowed words in language, he did an MA in Korean Studies at Yonsei University.

SIWOO LEE

SIWOO LEE

Co-Author

A young philosopher who studied international management at KyungHee University, Siwoo Lee has taken a profound interest in the symbolism of language, combined with his fascination with foreign tongues and his sophisticated command of slang, has led him to delve into the world of A Rat’s Tail.
This Guy

This Guy

Inspiration

Rather than thank all the fine people who helped along the way, feeding me foul words, sharing slang and generally telling me where I can go, I thought why not this guy… After all, who would even know about oppa and gangnam and well Korea if it wasn’t for Psy. (P’sigh)
the Rat's Tail logo in black and white

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