Korean Feeling Adjectives: Emotions and Physical States

At a glance

• Emotions (슬프다, 행복하다) and body states (배고프다, 피곤하다) are adjectives or adjective-like verbs.
• Plain statements describe the speaker's own feeling: 저는 슬퍼요.
• Other people's feelings need -아/어하다 or a guess ending: 슬퍼해요, 슬픈 것 같아요.
• Body states use a body part as a second subject: 배가 고파요.

The first section defines the group and explains why it needs its own hub.

What Are Korean Feeling Adjectives?

Korean feeling adjectives are words that name an inner emotion or a bodily condition, such as 행복하다 (happy), 슬프다 (sad), 배고프다 (hungry) and 피곤하다 (tired). They conjugate like other adjectives, and they share a grammar rule that most other adjectives do not have: the plain present states the speaker's own feeling.

Two groups sit under the heading.

1. Emotions name what happens inside you: 기쁘다, 슬프다, 무섭다, 외롭다.
2. Physical states name what your body reports: 배고프다, 목마르다, 졸리다, 아프다.

A few feeling words are dictionary verbs, not adjectives. 화나다 (to get angry) and 긴장되다 (to be nervous) conjugate as verbs in the Standard Korean Language Dictionary (표준국어대사전), yet learners use them like adjectives: 화나요, 긴장돼요. The lessons mark these words so you know which grammar applies. The next section states the first-person rule.

How Do You Talk about Your Own and Other People's Feelings?

You state your own feeling with the plain adjective, and you report someone else's feeling with a form that shows how you know it. 저는 슬퍼요 ("I am sad") is natural. 친구는 슬퍼요 as a flat statement sounds odd, because you cannot feel your friend's sadness directly.

The -아/어하다 ending turns the adjective into a verb, which is why its object takes 을/를 and not 이/가: 김치가 좋아요 ("I like kimchi", adjective) becomes 친구는 김치를 좋아해요 ("My friend likes kimchi", verb). The full contrast is on Korean feeling verbs. Next come the three pages in this section.

Feeling Pages

This section has three pages, one for each part of the topic.

Korean Emotion Adjectives

Gives 25 feeling adjectives from happy and sad to nervous and embarrassed, with polite forms, near-synonym notes (기쁘다, 행복하다, 즐겁다) and the first-person rule. It also marks which words are dictionary verbs.

Korean Physical State Adjectives

Gives hungry, thirsty, tired, sleepy, sick, dizzy and healthy, with the double-subject pattern 배가 고파요 and a doctor dialogue.

Korean Feeling Verbs

Explains how to talk about other people's feelings with -아/어하다, and the object-versus-subject switch in 좋다 / 좋아하다.

Related pages sit outside this section: nouns for feelings are in Korean emotions vocabulary and set phrases are in Korean feelings phrases. Single-word dictionary pages show every form of 행복하다, 슬프다, 기쁘다, 화나다, 무섭다, 아프다, 피곤하다 and 좋다. The next two sections preview the words.

Which Emotion Words Come First?

Six emotion words give a good start. The table shows each with its polite present and a short sentence.

Three of the six are irregular: 슬프다 drops ㅡ, 무섭다 and 외롭다 change ㅂ to 우. 화나다 and 긴장되다 are dictionary verbs, so their modifier forms are 화난 and 긴장된 as in 화난 얼굴 ("an angry face"). The body-state words follow.

Which Body-State Words Come First?

Six body-state words cover most daily needs. They follow the double-subject pattern, in which the person is the topic and the body part is the subject.

The pattern 저는 배가 고파요 has two subjects: 저는 marks the topic (me) and 배가 marks the body part that is hungry. The details, with a doctor dialogue, are on the physical states page. 졸리다 is a verb in the Standard Korean Language Dictionary, but its present 졸려요 states your own condition just like an adjective.

What this hub does not cover. It does not teach the full list of emotions, the -네요 ending for noticing a feeling, or vocabulary for illness. Those belong to the lessons and the vocabulary pages.

About this page. Last updated 2026-10-09. The Korean text on this page was machine-generated and reviewed and signed off by Min-ji Park on 15 October 2026. Forms were cross-checked with the site's rule-based conjugation engine. Romanization follows the Revised Romanization of Korean and is shown only as a learning aid.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I say "I am sad" in Korean? Say 저는 슬퍼요. The adjective 슬프다 drops its ㅡ before 어요, giving 슬퍼요 in the polite present. Because the feeling is yours, the bare adjective is natural. You can also drop 저는 and say 슬퍼요 alone, since Korean leaves out a subject that is clear from the situation.

How do I say "he is sad" in Korean? Use the verb 슬퍼하다 or add an inference ending. 그는 슬퍼해요 ("He feels sad") reports what is visible, and 그는 슬픈 것 같아요 ("He seems sad") gives your guess. A bare 그는 슬퍼요 claims direct knowledge of his inner state, which Korean avoids. The full pattern is on the feeling verbs page.

What is the Korean word for hungry? Hungry is 배고프다, polite present 배고파요, usually said as the two-part phrase 배가 고파요 ("the stomach is hungry"). The word 배 means stomach, and 고프다 is almost never used without it. Thirsty works the same way: 목이 말라요 or 목말라요. The physical states page teaches nine such words.

Which feeling words are irregular? Most are. The ㅡ-drop group includes 슬프다 (슬퍼요), 기쁘다 (기뻐요), 배고프다 (배고파요) and 아프다 (아파요). The ㅂ group includes 무섭다 (무서워요), 외롭다 (외로워요) and 어지럽다 (어지러워요), and 목마르다 is a 르 word (목말라요). The 하다 words, such as 행복하다, are regular.

What is the difference between feelings and physical states? Feelings such as 슬프다 name an emotion and normally take the person as the topic: 저는 슬퍼요. Physical states such as 배고프다 name a bodily condition and usually take a body part as a second subject: 저는 배가 고파요. Both are first-person statements in the plain present.