Are you studying for an upcoming exam in your Korean class or the TOPIK exam that includes essay writing?
If you are at an intermediate to advanced level, you should become familiar with some Korean transitional phrases to make your paragraphs more interesting to read. A transitional phrase can be used to make your message transition smoothly from one sentence to the next.
If you just write a string of sentences without any transitional phrases, your essay can end up sounding awkward and robotic without a natural flow.
In this article, I have compiled a list of 30 Korean transitional phrases that will prove very useful for you to have in your writing arsenal.


Korean Transitional Phrases
๊ทธ๋์ | And |
๊ทธ๋ฌ๋ | But |
๊ทธ๋ ์ง๋ง | But |
ํ์ง๋ง | But |
๊ทธ๋๋ | Even so, |
์ด์ฒ๋ผ | As such, like this, to this extent |
๋ฐ๋ฉด์ | On the other hand, |
์คํ๋ ค | On the contrary, |
๋ฐ๋ผ์ | Therefore, accordingly, |
ํนํ | Especially, in particular |
๋ํ | Additionally, |
๊ฒ๋ค๊ฐ | In addition to that, |
๊ทธ๋ฟ๋ง ์๋๋ผ | Not only that, |
๊ทธ ์ธ์๋ | Besides that, |
๊ทธ ๊ฒฐ๊ณผ | As a result, |
๋ค์ ๋งํด์ | In other words, |
๋ง์ฝ | If for any reason |
๊ทธ๋ ๋ค๋ฉด | If that is the case, |
๊ทธ๋ | At that time, |
๊ทธ ๋น์ | Around that time, |
๊ทธ ํ์ | Thereafter, |
๊ทธ ์ ์ | Before that, previous to that, |
์ฐ์ | First (before anything else), |
์๋ฅผ ๋ค์ด | As an example, |
๋ฌด์๋ณด๋ค๋ | Above all else, |
๋ฌผ๋ก | Of course, |
๋น์ฐํ | Naturally, |
๋ฐ์ง๊ณ ๋ณด๋ฉด | After all, logically speaking, arguably, |
์ด๋ป๊ฒ ๋ณด๋ฉด | Depending on how you look at it, |
๊ทธ๋ผ์๋ ๋ถ๊ตฌํ๊ณ | In spite of that, nonetheless, |
Below are some examples of these phrases I have found in recent articles that appeared in Woman Sense, a womenโs magazine in Korea.
I have underlined and highlighted where transitional phrases are used, but you can use the links provided to read through the rest of the articles to find more on your own:
Examples:
์ด์ฒ๋ผ ๋๋ง์์ ์ฑ์์ด ๋ณดํธํ๋ ์ด์ ๋ ์ข ๊ต์ ๊ด๋ จ์ด ์๋ค. ๋๋ง์ ์ผ๋ฅ ํธํ ์์ ์ฑ์ ์ผ์ดํฐ๋ง์ ๋ด๋นํ๋ ์๋ฆฌ์ฌ ์์ธ๋ณด ์จ๋ โ๋ด๊ฐ ์ฑ์์ ๊ด์ฌ์ ๊ฐ๊ฒ ๋ ์ด์ ๋ ์ข ๊ต ๋๋ฌธโ์ด๋ผ๋ฉฐ โ์ฑ์ ์๋ฆฌ๋ฅผ ์ ์ผ๋ก ์ผ๊ณ ์๋ ๋ ์ญ์ ์ฑ์์ ํ๊ณ ์๋คโ๊ณ ๋งํ๋ค. ํ์ฌ ๋๋ง์๋ 70%์ ๋๊ต ๋ฐ ๋ถ๊ต ์ ์๊ฐ ์ด๊ณ ์๋ค. ๋ฐ๋ผ์ ์ฑ์ ๋ฌธํ๊ฐ ์ ์ ๋ฆฝ๋ผ ์๊ณ ๋๋ถ์ด ์ฑ์์ด ํธ๋ ๋๊ฐ ๋๋ฉด์ ์ ์ ์ธต ์ฌ์ด์์ ๊ฑด๊ฐ๊ณผ ํ๊ฒฝ์ ์ํด ์ฑ์์ ํ๋ ค๋ ์์ง์ ๋ํ ๋๊ณ ์๋ค.
์ด์ฒ๋ผ ๋๋ง์์ ์ฑ์์ด ๋ณดํธํ๋ ์ด์ ๋...
The reason the vegetarian diet has become widespread to this extent is...
๋ฐ๋ผ์ ์ฑ์ ๋ฌธํ๊ฐ ์ ์ ๋ฆฝ๋ผ ์๊ณ ...
Therefore, the vegetarian culture is well established...
๋ฐ์ง๊ณ ๋ณด๋ฉด ๊ทธ๋ ์ํ์ ํฅํ ์ฌ๋ถ์ ์๊ด์์ด ์คํฌ๋ฆฐ ์์์ ํ ๋ฒ๋ ๊ด๊ฐ์ ์ค๋ง์ํจ ์ ์ด ์๋ค. <ํ์๊พผ>(2010), <๋์ฃผ>(2015), <๊ทธ๊ฒ๋ง์ด ๋ด ์ธ์>(2018), <์ฌ๋ฐํ>(2019)๋ฅผ ๊ฑฐ์ณ ๋ ธ๋๋จธ๋ฆฌ ๋ฐํญ๊ฐ๊ฐ ๋ ์ํ <์๋>๊น์ง ๋ ๊ทธ๋ฌ๋ค.
ํนํ <์๋>์ ๊ทธ์ ์ ๋งคํนํ์ธ ์ํ ์ฐ๊ธฐ๋ ๋ฌผ๋ก ์ด๊ณ , ํฅํ๊น์ง ๋ ๋ง๋ฆฌ ํ ๋ผ๋ฅผ ์ก์ผ๋ฉด์ ๋ฐ์ ๋ฏผ์ ์ํ ์ธ์์ ๋ ๋ค๋ฅธ ์๋ฏธ๋ฅผ ๋จ๊ฒผ๋ค.๋ฐ์ง๊ณ ๋ณด๋ฉด ๊ทธ๋ ์ํ์ ํฅํ ์ฌ๋ถ์ ์๊ด์์ด ์คํฌ๋ฆฐ ์์์ ํ ๋ฒ๋ ๊ด๊ฐ์ ์ค๋ง์ํจ ์ ์ด ์๋ค.
It can be argued that he has never disappointed his audience on screen regardless of his filmsโ blockbuster status.
ํนํ <์๋> ์โฆ
In particular, โStart-Upโ (movie) is...
์ด๋ค์ด ์ต๊ทผ ์ฃผ๋ชฉ๋ฐ๋ ์ด์ ๋ ๊ธฐ๋ณธ์ ์ผ๋ก ์ธ๊ตฌ ๋ณํ ์ถ์ด๊ฐ ํ๋ชซํ๊ธฐ ๋๋ฌธ. ์ถ์ฐ์จ์ด ํ์ ํ ๋ฎ์์ง๋ฉด์ ์ ์ ์ธ๊ตฌ๊ฐ ๊ฐ์ํ๋ ๋์ 50~60๋๋ ์ ์ฒด ์ธ๊ตฌ์ 30%์ ์ก๋ฐํ๊ณ ์๋ค. ๊ฒ๋ค๊ฐ ์ต๊ทผ IT ๊ธฐ์ ์ ์ด๋ค์ด ์ ์ํ๊ธฐ ์์ํ๋ฉด์ ์์ฆ ๋ช ๋ ๊ฐ ์จ๋ผ์ธ์์ ๊ฐ์ฅ ์ฑ์ฅ ์๋๊ฐ ๋น ๋ฅธ ๊ตฌ๋งค์ธต์ด๊ธฐ๋ ํ๋ค.
๊ฒ๋ค๊ฐ ์ต๊ทผ IT ๊ธฐ์ ์ ์ด๋ค์ด ์ ์ํ๊ธฐ ์์ํ๋ฉด์...
In addition to that, as they started to become more skilled in the latest information technology...
์์นจ์ ์ ์ฑ๊ฒจ ๋จน์ผ๋ฉด ๊ท์น์ ์ธ ์ํ์ ์ ์งํ ํ๋ฅ ์ด ๋์์ง๋ค. ์ค์ ์ ํ๋๋์ด ๋ง์ผ๋ฏ๋ก ์์นจ์ ๋จน์ผ๋ฉด ์๋์ง๋ฅผ ์ป์ด ํ๋์ ์ธ ํ๋ฃจ๋ฅผ ๋ณด๋ด๊ฒ ๋๋ค. ํนํ ๊ฒจ์ธ์๋ ์ฒด์จ์ ๋์ด๋ ๋ฐ๋ ๋์์ ์ค ๊ฑด๊ฐ์ ์ ์งํ๋ ๋ฐ ์ข๋ค. ์์นจ์ ๊ฑฐ๋ฅด๊ณ ํ๋ํ๋ฉด ๋ชธ์ ํ๋์ ํ์ํ ์๋์ง๋ฅผ ์ป๊ธฐ ์ํด ์ฒด๋ด ์ง๋ฐฉ์ ๋ถํดํ๋๋ฐ, ์ด๋ ํฌ๋๋น๊ณผ ์ ์ฐ์ด ์์ฑ๋๋ค. ์ ์ฐ์ ๋ชธ์ ํผ๋ก๋๋ฅผ ๋์ด๊ณ ๋ฉด์ญ๋ ฅ์ ๋จ์ด๋จ๋ฆฐ๋ค. ๊ทธ๋ ๋ค๋ฉด ์์นจ์ผ๋ก ๋ฌด์์ ๋จน์ผ๋ฉด ์ข์๊น?
ํนํ ๊ฒจ์ธ์๋โฆ
Especially in winterโฆ
์ด๋ ํฌ๋๋น๊ณผ ์ ์ฐ์ด ์์ฑ๋๋ค.
At this time, glucose and lactic acid are created.
This is when glucose and lactic acid are created.
๊ทธ๋ ๋ค๋ฉด ์์นจ์ผ๋ก ๋ฌด์์ ๋จน์ผ๋ฉด ์ข์๊น?
If that is the case, what would be the best food to eat for breakfast?
Other useful Korean words and phrases you could check out:
Conclusion
In order to become more familiar with the above Korean transitional phrases, you should practice writing a variety of different sentences using the words/phrases listed.
I also want to emphasize how important it is for you to read other peopleโs writing as much as possible. As with any language, the more you read, the better you will become at writing. Try to find Korean books, magazines, newspapers, or any other types of written material that are appropriate for your level.
์ด์ฌํ ๊ณต๋ถํ์ธ์! ํ์ดํ !!