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Nunchi

J.K. YOUNG

인사이트케이주식회사 · 2026-11-13 출간 예정

ISBN 9791123127156 · 사회과학

정가 17,000원 · 전자책

출간 예정전자책국립중앙도서관 ISBN 서지정보 등록

출간되면 알려드릴게요

『Nunchi』는 2026-11-13 출간 예정입니다. 출간되면 서점 판매 링크와 함께 이메일로 한 번 알려드립니다.

책 소개

You know the word. Now practice it in fifty-seven rooms.

6:02 PM. Your work is done. Your team leader is still typing.

Three colleagues glance at the clock, then at him, then back at their screens. Nobody moves. You have been in Korea for eleven days, and this is the first time you understand that the office has a second language, and that everyone but you is speaking it.

The language is nunchi. It has no grammar and no dictionary, but Koreans grade each other on it constantly: nunchi-fast, nunchi-slow, no-nunchi. Being bad at it is worse than rude. It is lonely.

This book will not make you Korean. It will show you fifty-seven rooms, in slow motion, so the second language becomes a little less silent.

What the word means. Nunchi, 눈치, is the skill of reading what other people think and feel from what they do not say: a pause, a glance, the speed of a reply, who picked up the chopsticks first. The first syllable is “eye.” The word appears in Korean writing from the seventeenth century, and it is usually glossed in English as “eye-measure,” a sizing-up. Koreans use it as a verb and a grade. You “look at nunchi” (nunchi-reul boda) when you watch a room before acting. You “give nunchi” (nunchi-reul juda) when you signal without words. You “have no nunchi” (nunchi-ga eopda) when you miss the signal, which is the commonest social criticism in the language. You “are fast” (nunchi-ga ppareuda) when you catch it before anyone has to give it.

Why a second book about it. The word reached English readers in 2019 through Euny Hong’s The Power of Nunchi, a lively book that presents it as a form of emotional intelligence anyone can learn. This is a different kind of book. It does not argue that nunchi will make you happy or successful. It goes into fifty-six ordinary situations, at home, at work, at the table, on the street and online, and slows each one down to show what a Korean in that room is reading, what the two available moves are, and why the room prefers one of them. It is a field guide.

How the book is built. The situations are grouped into six stages. Stage 1 is the home and the family: the in-laws, the seat, the gift, the holiday. Stage 2 is the office: leaving time, the company dinner, the group chat at night, the meeting where nothing is decided. Stage 3 is the table and the drinking that follows. Stage 4 is the street and the city: the subway seat, the queue, the shopkeeper, the taxi. Stage 5 is online and in love: the read receipt, the emoticon, the “some” stage, the hundredth day, the apology. Stage 6 is ceremonies, neighbors and shared spaces: the funeral hall, the wedding envelope, floor noise, the bathhouse, the mountain trail, the parents’ group chat and the church invitation. Each stage ends with a chapter that corrects a myth, Stage 5 ends with a chapter on the foreigner’s right not to read the room at all, and an epilogue closes the book.

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