Reading Korean News (보도체): Decoding Report Style

Korean news is written in 보도체 (report style): it states facts with the plain written endings -ㄴ다/-었다 (사고가 발생했다 — an accident occurred), forecasts with -(으)ㄹ 것으로 보인다 / -(으)ㄹ 전망이다 (기온이 떨어질 것으로 보인다 — temperatures are expected to drop), and attributes sources with ~에 따르면 …-다고 한다 (기상청에 따르면 비가 온다고 한다 — according to the weather agency, it will rain). This is your Level 3 capstone — a reading lesson where almost nothing is new. Instead, every tool you collected this level finally clicks together on a real news page.

You just finished passive verbs — 잡히다, 발생되다, 시작되다. Those passives are exactly what fills Korean headlines, because news cares about the event, not the doer. Add the written style from your diary lesson and the indirect quotation from your reporting lesson, and you can already decode a weather bulletin or a 마트 (supermarket) life-news blurb. Let’s learn to read, not translate.

Ten words for reading the news

These frame almost any Korean article, from weather to economy.

Reading the written endings — -ㄴ다 / -었다 / -ㄹ 것으로 보인다

News never speaks to a reader, so it uses the plain written style (문어체) you met in the diary lesson — only now applied to facts and forecasts. Verbs take -ㄴ다/-는다, past is -았/었다, and a forecast becomes -(으)ㄹ 것이다 / -(으)ㄹ 전망이다 / -(으)ㄹ 것으로 보인다.

When you decode a sentence, find the ending last: 발생했다 = 발생하다 (occur) + written past 었다. 떨어질 것으로 보인다 literally is “it is seen as likely to drop.” These three shapes — plain present, -었다 past, -ㄹ 것으로 보인다 outlook — cover most of any article’s verbs.

Attributing the source — ~에 따르면 / -다고 한다 / -라고 밝혔다

News rarely claims things directly; it attributes them. The frame is ~에 따르면 (according to ) at the front and -다고 한다 (it is said) or -다고 밝혔다 / -라고 밝혔다 ( stated) at the end. This is just the indirect quotation from your reporting lesson, wearing a press uniform.

Read the pair together: ~에 따르면 tells you whose claim it is, and -다고 한다 / -다고 밝혔다 tells you it’s reported, not the writer’s own opinion. 밝혔다 (revealed/stated) is the formal news verb; in your diary you’d just write 했다.

Decoding passive headlines — 잡혔다 / 발생했다 / 시작된다

Headlines compress hard, and they overwhelmingly use the passive verbs from your last lesson, because the actor is unknown or beside the point. Spot the -이/히/리/기- or -되다 ending and you’ve found the headline’s engine.

Two more formal connectors round out the news register: -(으)나 (“but,” the written -지만), -은 결과 (“as a result of”), and 에 대하여/대해 (“regarding”). So 조사한 결과 (as a result of investigating), 이 문제에 대해 (regarding this issue) — bookish glue that holds a report together.

A real-style news snippet

Here’s a short original bulletin written entirely in 보도체. Read it before the translation — try to spot the passive, the written past, and the attribution:

Trace every tool: 시작된다 (passive, written present), 떨어질 것으로 보인다 (outlook), 증가했으나 (written past + formal “but”), 밝혔다 (attribution). Four sentences, and they reuse the entire level.

Two friends react to a headline

Watch how people talk about news they read — switching from the article’s 보도체 back to spoken 해요체:

Notice the register shift: the article says 시작된다 / 밝혔다 (보도체), but when these two talk about it they relay it as 시작된다고 하던데요 / 밝혔대요 — the spoken version of the same reported content. Reading the news and chatting about it use the same grammar engine, just two registers apart. That ties Level 3 together: written endings, indirect quotation, and passives, all in one page.

FAQ

What is 보도체 (report style), and how is it different from 해요체? 보도체 is the news-report register of written Korean (문어체). Instead of the spoken 해요, it states facts plainly: verbs in -ㄴ다/-는다 (시작된다, 발표한다), adjectives in -다 (춥다), nouns in -(이)다, past in -았/었다 (발생했다, 밝혔다), and outlook in -(으)ㄹ 것이다 / -(으)ㄹ 전망이다 / -(으)ㄹ 것으로 보인다. It also attributes sources with ~에 따르면 …-다고 한다. So a sentence you’d SAY as 사고가 났어요 appears in an article as 사고가 발생했다. Nothing is new grammar here — 보도체 just recombines the written endings, indirect quotation, and passive verbs you already learned in Level 3.

How does Korean news say ‘according to’ and report what someone said? Two pieces work together. First, ~에 따르면 (according to ) names the source: 기상청에 따르면…, 정부에 따르면…. Then the reported content closes with -다고 한다 (it is said that) or -다고 밝혔다 ( stated/revealed): 다음 주에 비가 온다고 한다 = it is said it will rain next week; 정부는 정책을 바꾼다고 밝혔다 = the government stated it will change the policy. -라고 밝혔다 is used after a noun or a direct phrasing. This is just the indirect quotation from the last chapter, dressed in news vocabulary.

Why are so many news verbs in the passive, like 발생했다 or 시작된다? News focuses on the EVENT, not who caused it, so it leans on passive and process verbs: 사고가 발생했다 (an accident occurred), 장마가 시작된다 (the monsoon begins), 범인이 잡혔다 (the suspect was caught). These are the 피동사 (passive verbs) from the previous lesson — -이/히/리/기- or -되다 forms — and headlines love them because the actor is unknown or unimportant. When you read a headline, spot the passive ending first, then the written -ㄴ다/-었다, and the meaning falls out.

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