애증 (aejeung) — The Feeling of Hating Something and Still Not Letting Go
When you watch Korean dramas, there are scenes where “love-hate” pops up in the English subtitles. The moment an older brother glares at his younger brother but the look in his eyes isn’t only hatred. The moment a rival of twenty years hears that the other man has died and silently pours a drink. The Korean word that so often rides on those lines is 애증 (aejeung).
애증 (aejeung) means a feeling in which love and hate are tangled together at once, directed at a single person or thing. You like them and you resent them; you resent them and still can’t cut them loose. It isn’t love that later turned into hate, and it isn’t hate that later turned into love. The heart of the word is that the two feelings sit stacked in the same place, with no order between them.
That’s why time is always built into 애증 (aejeung). The word only holds up when you’ve been attached to something for a long while, when good things and wounds have piled up together over those years, and the relationship still hasn’t ended. Someone you dated for a month, or something you bought yesterday, doesn’t produce 애증 (aejeung). That’s just disappointment, or regret.
Grammatically it’s a noun. In practice it rarely stands alone — it usually travels in the forms below.
- 애증의 관계 (aejeung-ui gwangye) — a relationship where love and hate are mixed together
- 애증이 교차하다 (aejeung-i gyochahada) — for the two feelings to cross past each other
- 애증이 쌓이다 (aejeung-i ssahida) — for that feeling to build up over a long stretch of time
- 애증 어린 눈빛 (aejeung eorin nunbit) — a gaze steeped in that feeling
Worth noting: the verb form 애증하다 (aejeung-hada) is almost never used. Koreans don’t say 그 사람을 애증해 (geu sarameul aejeung-hae). They say 그 사람한테는 애증이 있어 (geu saram-hanteneun aejeung-i isseo) or 우리는 애증의 관계야 (urineun aejeung-ui gwangye-ya).
Seeing It in a Real Conversation
Scene: Saturday morning, in front of an apartment building. Jun-kyung has decided to sell the bike he’s ridden for eight years, and he’s waiting for the buyer.
Jun-kyung: 아, 진짜 팔아야 되나. 이거 체인만 세 번 갈았어. Ah, do I really have to sell it? I replaced the chain three times on this thing.
Emily: 아까부터 계속 안장 만지작거리더라. 그냥 두고 가기 싫지? You’ve been fiddling with the seat this whole time. You don’t want to just leave it, do you?
Jun-kyung: 싫지. 나한테 얘는 애증이야. 비 오는 날마다 미끄러져서 욕도 엄청 했는데. I don’t. This thing is love-hate for me. It skidded every rainy day and I cursed at it a lot.
Emily: 그 마음 알아. 나도 첫 자취방이 딱 그랬어. 곰팡이 때문에 애증의 3년. I know that feeling. My first place was exactly like that. Three love-hate years, because of the mold.
Jun-kyung: 야, 근데 너 그 방 나올 때 울었다며. Hey, but I heard you cried when you moved out of that place.
Emily: 울었지. 미운데 정든 거야. 그게 애증이지 뭐. I did. I hated it but I got attached. That’s what love-hate is.
Jun-kyung: …그냥 안 팔면 안 되나. …Can’t I just not sell it?
Emily: 안 되긴. 저기 구매자분 오셨어. Of course you can’t. The buyer’s here.
Using It This Way Sounds Off
✗ (on a second blind date) 우리도 이제 애증의 사이인가 봐요. (uri-do ije aejeung-ui sai-inga bwayo.) I guess we’re a love-hate pair now, too.
✓ (to a friend of ten years) 우리 진짜 애증의 사이다, 그치? (uri jinjja aejeung-ui saida, geuchi?) We really are a love-hate pair, aren’t we?
→ 애증 (aejeung) is a feeling that only forms once years have piled up. Used on someone you’ve just met, it lands heavily even as a joke, and the other person is left flustered, wondering, “When did I ever make this person resent me?”
✗ (to your boss at a company dinner) 부장님, 저는 부장님께 애증이 있습니다. (bujangnim, jeoneun bujangnim-kke aejeung-i itseumnida.) Sir, I have love-hate feelings toward you.
✓ (to a friend, after you’ve left the job) 그 부장님은 나한테 애증이지. 배운 것도 많은데 진짜 힘들었어. (geu bujangnimeun na-hante aejeung-iji. baeun geotdo manheunde jinjja himdeureosseo.) That boss of mine is love-hate for me. I learned a lot from him, and he really put me through it.
→ 애증 (aejeung) still carries its full half of “hate” inside it. Said to the person’s face, it isn’t a confession of affection — it’s a public declaration of resentment. The word is normally used about someone who isn’t in the room, or almost as a thing you mutter to yourself.
Example Sentences by Situation
1) The day you leave the company you spent years at
This is what comes out of the person who complained through every late night and swore daily they’d quit — on their actual last day, handing in the badge and walking out.
10년 다닌 회사라 그런가, 나오는 날엔 애증이 확 밀려오더라. (10 nyeon danin hoesa-ra geureon-ga, naoneun nal-en aejeung-i hwak millyeo-odeora.) Maybe because I was there ten years — on my last day, this love-hate feeling just washed over me.
2) Coming back to the hometown you wanted to escape
This is what someone says, looking at the entrance to the old neighborhood, after fleeing up to Seoul and then coming back down a few years later after all.
나한테 이 동네는 애증의 동네야. 빨리 벗어나고 싶었는데 결국 다시 왔네. (na-hante i dongne-neun aejeung-ui dongne-ya. ppalli beoseonago sipeonneunde gyeolguk dasi wanne.) This neighborhood is a love-hate place for me. I couldn’t wait to get out, and here I am again.
3) The sports team that disappoints you every year and you keep watching anyway
This is where the word gets its lightest, most cheerful use in Korea. Baseball and soccer fans say it about their own teams all the time.
우리 팀은 진짜 애증이지. 매년 욕하면서 또 보고 있잖아. (uri tim-eun jinjja aejeung-iji. maenyeon yok-hamyeonseo tto bogo itjana.) My team is pure love-hate. I curse them out every year and I’m still watching.
Polite and Casual Forms, and Similar Expressions
Because 애증 (aejeung) is a noun, it carries no politeness level of its own. You just change the ending of the sentence — casual is 애증이야 (aejeung-iya), polite is 애증입니다 (aejeung-imnida). But as we saw above, when the listener is the very person the feeling is about, switching to polite speech doesn’t soften anything. The problem isn’t your tone; it’s the fact that you brought resentment into the room at all.
Line it up against words that look similar and the difference in temperature becomes clear.
| Expression | Temperature / intensity | Where it’s used |
|---|---|---|
| 애증 (aejeung) | Heavy. Love and hate at almost equal size | People, places, and things you’ve been entangled with for years. Serious conversation or monologue |
| 미운 정 (miun jeong) | Tilts toward the warm side | Family, longtime colleagues. Everyday conversation, said with a smile |
| 원망 (wonmang) | Tilts toward resentment. Almost no love left | About someone who hurt you. Often in the form “원망은 안 해 (wonmang-eun an hae)” — “I don’t hold it against you” |
| 증오 (jeungo) | The strongest word, with only hatred left | News and formal writing. In everyday talk it sounds excessive |
The contrast with 미운 정 (miun jeong) is especially worth learning. 미운 정 (miun jeong) is a warm word that ultimately lands on “but I grew attached anyway,” so you can use it laughing over dinner. 애증 (aejeung) never lands. It points at a state where the two feelings are still pulled taut against each other.
Cultural Background — Love and Hate, One Character Each
애증 (aejeung) is a Sino-Korean word. It’s built from the character for love, 애 (愛), and the character for hate, 증 (憎) — two characters of exactly opposite meaning, simply set side by side. This way of coining words is common in Korean: 남녀 (男女, namnyeo, “man-woman”), 장단 (長短, jangdan, “long-short”), 승패 (勝敗, seungpae, “win-loss”) — you join a paired set of two characters to point at the whole range between them. So 애증 (aejeung) gives the feeling of “the entire span from love to hate.” It’s a word that refuses to pick a side and holds both.
There’s a reason Korean dramas return to this feeling so often. In Korean storytelling, conflict usually happens not between strangers but inside relationships that can’t be severed. Brothers fighting over an inheritance. Rivals who’ve competed at the same company for twenty years. A mother who pushes her child down the path she’s chosen. However much they resent each other, the family register, the company, and the holidays keep them tied together, so they can’t terminate the relationship. The resentment has nowhere to go, so it piles up right next to the love. That is 애증 (aejeung). When two characters who’ve been at odds all series finally sit down across from each other in silence in the final episode, Korean viewers read that silence not as reconciliation but as 애증 (aejeung) brought to completion.
In daily life it’s used far more lightly. The baseball team you’ve cursed at daily and cheered for ten years running. The late-night food you resent because of your diet and order again anyway. The worn-down neighborhood you’ve lived in for twenty years. Koreans attach 애증의 (aejeung-ui) to these things with a laugh — partly because it’s also a way of admitting you’ve kept something close for a very long time. Korean has the expression 미운 정 고운 정 다 들었다 (miun jeong goun jeong da deureotda), “I’ve grown attached through both the ugly feelings and the fond ones,” and you can think of 애증 (aejeung) as that whole sentence compressed into two characters.
Today’s Quiz
Which of the following sentences uses 애증 (aejeung) most naturally?
① 오늘 처음 뵌 팀장님과 저는 애증의 관계입니다. (oneul cheoeum boen timjangnim-gwa jeoneun aejeung-ui gwangye-imnida.) My team leader, whom I met for the first time today, and I are in a love-hate relationship.
② 20년을 산 이 동네는 나한테 애증의 공간이야. (isip-nyeon-eul san i dongne-neun na-hante aejeung-ui gonggan-iya.) This neighborhood, where I’ve lived for twenty years, is a love-hate place for me.
③ 어제 산 우산이 하루 만에 고장 나서 애증이 생겼어. (eoje san usan-i haru mane gojang naseo aejeung-i saenggyeosseo.) The umbrella I bought yesterday broke in a single day, so I developed love-hate feelings for it.
See the answer
Answer: ②
애증 (aejeung) is used when good memories and wounds have accumulated together over a long period. A neighborhood you’ve lived in for twenty years holds both affection and weariness, so it fits perfectly.
① fails because you met the person only today — there’s been no time for 애증 (aejeung) to accumulate — and above all, saying it amounts to declaring your resentment to the person’s face, which comes across as rude. ③ is a one-day feeling, so it isn’t 애증 (aejeung); it’s just 짜증 (jjajeung), “annoyance,” or 실망 (silmang), “disappointment.”