It’s time to talk about the time! Learning how to express the time seemed to be fairly straightforward to me; it’s just keeping those different numbering systems straight that tripped me up for a little bit (but I think I’ve got it now).
In Korean, when talking about the time, you’re going to use both the Native Korean numbering system and the Sino-Korean numbering system. Hours use the Native Korean numbering system and minutes and seconds use the Sino-Korean numbering system. We’ll take this following sentence for example.
지금 2시 30분이에요.
jigeum du si samsib bunieyo.
Right now it is 2:30.
When I’m writing the time in Korean, I have to remember: I’m not supposed to write the time as 2:30. The time is written as 2시 30분. 시 is used to denote the hour while 분 is used to denote the minutes (초 is used for seconds).
지금 – Now
2시 (두 시) – 2
30분 ( 삼십 분) – 30
이에요 – it is
Sometimes in English, when we say the time, we won’t always say, “it’s 10:55”, “it’s 7:30”, or “it’s 9:45”. Instead we will say “it’s 5 til…”, “it’s half past…” or “it’s a quarter ’til…” There are similar expressions in Korean, too.
오후 11시 5분 전이에요.
오후 열 한 시 오분 전이에요.
ohu yeol han si o bun jeonieyo.
It’s 5 until 11. (lit: It’s 5 minutes before 11pm).
오후 7시 반 이에요.
오후 일곱 시 반이에요.
ohu ilgop si banieyo.
It’s half past 7. (lit: It’s 7pm and a half. * 반 = half).
오전 10시 15분 전이에요.
오전 열 시 십오분 전이에요.
ojeon yeol si sibo bun jeonieyo.
It’s a quarter til 10. (lit: It’s 15 minutes until 10am).

