cold wave: 한파/寒波/hanpa

My phone constantly lights up with warnings about this or that—an eternal reminder that, even with a conservative president in office, it's still a fairly nanny-state government looking out for its citizens, a government that's as far away as your phone (to be fair, this system's been in place for years). This omnipresence can be good and bad. On the one hand, it's nice to be warned; it gives you a chance to prepare. On the other hand, the warnings feel intrusive, like someone standing over your shoulder and breathing into your ear. There's a PA system in my studio apartment that creates the same creepy feeling, and lately, it's been sounding off about every other day. There are PA speakers even in seemingly quiet parks and remote farmland, feeling like symbols of a bygone era, yet still very much in use.

Anyway, back to phones. The phone warnings are about someone who's gone missing: there'll be a listing of the person's name, sex, and age (usually, it's someone old who's wandered off); there'll also be something about what the person was wearing, and approximately where the person got lost. Sometimes, we get warnings about a heat wave or slippery winter ice on the roads. At other times, like yesterday and today, the warnings will be about the cold, and this is how I learned a new word: hanpa (한파, 寒波)—a cold wave. The pa/파/波 character is the same pa found in the word pado, which means a wave such as one might see on a beach. It's also the character in the word choeumpa/초음파, referring to ultrasound. I learned that word in 2021 while I was in the hospital after my stroke and getting a thoracic ultrasound.

Han/한/寒, by contrast, was new to me. Korean isn't a tonal language, so a lot of characters that were ported over from Chinese—which is a tonal language—sound exactly the same. I already knew the han/한/韓 meaning "Korea," and I knew han/한/汗 meaning "sweat," as in the four-character proverb mu han bul seong (무한불성, 無汗不成), "no sweat, no success," i.e., No pain, no gain. But this han had somehow escaped my attention. As you might have guessed, it means "cold." So together, han and pa combine to make the word (or is it a phrase?) hanpa, "cold wave."

And that's what we're enduring right now. There's no snow on the roads or walking surfaces, but Celsius-wise, we're below zero. Same for tomorrow. Right now, it looks as though we won't be above freezing until Friday afternoon. If you're enduring a hanpa wherever you are, I hope you hunker down, bundle up, and make sure your pipes aren't bursting. I left my electric floor heater on "1" (minimum) before leaving today, but I'm not too worried: even on cold days, and even with the floor heating off, my apartment tends to be fairly warm. I only hope the apartment above me doesn't suffer a burst pipe.