Days of the Week in Korean (+ How to Tell Time)

Picture this: a Korean friend texts 금요일에 만날까요? and you freeze. Which day is that — and wait, how do you even read a clock in Korean? Learning the days of the week in Korean takes about ten minutes. Telling time is just one small rule stacked on top.

This is a beginner-friendly guide with native-speaker audio you can tap and copy. By the end you'll read all seven days, ask "what time is it?", and set up a 약속 (yaksok, appointment) without switching back to English.

What are the days of the week in Korean?

Every Korean day of the week ends in 요일 (yoil, "day of the week"). You just change the first syllable: 월요일 (woryoil) is Monday, 화요일 (hwayoil) is Tuesday, and so on down to 일요일 (iryoil), Sunday. Learn that one ending and you're already most of the way there.

Today, tomorrow, and the weekend

Days of the week are only half of everyday scheduling. The words you actually reach for most are "today," "tomorrow," and "this weekend." Tap each one and say it out loud:

How do you tell time in Korean?

Telling time in Korean has one rule that trips up almost everyone: hours use native Korean numbers, but minutes use Sino-Korean numbers. So 3:30 is 세 시 삼십 분 (se si samsip bun) — native "se" for the hour, Sino "samsip" for the minutes. Mix them up and you sound off.

Here is the whole clock face in practice. Notice the hour always comes first, then the minutes:

Now hear it strung together — asking the time, making a plan, and reading a clock:

Common mistakes with Korean days and time

These four slips are the ones that instantly mark a brand-new learner. None are a big deal, but fixing them makes your Korean sound a notch more natural.

That's the whole clock in one sitting: swap the syllable before 요일, keep hours native and minutes Sino, and skip 에 with 오늘/내일/어제.

Now try it — say today's day and the current time out loud. You've now got the days of the week in Korean down; to keep them sharp, drill the Time & Dates vocabulary set with native audio, keep the days and time reference charts handy, and brush up on Korean numbers so both systems feel automatic.