To say happy birthday in Korean, say saengil chukhahae (생일 축하해) to a friend, or the polite saengil chukhahaeyo (생일 축하해요) to just about anyone else. There is also a formal saengil chukhahamnida (생일 축하합니다) — and that exact phrase is the entire Korean birthday song, sung to the same tune you grew up with.
Pick the ending that matches the person, and you are ready to celebrate.
Three levels, one wish
The three versions differ only in politeness. Use saengil chukhahae (생일 축하해) with close friends and people younger than you, saengil chukhahaeyo (생일 축하해요) as your safe, polite default, and saengil chukhahamnida (생일 축하합니다) when you want to be formal or celebratory.
생일 축하해
saengil chukhahae
Happy birthday (casual)
생일 축하해요
saengil chukhahaeyo
Happy birthday (polite)
생일 축하합니다
saengil chukhahamnida
Happy birthday (formal)
What the words mean
The phrase breaks neatly into two pieces. Saengil (생일) means "birthday," and chukha (축하) means "congratulations." Add the verb ending and you are literally saying "I congratulate your birthday." The same chukha shows up whenever Koreans celebrate anything — a wedding, a graduation, a promotion.
More words for the party
A few extra words turn a greeting into a celebration. Congratulations on its own is chukhahaeyo (축하해요), useful for any happy occasion. The party itself is a saengil pati (생일 파티), and the thing you bring is a seonmul (선물), a gift.
축하해요
chukhahaeyo
Congratulations
생일 파티
saengil pati
Birthday party
선물
seonmul
Gift
A bowl of seaweed soup
Here is the tradition that makes a Korean birthday special: on your birthday, you eat miyeokguk (미역국), seaweed soup. Friends and family may share the pot, but on the day it is really your bowl.
The reason is tender. Korean mothers traditionally eat miyeokguk for weeks after giving birth, to recover their strength. So eating a bowl on your own birthday quietly honors your mother and the day she brought you into the world.
There is a flip side to the soup. Because seaweed is slippery, students often avoid miyeokguk before a big exam — the superstition is that eating something so slick might make your answers "slip away." On birthdays it means love; on test days it means bad luck.
The first birthday: doljanchi
No birthday in Korea is bigger than the first one. The doljanchi (돌잔치) is a large party thrown for a baby turning one, historically a milestone worth celebrating because it meant the child had made it safely through a fragile first year.
The highlight is the doljabi (돌잡이): the baby is placed before a spread of objects — a coin, a pencil, thread, a stethoscope — and whatever they grab is said to hint at their future. Money for wealth, a pencil for scholarship, thread for a long life.
Korea officially switched to international age in 2023, so a Korean now counts their age the same way you do. If you have heard that Koreans "add a year at New Year," that was the older system — our Korean age explainer untangles exactly what changed and when.
Keep learning Korean
A single phrase, a bowl of soup, and a baby grabbing at a pencil — birthdays are one of the warmest ways into Korean culture. Keep going with our free essential Korean phrases, then practice the greeting out loud with audio and spaced repetition in the Pretalk app until you can sing along.
