마음 · 기분 · 속: The Three 'Hearts' and Their Verbs

English pours a lot of inner life into one word: my heart, my feelings, my mood all lean on "heart." Korean divides that territory among three nouns, and — this is the part that trips learners — each one is welded to a specific verb and a specific particle. You do not freely combine them. 마음 is your durable heart-and-mind, the seat of intentions and preferences. 기분 is your passing mood, the weather of the moment. 속 is your gut, your insides, and it is where hurt and worry physically live. Learn each noun together with the verb it collocates with, because the collocation is the unit a native speaker stores — not the noun alone.

마음: the durable heart-mind, and the locative trap

마음 is the deep, lasting inner self — where your intentions, your preferences, and your peace of mind reside. Its single most important collocation is 마음에 들다, "to be to one's liking." The literal picture is beautiful and worth holding onto: something enters into your heart. 들다 here means "to enter," and the destination — your heart — is marked with the locative particle 에, not the subject particle. The thing that pleases you is the grammatical subject, marked with 이/가.

마음 also anchors states of inner peace or urgency: 마음이 편하다 ("to feel at ease," lit. "the heart is comfortable") and 마음이 급하다 ("to feel rushed"). Here 마음 is the subject with 이/가 — a different frame from 마음에 들다, so watch the particle.

기분: the mood of the moment

기분 is transient — the emotional weather of right now, blown in by the weather, a meal, a comment. Its core collocations are 기분이 좋다 ("to be in a good mood") and 기분이 나쁘다 ("to be in a bad mood"), with 기분 as the subject and a descriptive verb as the predicate. Because it is momentary, 기분 pairs naturally with a cause: something made your mood good or bad, so it comes and goes.

When someone's mood gets dented, the verb is 기분이 상하다 ("to have one's feelings hurt," lit. "the mood gets spoiled"). This is the everyday phrase for social friction — a careless remark, a slight.

속: the gut, where hurt and worry sit

속 literally means "the inside/interior" — of a box, of your stomach, of you. Emotionally it is the deep gut, and it is specifically where distress lodges. The signature collocation is 속이 상하다 ("to be upset, heartbroken, distressed," lit. "the insides get spoiled/damaged"). Note that 상하다 attaches to both 기분 and 속, but 속이 상하다 is deeper and more painful than 기분이 상하다 — it is the ache of a parent whose child won't listen, not the sting of a rude comment. This collocation is so common it has fused into a single adjective, 속상하다.

속 also collocates with 타다 ("to burn"): 속이 타다 ("to be anxious, to be eaten up with worry," lit. "the insides burn"). It is the churning of waiting for news you desperately want.

The one that catches everyone: 마음에 들다 vs 좋아하다

Both translate as "to like," but they are built on opposite grammar and mean subtly different things — this is the single most useful contrast on the page. 마음에 들다 describes a state of appeal: the thing appeals to you, so the thing is the subject (이/가) and 마음에 is a fixed locative. It is passive and often first-impression — you like the look of it. 좋아하다 (contrast with 좋다) is an active transitive verb: you do the liking, so you are the subject and the thing is the object (을/를). It is stronger, more committed, more about feelings.

Watch the subject and object flip: in 마음에 들다 the person is the subject (그 사람이); in 좋아하다 the person is the object (그 사람을). Use 마음에 들다 for a favorable first impression — of a person, a room, a plan — and 좋아하다 for a settled, felt preference.

Common Mistakes

1. 마음이 들어요 instead of 마음에 들어요. This is the number-one error. The particle is locative 에, because something enters into your heart — it is not the subject. Say 마음에 들어요.

2. Reaching for 좋아하다 when a first impression calls for 마음에 들다. Saying 저는 이 집을 좋아해요 the moment you walk into an apartment sounds oddly attached. A native speaker says 이 집이 마음에 들어요 — "this place appeals to me."

3. Swapping the three nouns. 마음 is durable, 기분 is momentary, 속 is where deep hurt sits. A passing bad mood is 기분이 나쁘다, not 속이 상하다; genuine distress over your kid is 속이 상하다, not 기분이 나쁘다.

4. Marking the mood as an object. 기분 and 속 are subjects of their descriptive verbs — 기분이 좋다, 속이 상하다 — never objects. There is no 기분을 좋다.

Key Takeaways

• 마음 = durable heart-mind. Its key collocation 마음에 들다 takes locative 에 and makes the liked thing the subject.
• 기분 = passing mood. 기분이 좋다/나쁘다/상하다, with 기분 as subject.
• 속 = the gut, where hurt lives. 속이 상하다 (deep distress, fused as 속상하다), 속이 타다 (burning worry).
• 마음에 들다 (thing appeals to me, first impression) ≠ 좋아하다 (I actively like it, settled feeling) — opposite subjects, opposite strength. For more body-and-emotion collocations, see body-part idioms.