English has one tidy passive: take almost any transitive verb, use be plus its past participle, and you are done — caught, opened, discovered, loved, made, ignored. Korean does not work that way. It scatters passivity across three separate systems, none of which covers everything, and — the fact that shapes this whole group of pages — it reaches for the passive far less often than English does in the first place. This overview maps the three strategies so the detailed pages that follow have a home, and flags the two biggest traps: mixing the systems, and using a passive at all where Korean would keep the sentence active.
Strategy 1: the fused suffix (이/히/리/기)
For a fixed, memorized set of transitive verbs, Korean inserts a passive suffix — 이, 히, 리, or 기 — between the stem and the ending. The verb changes shape and flips from "do X" to "be X-ed." This is the same slot the causative suffix uses, which is why a few forms are ambiguous (more on that below).
| Suffix | Active verb | Passive | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 이 | 보다 (see) | 보이다 | be seen / be visible |
| 히 | 잡다 (catch) | 잡히다 | be caught |
| 리 | 열다 (open) | 열리다 | be opened |
| 리 | 듣다 (hear) | 들리다 | be heard / be audible |
| 기 | 안다 (hug) | 안기다 | be hugged |
도둑이 경찰에게 잡혔어요.
dodugi gyeongcharege japyeosseoyo
The thief was caught by the police.
밖에서 이상한 소리가 들려요.
bakkeseo isanghan soriga deullyeoyo
I hear a strange sound from outside. (lit. a strange sound is audible)
This set is closed. There is no rule that predicts which of the four suffixes a given verb takes — 잡다 takes 히, 열다 takes 리, 안다 takes 기 — so each is learned individually. Each suffix gets its own page; start with the 이 passive and the 히 passive.
Strategy 2: -아/어지다 (the productive fallback)
When no fused suffix exists, Korean derives a passive by attaching -아/어지다 to the verb's 아/어 form. This one is productive — it works on verbs the suffix set never touches, and it tends to describe a process or a resulting state ("get made," "come to be written").
이 책상은 나무로 만들어졌어요.
i chaeksang-eun namuro mandeureojeosseoyo
This desk is made of wood.
이 펜은 잘 안 써져요.
i peneun jal an sseojeoyo
This pen doesn't write well. (lit. isn't written well)
만들다 has no suffix passive, so "be made" must be 만들어지다; 쓰다 ("write") likewise gives 써지다. The full behaviour of this derivation — including how it shades into "become" and "come about on its own" — is on -아/어지다 as a passive.
Strategy 3: light-verb passives for Sino-Korean nouns
Sino-Korean action nouns — the same nouns that build 하다-verbs — passivize by swapping 하다 for a light verb. Which light verb you pick changes the flavour:
| Light verb | Meaning | Example | Gloss |
|---|---|---|---|
| 되다 | "become / get X-ed" (neutral) | 발견되다 | be discovered |
| 받다 | "receive X" (favourable) | 사랑받다 | be loved |
| 당하다 | "suffer X" (adversative) | 무시당하다 | be ignored / disregarded |
회의가 갑자기 취소됐어요.
hoe-uiga gapjagi chwisodwaesseoyo
The meeting was suddenly cancelled. (되다 — neutral)
그 배우는 모두에게 사랑받아요.
geu baeuneun moduege sarangbadayo
That actor is loved by everyone. (받다 — favourable)
저는 어제 사기를 당했어요.
jeoneun eoje sagireul danghaesseoyo
I got scammed yesterday. (당하다 — adversative)
The three are not stylistic variants: 되다 is the neutral workhorse (건설되다 be built, 해결되다 be solved), 받다 is for things you welcome (존경받다 be respected, 인정받다 be recognized), and 당하다 is for things done to you against your interest (거절당하다 be rejected, 이용당하다 be exploited). Picking 사랑당하다 or 무시받다 would be a semantic error. Each has its own page — 되다 passives and 당하다 passives.
Watching the pattern build
To feel the three systems side by side, here is one event — a bridge coming into existence — told three ways:
문이 저절로 열렸어요.
muni jeojeollo yeollyeosseoyo
The door opened by itself. (suffix 리 — 열리다)
다리가 작년에 만들어졌어요.
dariga jangnyeone mandeureojeosseoyo
The bridge was built last year. (-어지다 — 만들어지다)
다리가 작년에 건설됐어요.
dariga jangnyeone geonseoldwaesseoyo
The bridge was constructed last year. (되다 — 건설되다, more formal)
The last two describe the same fact; 건설되다 simply carries the Sino-Korean, slightly more formal register of a news report or an engineering document.
The bigger truth: Korean uses the passive less
Even with three systems available, the single most important thing to internalize is that Korean avoids the passive where English embraces it. Because Korean marks the topic with 은/는 and freely drops known subjects, "This book was written by a famous author" comes out most naturally as an active sentence with the book fronted as topic — not as a be-passive. Over-passivizing is the number-one way to sound like a translated textbook rather than a Korean speaker. That reframing is important enough to have its own page: why Korean prefers the active. When you do passivize, marking the demoted agent ("by X") has its own rules, covered in marking the agent.
Common Mistakes
1. Double-marking with a suffix and -어지다. The most frequent passive error. If a verb already has a fused passive, do not stack 지다 on top of it.
❌ 문이 저절로 열려졌어요.
Double passive — 열리다 is already passive; drop the 지다.
✅ 문이 저절로 열렸어요.
muni jeojeollo yeollyeosseoyo
The door opened by itself.
2. Stacking 지다 onto 잡히다 and its kin. Same error, another common victim.
❌ 도둑이 경찰에게 잡혀졌어요.
Wrong — 잡히다 is the passive already; ×잡혀지다 double-marks it.
✅ 도둑이 경찰에게 잡혔어요.
dodugi gyeongcharege japyeosseoyo
The thief was caught by the police.
3. Choosing the wrong light verb. 받다 is favourable, 당하다 is adversative — swapping them says the opposite of what you mean.
❌ 그 배우는 사람들에게 사랑당해요.
Wrong — 당하다 is for harm; being loved is welcome, so 사랑받다.
✅ 그 배우는 사람들에게 사랑받아요.
geu baeuneun saramdeurege sarangbadayo
That actor is loved by people.
4. Forcing an ill-fitting fused passive where -어지다 is the natural choice. Not every verb's fused passive suits every context — and it must be conjugated, never left in the dictionary form.
❌ 이 편지가 어제 쓰이다.
Bare dictionary form — and 쓰이다 leans 'be used'; for a letter getting written, the process passive is 써지다 (or Sino-Korean 작성되다).
✅ 이 편지는 어제 써졌어요.
i pyeonjineun eoje sseojeosseoyo
This letter got written yesterday.
Key Takeaways
- Korean passivizes three ways: the fused suffix 이/히/리/기 (잡히다, memorized set), the productive -아/어지다 (만들어지다), and light-verb passives for Sino-Korean nouns (되다 / 받다 / 당하다).
- The three light verbs split by attitude: 되다 neutral, 받다 favourable, 당하다 adversative.
- Never combine a suffix passive with -어지다 — ×열려지다, ×잡혀지다 are double passives.
- Above all, Korean prefers the active; reach for a passive only when the patient truly matters more than the agent.
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Start learning Korean→Related Topics
- Why Korean Uses the Passive Far Less Than EnglishTOPIK 3 — Korean strongly prefers active and topic-fronted sentences where English reaches for the passive: 은/는 topic-marking plus free subject-dropping let the patient come first while the verb stays active — so 'this book was written by a famous author' is naturally 이 책은 유명한 작가가 썼어요, not a be-passive.
- Marking the Agent: 에게 / 한테 / 에 / 에 의해TOPIK 4 — How the demoted 'by X' agent is marked in a Korean passive depends on animacy and register: animate agents take 에게 (neutral) or 한테 (spoken), inanimate forces take 에, and formal written passives use 에 의해(서) — while very often the agent is simply omitted.
- Morphological Passive -이-TOPIK 3 — The passive suffix -이- fuses onto certain transitive stems to mean 'be V-ed' — 보이다 'be visible', 놓이다 'be placed', 쌓이다 'accumulate', 섞이다 'be mixed' — often reads as an English state adjective, frequently pairs with -아/어 있다, and must never be doubled with -어지다 (×보여지다).
- -아/어지다 as PassiveTOPIK 3 — -아/어지다 on an action-verb stem builds an agentless passive/resultative (만들어지다 'be made', 지어지다 'be built') — the productive fallback for the many verbs that have no fused suffix passive — and why stacking both (보여지다) is the classic double-passive error.
- The 되다 Passive: N이/가 되다, N하다 → N되다TOPIK 2 — 되다 is the light-verb passive that partners Sino-Korean action nouns and the huge N하다 verb class: swap 하다 → 되다 to get 'be/get X-ed' — 사용하다 → 사용되다 'be used', 시작하다 → 시작되다 'begin'. It's the passive escape hatch for the thousands of 하다-verbs that have no fused suffix passive.