-기- is the last member of the passive-suffix family (이/히/리/기), and it attaches to transitive stems ending in the sonorants and sibilants ㄴ, ㅁ, ㅅ, ㅊ (and, for a couple of verbs, ㄷ/ㄶ). 안다 "hold/embrace" becomes 안기다 "be held"; 쫓다 "chase" becomes 쫓기다 "be chased"; 빼앗다 "snatch/rob" becomes 빼앗기다 "have (something) taken from you." A quiet theme runs through this set: several -기- passives lean adversative — they describe things being done to you that you'd rather avoid — which brings them close in feeling to the 당하다 passive.
How -기- makes a passive
Insert 기 after the stem: 안 + 기 + 다 → 안기다. The object of the active verb becomes the subject of the passive.
아기가 엄마 품에 포근하게 안겼어요.
agiga eomma pume pogeunhage angyeosseoyo
The baby nestled snugly in mom's arms. (lit. was held)
그는 빚에 쫓기고 있어요.
geuneun bije jjotgigo isseoyo
He's being hounded by debt. (lit. chased by debt)
The -기- inventory and its pronunciation
Unlike -히-, this suffix mostly does not fuse or aspirate — the stem-final consonant simply neutralizes and the ㄱ of 기 tenses (a tensing that Revised Romanization, by convention, does not spell out). The one exception is 끊기다, where the hidden ㅎ of the ㄶ cluster aspirates the ㄱ into ㅋ.
| Base verb | Passive | Pronounced | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 안다 (hold/embrace) | 안기다 | [안기다] angida | be held, be embraced |
| 쫓다 (chase) | 쫓기다 | [쫃끼다] jjotgida | be chased, be pressed |
| 끊다 (cut off) | 끊기다 | [끈키다] kkeunkida | be cut off, be disconnected |
| 감다 (wind/wrap) | 감기다 | [감기다] gamgida | be wound around |
| 뜯다 (tear/pluck) | 뜯기다 | [뜯끼다] tteutgida | be torn off, be plucked |
| 빼앗다 (snatch/rob) | 빼앗기다 | [빼앋끼다] ppaeatgida | have (something) taken |
The romanizations follow the tensification convention: the tense [끼] after ㅅ/ㅊ is written plain gi (jjotgida, tteutgida), because Revised Romanization does not mark tensification — but the aspirated [키] of 끊기다 is written ki (kkeunkida), because that comes from ㅎ-fusion, which RR does show. So 쫓기다 → jjotgida but 끊기다 → kkeunkida.
전화가 갑자기 끊겼어요.
jeonhwaga gapjagi kkeunkyeosseoyo
The call suddenly got cut off.
폭우로 인터넷이 몇 시간 동안 끊겼어요.
pog-uro inteonesi myeot sigan dong-an kkeunkyeosseoyo
The internet was down for several hours because of the downpour.
The adversative streak
Two of the most common -기- passives — 쫓기다 and 빼앗기다 — describe pressure and loss, and they cover ground where English uses an active verb with you as the unlucky object.
마감 시간에 쫓겨서 실수했어요.
magam sigane jjotgyeoseo silsuhaesseoyo
I was pressed for time by the deadline, so I made a mistake.
지하철에서 소매치기한테 지갑을 빼앗겼어요.
jihacheoreseo somaechigihante jigabeul ppaeatgyeosseoyo
I had my wallet snatched by a pickpocket on the subway.
That 지갑을 is a retained object — it stays marked with 을 even though the sentence is passive. The subject is the victim ("I," dropped), the pickpocket is the agent in 한테, and the wallet is what was actually taken. English can't keep the object and passivize at once ("I was had my wallet taken" is impossible), so it must recast the whole sentence — but Korean does it smoothly, and the effect is unmistakably "this bad thing happened to me." This overlaps with the 당하다 passive, the dedicated way to say you suffered an action.
그 영화에 완전히 마음을 빼앗겼어요.
geu yeonghwae wanjeonhi maeumeul ppaeatgyeosseoyo
That movie completely stole my heart. (lit. I had my heart taken by it)
안기다 and 감기다: watch the causative twins
안기다 is a two-voiced verb. As a passive it means "be held / nestle into someone's arms"; the identical form is also the causative "make (someone) hold, hand (a baby) to someone." Only the particles tell them apart.
엄마가 아기를 할머니에게 안겼어요.
eommaga agireul halmeoniege angyeosseoyo
Mom handed the baby to grandma to hold. (causative)
Here 엄마가 is the causer, 아기를 the thing handed over, 할머니에게 the person made to hold — three arguments, so this is the causative, not "grandma was held." The passive 아기가 엄마 품에 안겼어요 has just a patient-subject and a location. The full mechanism lives on when passive and causative look identical.
감기다 likewise doubles as passive ("be wound around") and causative ("wash someone's hair," from a different 감다). And beware the unrelated noun 감기 "a cold" — same syllables, no grammatical connection.
긴 실이 손가락에 칭칭 감겼어요.
gin siri songarage chingching gamgyeosseoyo
A long thread got wound tightly around my finger.
선물 상자가 누군가에게 뜯겨 있었어요.
seonmul sangjaga nugungaege tteutgyeo isseosseoyo
The gift box had been torn open by someone.
Common Mistakes
1. Guessing the suffix instead of using -기-. ㄴ/ㅁ/ㅅ/ㅊ stems take 기, not 이 or 히. There is no ×안이다 or ×쫓이다.
❌ 아기가 엄마한테 안이고 있어요.
Wrong suffix — 안다 passivizes as 안기다.
✅ 아기가 엄마한테 안겨 있어요.
agiga eommahante angyeo isseoyo
The baby is being held by mom.
2. Double-marking with -지다. 끊기다 already is passive; 끊겨지다 stacks a second one.
❌ 통화 중에 전화가 끊겨졌어요.
Double passive — 끊기다 already carries it.
✅ 통화 중에 전화가 끊겼어요.
tonghwa jung-e jeonhwaga kkeunkyeosseoyo
The call got cut off mid-conversation.
3. Dropping the retained object in a "have X taken" sentence. The thing lost stays as an object with 을/를.
❌ 저는 소매치기한테 빼앗겼어요.
Incomplete — you need to name what was taken: 지갑을 빼앗겼어요.
✅ 저는 소매치기한테 지갑을 빼앗겼어요.
jeoneun somaechigihante jigabeul ppaeatgyeosseoyo
I had my wallet snatched by a pickpocket.
4. Aspirating the wrong ones. Only 끊기다 has the ㅎ-fusion. 쫓기다 and 뜯기다 do not aspirate — [쫃끼다], [뜯끼다], with tense (not aspirated) ㄱ.
✅ 도둑이 경찰에게 계속 쫓기고 있어요.
dodugi gyeongcharege gyesok jjotgigo isseoyo
The thief is being chased continuously by the police.
Key Takeaways
- -기- is the suffix passive for stems ending in ㄴ / ㅁ / ㅅ / ㅊ: 안기다, 쫓기다, 끊기다, 감기다, 뜯기다, 빼앗기다.
- Most of the set tenses but does not aspirate (jjotgida, tteutgida); only 끊기다 aspirates via ㅎ-fusion → [끈키다] kkeunkida.
- Several -기- passives are adversative — 쫓기다 (be pressed/chased), 빼앗기다 (have something taken) — and keep the loss as a retained object (지갑을 빼앗기다).
- 안기다 and 감기다 double as causatives; the particles, never the verb form, tell the two voices apart.
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- Morphological Passive -리-TOPIK 3 — The passive suffix -리- attaches to ㄹ-final stems (and ㄷ-irregular verbs) — 열다 → 열리다 'be opened', 듣다 → 들리다 'be heard', 걸다 → 걸리다 'take time / catch a cold', 풀다 → 풀리다 'be solved / thaw' — several of which English almost never treats as passive.
- When Passive and Causative Look Identical (보이다, 업히다, 읽히다)TOPIK 4 — The same 이/히/리/기 suffix builds both passives and causatives, so a whole set of derived verbs — 보이다, 업히다, 읽히다, 안기다 — is homophonous between the two voices; only the surrounding particles and argument structure disambiguate.
- The Adversative Passive N을/를 당하다TOPIK 4 — 당하다 turns a Sino-Korean noun of harm into a victim passive — 사기를 당하다 'be scammed', 무시당하다 'be ignored' — encoding that the event was bad and the subject a victim, unlike neutral English 'be + past participle'.
- Which Verbs Passivize (and Which Do Not)TOPIK 4 — The suffix passive 이/히/리/기 is a closed, non-productive list — only a memorized set of native transitive verbs takes one, and the choice tracks the stem-final consonant; everything else passivizes through the escape hatches 되다 (for Sino-Korean nouns) and -아/어지다 (for native verbs).