Learn the Korean passive voice with -이/히/리/기 verb endings — how they form, what they mean, and how they differ from the -아/어지다 passive pattern.
Active sentences say who did something; passive sentences say what happened to something. Korean has two main ways to form the passive, and mixing them up is one of the most common intermediate-level mistakes.
A closed set of common verbs form the passive by adding one of four suffixes directly to the verb stem. There is no simple rule for which suffix a verb takes — they must be memorized individually.
| Active verb | Meaning | Passive form | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 보다 | to see | 보이다 | to be seen/visible |
| 먹다 | to eat | 먹히다 | to be eaten |
| 듣다 | to hear | 들리다 | to be heard |
| 안다 | to hug | 안기다 | to be hugged |
For most other verbs, Korean forms the passive by attaching -아/어지다 to the verb stem — this pattern is far more common and productive than the irregular suffixes above.
| Active verb | Passive form | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 쓰다 (to write) | 쓰여지다 | to be written |
| 만들다 (to make) | 만들어지다 | to be made |
| 잊다 (to forget) | 잊혀지다 | to be forgotten |
Note the particle shift: the object (를) of the active sentence becomes the subject (가) of the passive sentence, and the original subject often takes 에게 (by/from).
Unlike English, Korean speakers use the passive far less often in casual conversation — it tends to sound more natural in writing, news reports, and descriptions of natural phenomena (산이 보여요 — the mountain is visible) rather than everyday speech about people's actions.
Do I need to memorize every -이/히/리/기 verb? Focus on the most frequent ones first (보이다, 들리다, 먹히다) — the rest come naturally through exposure to reading and listening.
Is -아/어지다 ever wrong to use? It can sound redundant when attached to a verb that already has a natural -이/히/리/기 passive form, so native speakers usually pick whichever is more common for that specific verb.
Passive voice is one of those grammar points that feels abstract until you see it in real sentences repeatedly. Reading practice builds it in so it clicks naturally instead of through pure memorization.