We attended a good amount of festivals over the summer, but one that I was really looking forward to was the chicken and beer festival (chimac). The Daegu Chimac Festival is still relatively new — only a couple years old — but is probably one of the most popular festivals here in Daegu.
“Chimac” (also known as chi-mc or chimaek) is a Konglish word that combines the English word “chicken” with the Korean word for beer (maekju). As someone who loves word play, code-mixing, and pidgins you would think that I would have clued into the definition of “chimac” a long time ago. There was a restaurant near our house in VA called “Chi-MC” and for the longest time we either thought it was “Chi M. C.” or “Chi-mack” as in McDonalds, as in reference to fast food style chicken. DUH. All this time I had been stuffing Korean chicken down my piehole and I had no clue.