Last week, I wrote about a Korean term for work romance. This week, it’s dating at school: If you’re a student involved in a romance with another student, you’re one half of a CC (pronounced “see see,” han’gŭlized as 시시, but usually written with the Latin letters).
CC is a Korean slang word, an acronym of “campus couple” or, in han’gŭl, k’aemp’ŏsŭ k’ŏp’ŭl (캠퍼스 커플). As I’ve written before, acronyms are a common form of Korean slang. Many, like mil-tang and ch’i-maek, are contractions of longer Korean or Sino-Korean words or phrases. Some of these, of course, are from English loanwords—sometimes made up of first syllables like the Korean ones (강연임 Gang Yǒn-im 2016), occasionally, as here, of the first letters of the English originals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVIADXz41Pk
Originally, CC referred to only couples who were attending the same university, but now it covers any student couple, even those in elementary, middle or high school (나무위키).
https://www.instagram.com/p/BLEL7HRhb2p/
The Namuwiki article on the topic notes that many of the pitfalls associated with 사내연애 also apply to CCs—obviously—and that in fact, at least some clubs at some universities (e.g., KAIST) prohibit members from dating one another for this reason, although CC relationships tend to be okay if the couple meets through “meeting” 미팅 or “soget’ing” 소게팅, two words I should definitely write about soon!
Sources
Personal experience.
강연임 (2016). “국어의 줄임말 현상에 따른 언어변이 양상과 문제점” 韓國言語文學 第97輯, 7-32.