Each Korean speech level can be combined with honorific or non-honorific noun and verb forms.
Hasoseo-che is now used mainly in movies or dramas set in the Joseon era and in religious speech.
When the infix op / saop , jaop (옵; after a vowel / 사옵 , 자옵; after a consonant) or sap / jap (삽 / 잡) or sao / jao (사오 / 자오) is inserted, the politeness level also becomes very high.
A conversation with a stranger will generally start out in this style and gradually fade into more and more frequent haeyo-che.
Unlike other speech styles, basic conjugations for the declarative, interrogative and imperative forms are identical, depending on intonation and context or other additional suffixes.
Most Korean phrasebooks for foreigners follow this speech style due to its simplicity and proper politeness.
It was originally a refined, poetic style that people resorted to in ambiguous social situations.
[2] Further, due to its over-use by authority figures during Korea's period of dictatorship, it became associated with power and bureaucracy and gained a negative connotation.
Consequently, this style has almost completely fallen out of use in modern South Korea, and the generation of Koreans who came of age after democratization also conspicuously avoid using it.
Any other written style would feel like a first-person account (that is, anything else would seem to be told in the main character's own voice).
Basic conjugations for the declarative, interrogative and imperative forms are identical, depending on intonation and context or other additional suffixes.