아는것이 병
know-PRESPART-fact-SUBJ sickness
Knowing [is] sickness.
“Knowing is sickness.” It sounds like it could be the title of a Kierkegaard book.
There’s another proverb in Korean that is exactly opposite:
아는것이 힘
know-PRESPART-fact-SUBJ strength
Knowing [is] strength.
“Knowing is strength.” This sounds more like the title of something by Lenin.
It’s interesting to reflect on how these two opposite possibilites start quickly to take on ideological resonances in my mind.
The nominalizing ending -는것 is extraordinarily common. Not only is it used to construct a sort of periphrastic present tense with the copula (-이다), but it also seems to serve as a kind of periphrastic gerund (where the actual gerund is -기 and the more nominalizing -ㅁ). Both proverbs are missing an explicit copula after the second noun phrase, but I think it’s implied by the subject marker on the first. This strikes me as similar to the Russian present tense copula, which is normally absent in actual Russian, and merely implied by the case endings of the nouns.