양 자 택 일
both-people-choose-one
Selection between two choices
For this proverb, “Have your cake and eat it too,” is the meaning suggested on one site. But I think it’s more simple than that – it’s saying you have to make a choice – it doesn’t seem to carry as much baggage as the English version about cake with respect to the type of choice to be made.
Like some others I’ve chosen, this is one of those Chinesisms (Sinisms?). It’s not so much a proverb as it is simply some Chinese that’s fossilized in toto into the Korean language. Like some of the others, too, it can be verbified, just like so many noun-phrases in Korean: 양자택일하다 [yang-ja-taek-il-ha-da = to make a selection between two choices].
There seems to be a special category for these specifically four-syllable Sinisms – I hesitate to think of them as proverbs at this point, and I learn more Korean in studying the hanja dictionary trying to figure out the meaning than I learn from the phrase itself. The definition for this phrase was, “둘 중에서 하나를 고름, 둘 중에서 하나를 택하다.”
둘 중에서 하나를 고름,
two between-LOC one-OBJ equal-GER
둘 중에서 하나를 택하다.
two between-LOC one-OFJ choose
Two things being equal, choose one.