맨손으로 수박 격파하는 오해원의 휴가 순간

What does “격파” mean in Korean?

격파 is the taekwondo word for breaking something — a board, a brick, a roof tile — with one clean strike. It’s built from the hanja 擊 (“strike”) and 破 (“shatter”), so the word literally means “strike and break.” Outside the dojang you’ll also see it for “smashing” a record or a target, but its home is the snapping board: the move that makes a black belt a black belt.

Here the target isn’t a board but a watermelon, split 맨손으로 (bare-handed) with a 손날 — the “knife-hand,” the muscled pinky-side edge of the open palm that’s taekwondo’s classic chopping surface. The verb form is 격파하다 (“to break”), as in 송판 격파 (“breaking a pine board”). The hanja roots travel: 擊 also gives 공격 (gonggyeok, “attack”) and 破 gives 파괴 (pagoe, “destruction”), so meeting 격파 here unlocks a small family of “strike” and “shatter” words at once.