> Is the Korean word “부 (Bu)” pronounced as “poo” and does it mean “wealth”?

It’s pronounced boo, as in “he’s my boo”.

I’m gonna attempt to explain my street level knowledge of the influence of hanja (written chinese) in korean here…

Thousands of Korean words are actually korean pronunciations of chinese words that were inherited hundreds of years ago. It’s similar to how many words in an european language actually descend from latin – for example english word administration comes from administratio in latin, iglesia (church) in spanish comes from ecclesia in latin, etc.

Each chinese word is monosyllabic, and they are often combined to create composite words, and the meaning of those composite words is a combination of the meanings of the two original words. Similar to German language composite words. Eventually you get used to seeing the same syllables in similarly themed words over and over, and your brain automatically deduces that certain syllables must mean roughly something.

For example, 부자(富者) means rich person. 부호 (富豪) means a person who has person of power and wealth. 부유세 (富裕稅) means tax assesed according to a person’s wealth. 갑부(甲富) means someone of extreme wealth.

So after you see a couple dozen words like this, and your brain unconciously puts 2 and 2 together and figures that the 부 syllable there comes from a chinese word related to wealth.

And indeed, this 부 is 富(부유할 부), meaning “wealth”.

But there are many other 부s.

Here are some examples:

부가가치 附加價値 means added value. The 부 there means “added”

부산물 副産物 means a collaterally created product. The 부 there means “as well” (uh… something like that)

Like the other person mentioned, 경리부 經理部 is “Department of Accounting”, 부 meaning “department”

부자 (父子) means “father and son”. 부 here means “father”. Confusingly, it’s the same writing and pronunciation as 부자(富者) for rich person. You just have to figure it out based on context.

As you get more versed in the language, you learn to distinguish the various families of meaning that each syllable may belong ti, and make inferences accordingly to guesstimate a word’s meaning. Most of the time you’ll be right, and sometimes get it wrong.

Not all Korean words descend from Chinese. Other words are autoctonous. A lot of words describing fauna and flora, nature, colors, sound etc are “pure Korean words”.

However the more “civilized” and sophisticated words tend to be of Chinese origin, because a thousand years ago China was the center of the known world in Asia and the apex of civilization. Again, just like Rome and latin.