Korean slang profile
민텔
mintel
An amenity-rich upscale guesthouse
An upscale guesthouse with various amenities.
- Expanded form
- 민박 + hotel / 민박 + 모텔민박 (guesthouse) + hotel / 민박 (guesthouse) + 모텔 (motel)
- Other spellings
- —
- Earliest source found
- 2004
- Documented trend period
- Not verified
This is the earliest source we have verified, not the date the term was coined.
01Examples, with English translations
- Example by Julimmal
모임 장소로 노래방과 바깥 쉼터가 있는 민텔을 알아봤다.
For our gathering, I looked into a 민텔 with karaoke and an outdoor rest area.
02Documented history
- 2004The National Institute of Korean Language’s 2004 new-word collection lists the headword “민텔” and its definition.[1]
03Origin & word formation
The source-language notation gives guesthouse plus hotel, but the accompanying article example explains a combination of guesthouse and motel. Who first used it and when have not been verified.
Evidence for the origin explanationLow
The headword, definition, and source-language spelling in the 2004 collection were compared. The original older articles re-quoted there were not directly opened, so their dates were not used for firstSeen. The first coinage and spread remain unverified. The source-language form and the components explained in the re-quoted article differ, so both accounts were retained. Which was the first original form has not been verified.
04Sources
Original titles and links are preserved. An English translation does not replace the original source.
- 2004년 신어 (국립국어원)Published 2004Original source checked Nov 14, 2026