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This article aims to compare and contrast the word ‘먹다’ in Korean and the corresponding manifestation in Vietnamese. There are similarities and differences as a result. 1) The similarities: Firstly, regarding the basic meaning, it is used when mentioning an act of putting food into the mouth and chewing such as eating rice or bread. Secondly, for the extended meaning, in Vietnamese, when mentioning an illegal act to appropriate someone’s belongings or money, people use the word eat (먹다) which is similar to ‘먹다’ in Korean. When teaching the word ‘먹다’ for Vietnamese students, teacher can use this similarity to help them understand and remember. Therefore, students will find it more interesting when learning Korean vocabulary. 2) The differences: There are two differences. The first difference is the meaning while the second one is both meaning and syntactic structure. The meaning-related difference shows that in Korean ‘먹다’ is used to show either good or bad results for the action subject. Nevertheless, Vietnamese is based on the action results in order to have correlative verbs. This causes the dissimilar form to ‘먹다’ in Korean. Besides that, there is a difference in meaning such as there are many Vietnamese words used to describe in detail the act of giving the drink to body while Korean only have ‘먹다’ to generally call all of those acts. The second difference is not only meaning but also syntactic structure. This difference is frequently used to describe the age. In Vietnamese, people do not use transitive verbs to label the age like Korean. If teacher help students understand these differences by using funny illustration, they will remember the lessons for a long time and can apply accurately when performing the expressions related to the word ‘먹다’ in Korean.