What happens when you become a mistake?

ANSWER: You die.

The Korean sentence 잘못하면 죽는다 can translate into English as "If you make a mistake, you die," so mistakes can be deadly, such as when one cuts the wrong wire while trying to defuse a bomb.

잘못 is the Korean word for "mistake," so 잘못하다 means "to make a mistake." And 잘못되다 can translate as "a mistake was made" or "something went wrong," used when the person who made the mistake is not mentioned. 잘못되다 can also translate as "to become a mistake." And, interestingly, Koreans also use 잘못되다 to mean "to die."

Last night I came across the following Korean sentence:

"숙환으로 병석에 계시던 할아버지께서 어젯밤 잘못되셨습니다."

The sentence translates as follows:

"Last night, grandfather, who had been sick in bed with a chronic illness, passed away."

However, the Korean sentence 할아버지께서 어젯밤 잘못되셨습니다 literally translates as "Last night grandfather became a mistake."

I suspect that 잘못되다 was originally a Korean translation of the English expression "become a statistic," which can mean that something bad, including injury or death, as happened to someone.