The Korean word for "cow" is 소, but what is the Korean word for "beef"?

 ANSWER: Apparently, both 소고기 and 쇠고기 are now acceptable.

In Korea, 소 means "cow," and 고기 means "meat," but I had learned sometime in the late 70s or early 80s that the correct way to say "beef" in Korean was 쇠고기, not 소고기. Why? Because 쇠  is supposedly an abbreviation of 소의, which is 소 plus the possessive marker 의, so 쇠고기 literally means "cow's (소의) meat (고기)." Yet, when I was in Korea, many Koreans were saying 소고기 instead of 쇠고기. When that would happen, I would think to myself, "Wow! This Korean is poorly educated." Well, maybe those Koreans were not so poorly educated after all."

Even though 쇠고기 may have traditionally been the correct way to say "beef" in Korean, I have recently learned that since 1988, both 쇠고기 and 소고기 are considered correct, even though only 쇠고기 is listed in my Korean-English dictionary. In fact, it seems that now either 쇠 or 소 can be used to refer to almost anything related to cows. If you want to say "cow dung" in Korean, for example, you can apparently now say either 쇠똥 or 소똥, even though only 쇠똥 is listed in my dictionaries. And if you want to say "ghost of a cow" in Korean, in addition to "쇠귀신" (--鬼神), 소귀신 is probably now also acceptable, even though 소귀신 is not in my dictionaries.

By the way, be careful when ordering 우신탕 because 우신탕 can mean either "cow-ghost stew (牛神湯)," "cow-penis stew (牛腎湯)," or "spicy beef stew" (牛辛湯)." In the video below, they are apparently preparing "cow-ghost stew" (牛神湯 신우탕), which is stew that stupid people eat.

If you watch the video below on YouTube, you can see that the caption for the video reads as follows: "두거리 우신탕! 우신탕 당진점 - 해장하기 좋고 맛있는 국밥 (Woo Shintang (Korean beef soup), 牛神湯, 牛心汤)."