Grammar
-아/어도
Meaning
Intermediatea-eodo
Attached to a verb or adjective stem, -아/어도 sets up a condition that does not stop the second clause: 10%만 발생해도 5000억 원이 된다 = 'even if only 10 percent arises, it comes to 500 billion won'. Paired with 만 ('only'), as here, it builds the standard shape of a business scenario — a deliberately modest assumption whose result is still large.
Form
Take the verb or adjective stem and add -아도 after a bright vowel (ㅏ, ㅗ), -어도 otherwise, and -해도 for 하다 verbs. Past tense goes inside it — 갔어도 means 'even though they went'. With a noun, use 이어도 / 여도.
Examples
하루에 10분만 걸어도 도움이 됩니다.
Even walking just ten minutes a day helps.
맥놀이 무늬가 바뀌어도 진동수는 유지됩니다.
Even when the beat pattern changes, the frequencies stay the same.
Common mistakes & nuance
It covers both English 'even if' (the thing may not happen) and 'even though' (it did happen), and Korean does not distinguish them here — the tense and the context decide. Paired with 만, it makes the common 만 ~ -아/어도 shape meaning 'even with only ~', which reads as a lower bound rather than a concession.
Similar grammar
- -지만
-지만 simply joins two contrasting facts, both of them real. -아/어도 says the second holds regardless of the first, so it can take a hypothetical the way -지만 cannot.
- -(으)ㄹ지라도
The same meaning in a much more formal register, found in speeches and written argument. -아/어도 is the everyday form and the one that turns up in news.