각 (gak) stuck onto a noun means the conditions for that thing have lined up. 라면각 (ramyeon-gak) is not a type of ramyeon. It means the moment for ramyeon has arrived.
On its own the word means angle. The slang use comes out of billiards and games, where you look at the table and see whether the shot is there. That reading survived the jump to everyday speech more or less intact. 각이 나왔다 (gagi nawatda) means the opening appeared.
You will also see it spelled kak, since Korean ㄱ at the start of a word lands somewhere between English g and k.
Real examples
라면각 (ramyeon-gak)
Said around 11pm. The hour, the hunger, and the packet in the cupboard have converged.
퇴근각 (toegeun-gak)
The work is done, the boss left, leaving is now realistic.
지각각 (jigak-gak, heard as jigak-kkak)
지각 means being late, and 각 gets added on top. The second 각 tenses after the ㄱ, so it comes out kkak. This is one of the most common ones in the wild and also one of the ugliest to romanize.
낮잠각 (natjam-gak)
A nap is happening.
이건 사야 되는 각인데 (igeon saya doeneun gak-inde)
I am probably buying this.
각 나왔다 (gak nawatda)
No noun attached at all. The opening is there, whatever the opening happens to be.
The verb form learners miss
Most lists only show you noun + 각. The verb form is just as common and much harder to parse cold, because 각 shows up after a modifier ending in -(으)ㄹ.
망할 각 (manghal gak) = this is heading for a disaster
그만둘 각 (geumandul gak) = I am close to quitting
The logic is the same. A future-shaped verb form, then 각. If you see 각 sitting after a word ending in ㄹ, that is what happened.
각 잡다 is a completely different word
This trips people up constantly, because it uses the same syllable and appears in the same casual registers.
각 잡다 (gak japda) means to square something up, to do it properly. 각 잡고 공부하다 (gak japgo gongbuhada) is to sit down and study seriously. The image is a folded blanket with sharp corners, which is where it comes from.
So 각 잡고 signals effort and formality. 각 as a suffix signals a prediction. They never overlap, and the giveaway is position: a suffix is glued to the front word with no space, while 각 잡다 has 각 standing alone as an object.
Also worth separating from -할 듯 (-hal deut), which learners reach for as a substitute. 할 듯 is a neutral guess about anything. 각 carries the sense that you have read the setup and you are already leaning into it. 비 올 듯 is a weather observation. 비 올 각 sounds like you are deciding whether to cancel something.
Don’t attach it to other people’s bad news
각 is light. That is the whole flavor of it. Which means putting it on something serious that happened to someone else reads as a joke at their expense, and a fairly cold one.
Keep it on yourself, your own dinner, your own commute, your own shopping. 나 지각각 is normal. Announcing 각 about a friend’s job situation is not.
The other thing to watch: not every 각 in Korean text is this suffix. 각도 (gakdo, angle), 삼각형 (samgakhyeong, triangle), and 사각지대 (sagakjidae, blind spot) are ordinary vocabulary. Context sorts it out fast, since the suffix version is always welded to the end of another word.
Formal settings
This one has a softer line than most internet Korean. 오늘 야근각이네요 (yageun-gak) between coworkers of similar rank in a group chat is completely ordinary and nobody blinks.
Written email, a client, a professor, anything with a subject line: no. The word assumes the other person is reading the same situation you are and finds it slightly funny. That assumption is the part that fails upward. If you need to say the same thing in a formal register, you are looking at -(으)ㄹ 것 같습니다.
There is also an age skew. 각 arrived through gaming and forums, so it sounds natural coming from someone in their twenties or thirties and slightly rehearsed coming from anyone who did not grow up with it.
지각각 is the one you will hear most, because it is the one people say about themselves, out loud, while running.