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(from https://www.italki.com/question/266780)

They added that the couple’s home was not far away from the site of a prison hospital from the war.

그들은 이 부부의 집이 나폴레옹 전쟁 동안 교도소 병원이었던 곳에서 멀리 떨어져 있지 않다고 덧붙였다.

As 떨어져(서) already means 'far', '멀리 떨어져' seems tautological. How does the addition of '멀리' change the meaning here? Would 많이 떨어져 be equivalent, or wrong?

떨어지다 usually means 'fall', so is the addition of '멀리' needed for it to be clear that we mean 'distant'?

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    Who told you that 떨어지다 means far? It does not and it should mean "distanced at" in your case. That's why 멀리 is needed to mean "distant".
    – Incredibly HandSome Samuel
    Jul 15 '16 at 8:25
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    For example, 여기 15킬로미터 집에서 떨어진다. -> This place is 15 km away from my home.
    – Incredibly HandSome Samuel
    Jul 15 '16 at 8:28
  • Aha - I interpreted 'at a distance; away from' in wordreference.com/koen/%EB%96%A8%EC%96%B4%EC%A0%B8 to mean 'far'. "at a distance" in English can mean "far"; maybe it's more "at a certain distance".
    – topo morto
    Jul 15 '16 at 8:53
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"떨어지다" doesn't necessarily mean 'far', it means that objects are apart from each other, so the distance can differ in each specific contexts.

  • 서울과 부산은 약 400km 떨어져 있다.[citation needed]
  • 너와 나는 약 5m 떨어져 있다.

Thus "멀리 떨어져" is not tautological. "많이 떨어져" can be used, but it is unnatural to interpret "떨어져" as "be apart from".

  • *그는 많이 떨어진 곳으로 도망갔다.
  • 그는 멀리 떨어진 곳으로 도망갔다.
  • 내 기말고사 점수는 중간고사보다 많이 떨어졌다.
  • *내 기말고사 점수는 중간고사보다 멀리 떨어졌다.
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  • I nominated you for a moderator position please accept or decline this nomination and remove the instance of (s)he by the correct pronoun.
    – Lyle
    Jul 15 '16 at 10:15
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As 떨어져(서) already means 'far', '멀리 떨어져' seems tautological. How does the addition of '멀리' change the meaning here? Would 많이 떨어져 be equivalent, or wrong?

You were little confused. '멀리' = 'far' and '떨어져' = 'away' are more valid, if we have to map.

멀리 떨어져 있지 않다 can be rewritten to 멀리 떨어져 있지 않다, without losing any meaning in the example sentence. It is like that 'far away from' could be rewritten to 'far away from'.

Additionally, 많이 떨어져 있다 and 멀리 떨어져 있다 have almost same meaning. But you can not reduce 많이 떨어져 있다 to 많이 떨어져 있다 because the 많이 does not convey 'distance' unlike 멀리. Rather 많이 means just 'great' or 'a lot'.

떨어지다 usually means 'fall', so is the addition of '멀리' needed for it to be clear that we mean 'distant'?

In that context, 떨어지다 means 'distance',

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'떨어지다' (네이버 국어사전 link) has a lot of meanings and is one of the most broadly used verbs in Korean.

1 . 관계가 끊어지거나 헤어지다.

아이가 부모와 떨어져 지내는 것은 힘든 일이다.

어떤 일이 있어도 우리 둘은 떨어져서 살 수 없습니다.

우리 식구는 지방에 계신 아버지와 떨어져 산다.

2 . 「…에서」 일정한 거리를 두고 있다.

식당은 본관과 조금 떨어져 있는 별관에 있다.

두 건물은 약 200미터쯤 떨어져 있다.

지하철역은 우리 집에서 300미터쯤 떨어져 있다.

It means No. 2 above in your example. If you don't use any adverbs such as '약 200 미터쯤', '300미터쯤', '조금', '멀리', '많이', '엄청나게' and '약간', etc. you never know how long the distance is.

If you contrast

식당은 본관과 떨어져 있다 (Literally) The restaurant is separated from the main building

with

식당은 본관과 멀리 떨어져 있다 (Literally) The restaurant is located far away from the main building

You will notice that using '멀리' is not tautological at all.

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