Why does “신혼여행을 가다” make sense?

Question

In Naver dictionary, an example sentence goes like this

어디로 신혼여행을 가십니까?

I can get the meaning: ‘where are we going for honeymoon?’ However, looking into the sentence a little bit deeper, I find it strange to use ‘신혼여행’ as the object corresponding to the verb ‘가다’ (as marked by the ‘을’).

As far as I know, going to somewhere for a purpose should be expressed in ‘-러 가다’. Hence, in this case the sentence should have been ‘어디로 신혼여행을 하러 가십니까?’.

My questions are:

1. Is it proper to use the ‘purpose of going’ as the object of ‘가다’ (and thus ‘purpose of going-을/를 가다’ is correct) ?
2. Is it an abbreviation of ‘어디로 신혼여행을 하러 가십니까?’ which omits ‘하러’? If so, is this a common contraction accepted in most context? If I don’t use the contraction, how strange would I sound?

Answer 1

Good question.

A honeymoon is an 'activity in which people go somewhere to engage in'. I have written about this use of 을/를 here.

A summary is below:

Activities in which people go somewhere to engage in, including 낚시 (fishing), 등산 (hiking), 영화구경 (movie viewing), 여행 (travel), 수영 (swimming) and 산책 (going for a walk) are marked by 을/를 and are followed by movement verbs (variants of 가다/오다). This is similar to how English speakers use phrases like ‘go fishing’ or ‘go to the horse races’.

This isn't an abbreviation which omits ‘하러’. 신혼여행을 가다 doesn't describe the purpose, per se. It is simply 'going to do X', where X is an activity.

Answer 2

The object of the verb '가다' can be some nouns with '을/를'.

For example, 여행을 가다 go for trip

신혼여행을 가다 go for honeymoon

고향을 가다 go to hometown

When you want to use a verb as an object of the verb '가다',

you need to add a conjunctive Ending '-러/-으러' before '가다'

For example,

공부하러 가다 (공부하다 + 러 + 가다) go (in order) to study

운동하러 가다 (운동하다 + 러 + 가다) go (in order) to exercise

저녁을 먹으러 가다 (먹다 + 으러 + 가다) go (in order) to eat dinner

가방을 찾으러 가다 (찾다 + 으러 + 가다) go (in order) to find a bag

여행하러 가다 (여행하다 + 러 + 가다) go (in order) to travel

(여행 is a noun and 여행하다 is a verb. So both 여행을 가다 and 여행하러 가다 are correct.)

*~으러 is used when the verb stem ends in a consonant.

~러 is used when the verb stem ends in a vowel.

-> If a word has meaning as a noun only like 신혼여행,

you need to omit '러/-으러'.