Koreas bridge language divide

SHARED DIALECT DIVERGED DUE TO DIFFERING IDEOLOGICAL REALITIES

When South Korean businessperson Kim Yongtae worked with North Koreans at the Kaesong Industrial Complex before it was closed in 2016, one of the biggest challenges was communicating in what is ostensibly a shared language.

“There were confounding moments because there were terms I had never heard of while working and living just in South Korea,” he said, describing blank looks from North Korean workers when he used the word “container”, which is pronounced similarly to the English term in South Korea.

Between the South’s increasing adoption of international terms and the North’s political sensitivity to some words, the growing language divide is complicating cooperation on a range of joint cultural and economic exchanges as ties between the neighbours improve.

To counter this and promote a sense of unity, the South Korean government is restarting a project to develop a common Korean language dictionary with the North.

North and South Korea speak the same language based on the Hangeul alphabet but after decades of division, only about 70% of words are mutually understood, according to some experts.

The two Koreas officially maintain the goal of reunification, but as each side has developed in strikingly different ways, that dream has faded. North Korea’s government has maintained, at least officially, a tight grip on its economy, so many North Koreans are unfamiliar with economic and business terms common in the South’s capitalist system.

“Homelessness, yearly rent, monthly rent: the North Koreans have no such terms as everything is owned by the state which gives out housing,” said Kim Wanseo, a South Korean lexicographer on the committee compiling the dictionary.

After defecting to the South in 2002, Kim Young-hee had to learn a number of financial terms that didn’t exist in the North, including stocks and shares. “When it comes to general terms, I would say seven out of 10 words can be mutually understood by people on each side,” said Kim, the lexicographer. “But with jargon and technical words there is a big, big difference between the two, now.”

The North’s isolation has also meant North Koreans have adopted fewer English words. This was obvious when the players from the North and South combined in a joint ice hockey team for the Olympics. “The only two words we shared were ‘skates’ and ‘puck’,” said Kim Jung-min, Korea Ice Hockey Association spokesperson.

In the wake of April’s summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, the two Koreas have embarked on a number of cooperation projects designed to avoid running foul of sanctions.

Besides the dictionary, other projects being discussed include the archaeological excavation of a palace in North Korea, performances by a North Korean art troupe in the South, pest control projects in the North and sporting events. And in a gesture of unity, North Korea changed its time zone by half an hour to realign with the South.

The South’s Unification Ministry says standardising the language is necessary to prepare for eventual unification. Politics is never far away, however, and past dictionary discussions with the North often involved sensitive terms. For example, the dictionary’s authors had to avoid one term for “him”, which was used only to apply to North Korean leaders, and the US could not be mentioned in examples, said Kim, the lexicographer.

The sides debated the definition of dong-mu, which means childhood friend in the South, but has come to mean comrades who experienced the communist revolution together in the North.

“We had to negotiate an impartial definition and ended up defining it as ‘someone who strives with others for a single goal’,” Kim said. In the South, the verb sal-jida is used to say “you’ve gained weight”. “But it’s very insulting to North Koreans. They only use it for farm animals.” –

With jargon and technical words there is a big difference