Language hurdles plague two Koreas after years of division

SEOUL: When South Korean businessman Kim Yong-tae 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 never heard of while working and living just in South Korea,” he said, describing blank looks from some North Korean workers when he used the word “container”, which is pronounced similar to its 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 the confusion and promote a feeling of unity, the South Korean government is working to restart an obscure academic project aimed at developing 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 per cent of words are mutually understood, said experts.

The Koreas officially maintain the goal of reunification, but as each side has developed in different ways, that dream has faded.

North Korea’s government has maintained — at least officially — a tight grip on its economy, meaning many North Koreans are unfamiliar with some economic and business terms common in the South’s more capitalist system.

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

“When it comes to general terms, I would say seven out of 10 words can be mutually understood by people from each side,” said Wanseo.

“However, when it comes to jargon and technical words there is a big, big difference between the two.”

The South’s Unification Ministry says preserving and unifying the language is needed to prepare for eventual unification.

Politics is never far away, however, and past dictionary discussions with the North Koreans often involved sensitive terms.

For example, the dictionary’s authors had to avoid one term for “him,” which was typically used only to apply to North Korean leaders, and the United States could not be mentioned in examples, said Wanseo.

The sides debated the definition of the word “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 what an impartial definition is and ended up defining it as ‘someone who strives together for a single goal.’

Other debates were less serious.

In South Korea, the verb “sal-jida” is used to say “hey, you’ve gained some weight”.

“It’s insulting in some contexts here too, but it’s a very insulting word to the North Koreans — to a whole new level,” Wanseo said. “They only use this verb for farm animals.”