I
was eating dinner. Only eating, I was not speaking at all. My coworkers were
talking very freely and friendlily. They were not oppressed by anything. They
did not look like people who joined this company a month ago. They were living
in their world, their South Korean world.
Our
superior, who was eating dinner with us, said something and my coworkers
started to introduce themselves. They said their name, something about their
family, and about their hobbies. Someone said that his favorite food was pizza. What could a pizza be? I have
never heard of a food called pizza.
When
the person sitting next to me finished introducing himself, it was my turn. I
had to say something. I wished not to say anything at the dinner table because
my accent would reveal my identity. Even though many of them already knew that
I was a North Korean, I did not want to tell this with my own lips.
Unfortunately, I had to speak with my awkward South Korean accent.
“My
name is Lee Hyeon… No, Yi Hyeon-Jin.”
I
made a mistake again. My name was not Lee Hyeon-Jin, but Yi Hyeon-Jin. South
Koreans never used the family name Lee; it was their grammar. They called this
rule the “initial sound law (dueumbupchik),” which states that when the [li] sound
comes at the beginning of a word, this sound should change to [i]. I had to
think one more time even before saying my name.
“I like to play soccer with my dongmus (dongmu: Korean for “comrade”).
My dongmus are very good soccer players.”
My
coworkers and my superior looked at me suspiciously. Using their facial
expressions, they said “I cannot understand you.” What a catastrophe. I should
have not said “dongmu” when referring to a friend, because South Koreans use chingu (Korean for “friend”) to refer
the same thing. I heard that in South Korea, because the word “dongmu” contains
a communist connotation, this word is no longer used to refer a friend.
I said lots of more things, and I finally finished my long self-introduction. I finished, but failed the “South
Korean Language Test.” They could not understand me, and I could not understand
them. The discrepancy between languages was so great that I experienced
difficulties even when introducing myself.
Before
Korea was partitioned, there were many regional dialects which slightly
differed from others. When Korea was partitioned after the Korean War, South
Korea chose the Seoul dialect as the standard, but North Korea heavily based
their language on the Pyongyang dialect. Even though these two dialects
differed before the partition of Korea, their difference was not as great as
the difference between North and South Korean language today.
The
language of North and South Korea began to greatly differ when North Korea made
a new rule for Hangul orthography (“Chosono Choljabop”) in 1954. The rule
itself contained only minor changes from the “Proposal for Unified Korean
Orthography (Hangul Matchumbeop Tongiran),” the original rule for Korean
orthography made in 1933 by the Korean Language Society. After this rule was
made, North Koreans started to call their language “Chosono,” setting their
language apart from the South Korean “Hangul.”
Affected
by the Juche idea, Kim-Il-Sung started to alter the North
Korean language by issuing rules such as “A Number of Issues on the Development
of the Korean Language” (1964), “In Rightly Advancing the Racial
Characteristics of the Korean Language” (1966) and “Standard Korean Language”
(1966). The language changing process in North Korea was administered by the
National Language Revision Committee, which was under the control of the North
Korean government. New rules were still made in the 21st century,
like “Standard Spacing Rules in Writing Korean” (2000) and “Rules for Spacing
in Writing Korean” (2003).
As a
result, Hangul and Chosono became very different languages. Many words derived
from English vocabulary or Chinese characters were changed to pure Korean in
Chosono. These words were changed because of the Juche idea, which insists that
using vocabulary derived from English or Chinese harms perfect autonomy.
Moreover, some words look the same but differ in meaning because of the
different political setting of North and South Korea. For instance, the word “dongmu”
meant “friend” in Hangul, but the same word means “comrade” in Chosono, meaning
a friend in the communist context. Hangul and Chosono also became different in
accent, pitch, spacing, pronunciation, and orthography.
The
differences between Hangul and Chosono are causing unexpected problems. North
Korean defectors are experiencing difficulties when adapting to South Korean
society because their accent is different from that of South Koreans. Because
Hangul and Chosono have very different accents, almost every South Korean can
immediately recognize a North Korean by his accent. Furthermore, North Koreans
only understand about 60% of the South Korean language. Moreover, if the
difference between these languages increases, North and South Koreans can
easily lose their sense of kinship because they lose a crucial bonding element
called language. If Hangul and Chosono were not so different, the North Korean
defector would have experienced less or no difficulties when introducing
himself at a dinner.
North
and South Koreans were originally the same ethnic group, so they shared their
language. The ancestors of North and South Koreans lived in a same nation
called the Chosun dynasty. However, because the discrepancy between Hangul and
Chosono increased and increased, North and South Koreans no longer think the
other one as the same ethnic group. To North Koreans, South Koreans are people
who use a language that they cannot understand. To South Koreans, North Koreans
are people who changed their language to serve their ideology. They cannot
understand each other. They cannot properly introduce themselves. The bridge
between North and South Koreans are blocked; they cannot communicate.
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