Since 1953 North and South Korea have been divided and dialogues between these two sides had never been easy. Today, however, academics from the two Koreas are saying that a unified Korean language dictionary is nearing completion. They hope that speaking the same language will at least lessen the divide between the two governments.
A new Korean dictionary
Lexicographers and linguists from South Korean who are involved in the project of having one unified language dictionary for the entire Korean peninsula left for North Korea last week. This will be the first meeting to be held in North Korea in a span of five years. The project, however, has been ongoing for 25 years. Those involved in the project are saying that the dictionary is close to completion.
Chief editor of the project, Han Young-Un stated that it is a very important piece of work since the divide in the Korean language could become a big barrier to the unification efforts between the North and the South. He cited that the problem is more marked in the language used by architects, lawyers and doctors and other professionals. He quipped that should two architects from each side meet and talk, they would not be able to build anything. Such is the disparity in the language.
During the first few years that Korea was under Japanese rule, Korean was still allowed to be taught in school, with Japanese children also learning the language, which was written in both “hanja” and “Hangeul,” the Korean script. However, by 1938, the policy changed and Korean language lessons were removed from the school curriculum as well as in the government.
As the peninsula got divided, each government prioritized Korean literacy and language, however, the direction each one took was different, with changes in pronunciation, meaning and writing of the script. In South Korea the word agassi (a-gah-shi) translates to “young lady” or “miss” in English. However, in North Korea, the same word is used to denote “a slave of feudal society.”
With over six decades of total separation, the two governments are not only radically divided in economics and politics but also in language. The introduction of new words and phrases into each government’s lexicon means that the two sides will no longer understand one another soon if nothing is done with the language. At the moment the language that is spoken in South Korea is based on the Seoul dialect, with several words borrowed from English. In the North however, the speakers use the Pyongyang dialect, which borrowed several words from the Russian language.
The making of a unified Korean dictionary was initially suggested in 1989 by Moon Ik-Hwan, a pro-unification activist from South Korea who met Kim Il-Sung, the founder and leader of North Korea, on a visit to Pyongyang. The North Korean leader approved the plan, but Moon was put in jail in South Korea for illegally crossing the border and died in 1994. It was only in 2004 when the project was resurrected during the cross-border exchanges after the 2000 summit of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il and South Korean president Kim Dae-Jung. The committee to create the project was established in 2005.
The committee planned to have 330,000 entries and they have managed to finalize 55,000 words. The plan is to have the project finished by 2019.