The Koreas have been divided for more than a half-century. And that's created a language divide as well. Jason Strother reports from Seoul.
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LISA MULLINS: The two Koreas have been divided politically and geographically for more than 60 years now. During that time, they've also grown apart in the way they use the Korean language. For thousands of North Korean refugees living in the South, that means getting used to a dialect that sounds foreign. From Seoul, Jason Strother reports.
JASON STROTHER: Chae Su Jeong fled North Korea in 2001. Like many of the other 15,000 North Koreans who have defected to the South, Chae says at first she was blown away by all the cars and big-screen TVs she saw. She was perplexed by bank ATMs. Chae says she got used to those things pretty quickly, but she wasn't prepared to hit a language barrier while speaking with other Koreans.
CHAE SU JEONG: I didn't realize how different the North and South Korean languages were until I started working for a recycling company. Back in North Korea, they only have one word to describe all kinds of paper, but here, there are many. It really embarrassed me that I didn't know what my co-workers were talking about.
STROTHER: The North Korean language, like much of the nation itself, is stuck in a time warp. It's retained a lot of words and expressions that South Koreans no longer use or the meanings have changed. For example, North Koreans still call a boxed lunch “bento†which was used all over the Korean peninsula in the 20th century. It's now called “toshirak†in the South. Or the saying, “Il Op Sum Ni Daâ€. In North Korea, it's a common response when asked “how are you today?†Meaning “Fine, nothing special.†But in South Korea, depending on who you're talking to, the phrase is considered to be quite rude, meaning something like “buzz off.†For refugees, language is one of the toughest parts of adjusting to life in South Korea. That's according to Ko Gyoung Bin, director of Hanawon, a government-run facility that gives newly arrived defectors a crash-course on living in the capitalist world. “We try to teach them the new terminology through textbooks,†Ko says. “We also encourage them to watch South Korean movies to learn how we speak.†He adds that Hanawon even hires defectors who have lived in South Korea for a while to help translate. Regional dialects exist throughout Korea, but the North-South language divide has little to do with geographical differences. Like many other aspects of North Korean life, language has been manipulated to praise the country's rulers. Kim Seok Hyang lectures at the Ewha Institute for Unification Studies and has written a book on how North Koreans use their language. She gives an example of one word whose meaning has changed since the Koreas were divided. It's sun-mul, and it translates as a gift or present one gives to a friend.
HYANG: North Korean way of speaking this sun-mul, sun-mul is the deserved word by Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. So only Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong-Il are the only two who can give sum-mul to another person.
STROTHER: Adding to refugees' linguistic difficulties is the infusion of English words into South Korean. The mix is known here as Konglish. These are especially prevalent in the names of relatively modern technology. You can't really expect someone to know how to send a fax or make a Xerox when they've never heard these words, or even seen the devices themselves. Defector Chae Su Jeong says it was tough learning all these new words.
JEONG: I had no idea what “camera†meant. In North Korea, it's called a “Sajingi.†Now that I am learning English, life is a little easier here. But before, I couldn't follow what my professor or classmates were saying because they use so many English words.
STROTHER: The Pyongyang regime not only keeps English words out, but has also done away with Chinese characters, which are still learned in South Korea. North Koreans believe they speak a superior form of the language, something many still believe even after they defect. Again, Kim Seok Hyang.
HYANG: North Korean defectors are arguing their way of using Korean language as pure and clean way of protecting Korean from outside dirty thing.
STROTHER: Those “dirty things†of course mean foreign words. For The World, I'm Jason Strother in Seoul, South Korea.
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