[KS] Re: North-South Standard Dialects, Regionalism

[John Duggan]

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I guess I need to rephrase my question on regionalism.

The regions have existed for centuries, but my question is on regionalism as 
an organizing principle for political power.  Candidates were elected to the 
national assembly this year were often chosen on the basis of a 
regionally-centered party affiliation.

1) How historical are regionally biased sentiments?  In the late 1970s, I 
often heard disparaging caricatures of people from Cholla.  The first time 
was quite surprising.  A teacher who otherwise appeared quite reasonable 
launched into an invective about Cholla treachery, how this stretched back 
in time to the Paekche-Silla rivalries, etc.  I also had a co-worker from 
Cholla who was suspended for several months after being denied a loan for an 
outburst about anti-Cholla government policies that happened to have been 
overheard by an informant ready to report him to the Park regime secret 
police.  A frequent complaint, also, from people from Cholla was the 
differential development under Park.

2) I've heard it claimed that Chon and his generals brought in forces from 
outside Cholla to carry out his 1980 Kwangju massacre.  I've also heard it 
claimed that the riot police in Seoul were usually chosen from country boys 
so they wouldn't be swayed by local identification.  Whether these are true 
or not, the perception of bias is quite real.

3) What I would like to know is how much regionalism predated the Park 
regime. Were the parties in the First and Second Republics organized around 
a regional structure, or did they tend to be organized more along 
ideological lines?  How much of the current inter-regional bias predates the 
36 years of Kyongsang-do domination under Park-Chon-No-Kim Yong Sam, and how 
much of it arose out of that context of domination? To what degree was this 
a spontaneous evolution vice a design on the part of the rulers?

4) In the North, power seems to concentrate around those in Kim Il Sung's 
family and original guerilla unit - predominated by a mix of Pyongan and 
Hamgyong natives. Kim Chong-il represents the fusion of these two groups. 
Perhaps the intermarriage within the leadership was the North's response to 
regional interests?

5) It's interesting that the central region (Hwanghae, Kyonggi, Seoul, 
Kangwon, and Chungchong) has not surfaced a national leader in the south 
since Syngmann Rhee and Yun Posun.


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