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

[Dr. John Caruso Jr.]

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Oh yes,  a number of Koreans discriminate against provincial accents.  How
fortunate their "divide et impera," policies are so transparent.  What are
the ultimate results of linguistic regionalism in Korea?

Perhaps one should compare irrational Korean linguistic bias to the rational
extermination of races, religions and ethnic groups in the Western models of
technology and democracy that are regularly referenced as political
paradigms.

How many doses of Western materialism will it take to make the Koreans as
ruthless as the European Nazis or as vicious as America's 300 year romance
with slavery and segregation?

Seoul riot police recruited from the countryside -  worse than all white US
National Guard units for 100 years in the former states of the Confederacy?

Let's  join together and bring our Western appreciation for diversity to
South Korea so they can be liberated.

John

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Duggan" <duggan_john at hotmail.com>
To: <korean-studies at iic.edu>
Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2000 9:45 AM
Subject: Re: North-South Standard Dialects, Regionalism


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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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