[KS] Korean in North Korea

[J.Scott Burgeson]

That line was meant to be a joke, referring to how "pure" or "traditional" Korean can be seen as old-fashioned or out-of-date by many South Koreans these days, who have been acculturated and well-assimilated into the Empire and thus have very different tastes than their Northern cousins. In any case, I'm not sure about the origin of "입종이" except to say that it was in common use by residents of Pyongyang with whom I frequently interacted. Moreover, in my experience Choson-jok tend to consume South Korean media sources and are generally more oriented to the South, and if memory serves, "napkin" was well-understood at Choson-jok restaurants in the Chinese Northeast. 


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On Mon, 11/25/13, Frank Hoffmann <hoffmann at koreanstudies.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [KS] Korean in North Korea
 To: "Korean Studies Discussion List" <koreanstudies at koreanstudies.com>
 Date: Monday, November 25, 2013, 1:46 AM
 
 > when hearing words like
 "입종이" or "차림표." Must be from the Choson 
 > period, right?
 
 The second one clearly munhwaŏ and standard -- but the
 first one, is 
 that a NORTH Korea term and not maybe Yŏnbyŏn slang?
 
 By the way, seems to me American English could be one of the
 most 
 static and conservative languages these days. Anyone shares
 that? (Am 
 anything but a language person, just a harmless observation
 and 
 question.)
 
 Sone stats, quite impressive ones -- quoting Ross King:
 
 "By 1991, the DPRK had coined as many as 50,000 new lexical
 items, in a 
 highly significant reorientation of core Korean vocabulary
 away from 
 foreign sources and towards a purified ‘true’ national
 language built 
 on native Korean words. Given the rapid progress of the
 Korean language 
 in South Korea in an entirely opposite direction and the
 adoption of 
 increasingly more English loanwords (estimated in Sohn 1991:
 99 to have 
 reached 10,000 in number by 1991) despite certain government
 attempts 
 at control of the lexicon, this has opened up a major gap
 between 
 language in the North and that in the South, (...)."
 
 Ross King, "North and South Korea," in _Language and
 National Identity 
 in Asia_, ed. by Andrew Simpson, Oxford UP, 2007.
 
 Werner Sasse wrote a nice piece on Munhwaŏ also, back in
 1980:
 http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/jbp/kl/1980/00000002/00000001/art00004

 
 
 Best,
 Frank
 
 --------------------------------------
 Frank Hoffmann
 http://koreanstudies.com