Koreans strive to narrow language divide

ROK, DPRK aim to complete work on joint dictionary project by 2019

Pyongyang and Seoul have never found dialogue easy, but academics from both sides currently meeting in Pyongyang are trying to steer things in the right direction by at least getting them to speak the same language.

A 25-year old effort to produce a unified Korean language dictionary is, its compilers say, entering the home stretch in its bid to bridge a growing gap in vocabulary, if not ideology.

Last week, a group of linguists and lexicographers from the Republic of Korea involved in the dictionary project left for their first meeting in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in five years.

"It's important work," said chief editor Han Young-un, who said a growing divergence in Korean usage risks becoming as big a barrier to eventual DPRK-ROK unification as the heavily militarized border that divides the peninsula.

Speaking to AFP before he left for Pyongyang, Han said the problem was especially pronounced in the language used by professionals like doctors and lawyers.

Polarized meanings

"It's so marked that architects from each side would probably have difficulty building a house together," he added.

After the 1910-45 Japanese occupation of Koreaduring which Korean was banned in schools and governmentboth sides of the newly divided peninsula put a priority on the Korean language and literacy.

But more than six decades of almost total separation have seen their common language split almost as radically as their economies and politics.

Some common words have polarized meanings, such as "agassi", which means "young lady" in the ROK, but "slave of feudal society" in the DPRK.

The real problem is the far larger number of words that have exclusively entered each country's lexicon and are mutually unintelligible.

Han estimates such differences now extend to one-third of the words spoken on the streets of Seoul and Pyongyang, and up to two-thirds in business and official settings.

"At the moment there is still no problem in basic communication, but the language rift will become unbridgeable if the differences are left unchecked," Han said.

The project to compile a unified Korean dictionary was first suggested by ROK pro-unification activist Moon Ik-hwan when he met DPRK founder leader Kim Il-sung during a visit to Pyongyang in 1989.

'Unbridgeable' rift?

Kim approved the idea, but things got off to an inauspicious start as Moon was thrown into jail on his return to the ROK for making an illegal trip to Pyongyang.

Moon died in 1994, and it wasn't until 2004 that the project was revived as cross-border exchanges flourished in the wake of a landmark summit in 2000 between then-ROK president Kim Dae-jung and then-DPRK leader Kim Jong-il.

"Like his father Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il saw the project as significant in terms of preserving Korea's cultural assets," said Kim Han-mook, who heads the ROK side of the joint committee that was finally established in early 2005 to put the dictionary together.

The target was 330,000 entries, and the committee has so far managed to come up with concrete definitions for 55,000 words.

The work was slow at first as the two sides got to know each other, but soon picked up pace, and Han said he was confident a 2019 completion target could be met ifand it 's a big "if"the committee can go about its work uninterrupted.

Unfortunately, even the peaceful work of lexicography is not immune to the volatile nature of relations between the DPRK and the ROK, which have remained technically at war since the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.

The committee held 20 meetings in its first five years, but then in 2010, inter-Korean relations were effectively frozen as military tensions soared.

(China Daily 11/04/2014 page10)