2022-23
Mitra FAMILY GRANT Recipient
Linguistic Divergence at the 38th Parallel: The Political Evolution of Kim Il-Sung’s Language Reform Campaign
Michelle Jin
Linguistic Divergence at the 38th Parallel: The Political Evolution of Kim Il-Sung’s Language Reform Campaign
Michelle Jin
2023 Mitra Family Scholar
Mentors: Mr. Byron Stevens and Mrs. Lauri Vaughan
April 12, 2023
In 1945, at the conclusion of World War II, American and Soviet diplomats established the 38th parallel on the Korean Peninsula, temporarily dividing the region into North Korea and South Korea. Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union consulted a single Korean citizen before honoring the 38th parallel, failing to recognize its irreversible impact on the region.1 The Allied leaders’ rash decision severed a peninsula that had been a “unified political entity since 668 [CE].”2
While the Korean War, which occurred from 1950 to 1953, augmented political disunity between South Korea, backed by the United Nations and capitalist powers, and North Korea, supported by the Soviet Union and its communist allies, the 38th parallel congealed such political fragmentation.3 From the end of the Korean War in 1953 until 1971, the two Koreas maintained no channels of direct communication. Simply put, diplomacy ceased between the two until 1972, the year of the Pan-Korea Summit.4 At the 1972 Pan-Korea Summit in Seoul, the first official meeting between the two nations in several decades, South Korean diplomats were shocked by the lack of mutual linguistic intelligibility between themselves and their northern neighbors.5 While the two nations struck a common objective of achieving Korean reunification without depending on foreign powers, South Korean diplomats wondered whether this ambition
1 Young Ick Lew, Brief History of Korea: A Bird's-Eye View (New York: Korea Society, 2000), 24.
2 Lew, 24.
3 Chung Min Lee, "A Peninsula of Paradoxes: South Korean Public Opinion on Unification and Outside Powers," Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, last modified May 13, 2020, accessed March 29, 2023, https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/05/13/peninsula-of-paradoxes-south-korean-public-opinionon-unification-and-outside-powers-pub-81737.
4 "North Korea (10/00) Background Note," U.S. Department of State, accessed March 29, 2023, https://2009-2017.state.gov/outofdate/bgn/northkorea/26220.htm.
5 Jacob A. Terrell, "Political Ideology and Language Policy in North Korea," Berkeley Linguistics Society 33, no. 1 (2007): 431, accessed September 13, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3765/bls.v33i1.3545.
could truly be achieved, especially if the two nations’ languages, that had instilled a shared bond for centuries, had diverged at such a rapid pace since 1945.6
The language comprehension issues that mired the diplomats’ conversation can be attributed to North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung’s purposeful, government-planned language reform campaign that was initiated in 1945. In just three decades, Kim Il-Sung’s language purification campaign successfully altered the Korean language by removing foreign loan words and instilling new vocabulary, expediting a cultural process that typically requires generations.7
Throughout history, the Korean Peninsula’s geographic position, bounded by China and Russia in the north and Japan in the southeast, has made the country vulnerable to both military campaigns and foreign encroachment.8 Due to colonization and forced assimilation from 1910 to 1945, the country’s language inevitably became intertwined with a cacophony of foreign languages, including Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and English. After the conclusion of World War II in 1945, then North Korean dictator Kim Il-Sung, steadfast that language reform wielded major influence in nation-building, pursued a “Korean vernacular-only” policy that removed foreign loan words and vocabulary terms, especially those from English, Chinese, and Japanese, to “decolonize and indigenize the form of Korean used in North Korea.”9
Kim Il-Sung’s language policies fall under two time periods: pre-1966 and post-1966. While many scholars have created their own sub-categories to divide Kim Il-Sung’s language
6 Lee, "A Peninsula," Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
7 Terrell, "Political Ideology," 33.
8 Lew, Brief History, 6.
9 Sonia Ryang, Language and Truth in North Korea (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2021), 50, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1pncr13.
reform campaign, 1966 serves as the birth of North Korean linguistic prescriptivism, a primary shift in Kim Il-Sung’s linguistic objectives, where his goals repositioned from emphasizing practicality to ideology. Before 1966, Kim Il-Sung’s language reforms served pragmatic purposes, such as increasing literacy and strengthening shared cultural identities. After 1966, he aligned his language policies with the state ideology of Juche, which translates to self-reliance. With Juche, Kim Il-Sung sought to dampen foreign influence by uplifting North Korean political autonomy, economic autarky, and social independence.10 While Kim Il-Sung’s language policies reinforced his political demagoguery, his pre-1966 reforms emphasized Korean linguistic identity and cultural heritage, a neglected area of scholarship.
Pre-1966 Policies: Tackling Illiteracy
In 1443, King Sejong the Great sponsored the creation of Hangul, Korean script, creating a simpler alphabet system as an alternative to Hanja, Chinese script, a writing system far more cumbersome to learn.11 King Sejong’s creation of Hangul not only established a unique aspect of Korean literary culture but also served as a “utilitarian measure to allow lower-class men and women [...] to achieve literacy without having to learn the massive and complicated set of Chinese characters.”12
Despite the creation of a straightforward and attainable writing system that distinguished itself from Hanja, Chinese linguistic influence continued to dominate the Korean language. The invention of Hangul failed to “challenge the monopoly of Chinese characters in written
10 Daniel Byman and Jennifer Lind, "Pyongyang's Survival Strategy: Tools of Au thoritarian Control in North Korea.," International Security 35, no. 1 (2010): 52, accessed January 1, 2023, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40784646.
11 Lew, Brief History, 16.
12 Ryang, Language and Truth, 50.
communication,” which continued into the mid-twentieth century.13 Korean elites continued to use Chinese characters to establish social superiority, leveraging their writing capabilities to create and revise Korean legal codes. Many common citizens, unable to read or understand government texts, were excluded from policymaking, and oftentimes manipulated by the elite class. Simply put, illiterate citizens stood by powerless.
After Japanese colonial rule over the Korean Peninsula terminated in 1945, North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung recognized the gravity of North Korea’s illiteracy crisis. Over 25 percent of the population, approximately 2.3 million individuals, were illiterate a clear barrier to post-war nation-building.14 To improve literacy among the North Korean populace, Kim Il-Sung opened over 8,000 adult night schools and language institutions in 1945; the number of schools in operation increased to 40,000 by 1947.15 As early as 1946, Kim Il-Sung decreed a national law banning the use of Japanese loan words.16 Another law banning Chinese characters from North Korean literature and educational curricula ensued.17 In accordance with the two aforementioned laws, textbooks immediately revised after World War II prohibited the use of Chinese characters and Japanese loan words, sanctioning only the use of Hangul. By eradicating Chinese characters
13 Hyun-Hee Moon, "Language and Ideology in North Korean Language Planning" (Master's Thesis, Australian National University, 1998), 11, accessed September 8, 2022.
14 Chin-Wu Kim, "Linguistics and Language Policies in North Korea," Korean Studies 2 (1978): 166, accessed September 13, 2022, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23717719.
15 Ryang, Language and Truth, 51.
16 Yong Soon Yim, "Language Reform as a Political Symbol in North Korea," World Affairs 142, no. 3 (1980): 217, accessed September 8, 2022, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20671827.
17 Key P. Yang and Chang-Boh Chee, "North Korean Educational System: 1945 to Present," The China Quarterly, no. 14 (1963): 126, https://www.jstor.org/stable/651347.
from Korean texts, Kim Il-Sung hoped to simplify language education among North Korean youth and increase literacy.
To amplify the effectiveness of his literacy campaign, Kim Il-Sung increased language instruction in North Korean schools. Across the nation, junior high school students spent five to eight hours a week drilling the nuances in Korean grammar and vocabulary, and elementary school students dedicated over half of their learning time to native language instruction.18 While the North Korean government reported that the nation’s literacy rate stood at 100 percent by 1949, such government statistics must be considered doubtfully. If the North Korean government began eradicating Chinese characters, the main hindrance to literacy, in 1949, it could not have realistically achieved 100 percent literacy with such celerity in less than a year.19 However, Kim Il-Sung’s campaign proved successful in increasing literacy rates in the nation.
Aside from such dubious statistical analysis, Dr. Sonia Ryang, professor of Asian Studies at Rice University, affirms the general success of Kim Il-Sung’s literacy campaign, where “the adoption of a Korean-only writing system enabled the North Korean state to educate men and women, the old and the young, at a remarkably fast speed.”20 Kim Il-Sung’s coupling of his language reform initiatives and anti-illiteracy campaign suggest that his nativist language policies emanated from practical reasons, as literacy continues to be an issue that every nation, regardless of political affiliation, attempts to ameliorate.
18 Yim, "Language Reform," 218.
19 Jae Sun Lee, "State Ideology and Language Policy in North Korea: An Analysis of North Korea's Public Discourse" (PhD diss., University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, 2018), 31, accessed January 11, 2023, http://hdl.handle.net/10125/62321.
20 Ryang, Language and Truth, 51.
Pre-1966 Policies: Elevating Social Etiquette
Beyond addressing illiteracy, Kim Il-Sung sought to improve the North Korean populace’s social etiquette through language policies an effort to bolster Korean cultural identity. Because scholars historically have not emphasized the role of “linguistic etiquette or politeness” in North Korean language reform management, there are still wide debates surrounding the topic. While some historians believe that reinforcing etiquette in the Korean language serves as a tenet of Communist ideology, others comprehend its deep-rooted, apolitical importance to Korean culture.21 Linguistic honorifics are crucial aspects of Korean cultural, historical, and linguistic identity. Before 1966, Kim Il-Sung’s linguistic policies relating to social etiquette did not seek to elevate his own status or promote the Juche philosophy.
Throughout Korean history, linguistic politeness has served as an emblem of Korean culture. The use of honorifics traces back as early as the Three Kingdoms Period that began in 57 BCE and gained traction during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1897), where Confucian norms and linguistic etiquette helped reinforce a hereditary social hierarchy.22 When a subordinate addresses a superior with honorifics, he actively recognizes their differing social statuses by appending a special case and particle ending to Korean verbs. The use of honorifics solidifies a rigid social system, sustained by generations, by which one must either show deference or be shown deference
Moun Kyoung Shin, scholar of Linguistics at the University of York, posits that “the strict honorification systems in North Korea are focused on showing respect” to the North
21 Lee, "State Ideology," 12.
22 Sonia Seo-young Chae, "Understanding the Korean Language," interview, Asia Society, https://asiasociety.org/korea/understanding-korean-language.
Korean leader, a widely agreed upon statement.23 Many scholars conclude that the North Korean government wielded linguistic etiquette as an “ideological tool for mobilizing indigenous, superior, and Communist moral culture.”24 However, the ideological impact of linguistic etiquette in language planning only became relevant after 1966. With a significant lack of scholarship surrounding etiquette and language reform before 1966, it is unreasonable to conclude that North Korean linguistic etiquette policies were implemented purely for ideological purposes.
Kim Il-Sung’s pre-1966 linguistic etiquette policies, including rules on the use of honorifics, began as a genuine extension of preserving hierarchical systems inherent to Korean historical culture. In 1963, the North Korean government published Our Life and Language, a guidebook detailing oral linguistic etiquette, including speaking mannerisms, body posturing, and vocal tones.25 The guidebook teaches Koreans how to navigate public spaces and speak to individuals respectfully, including steps to properly address elders on public transportation or answer a professional phone call.26
By equating civility and standardization, Kim Il-Sung framed the nation’s newlystandardized language around mutual respect and honor a key component of traditional Korean honorifics systems. While some scholars immediately assume that Kim Il-Sung’s emphasis on
23 Moon Kyoung Shin, "A Comparative Study of Honorific Systems in North and South Korea: Shifts since 1950" (PhD diss., University of York, 2017), 2, https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/24122/
24 Eunseon Kim, "Language and Politeness in the 'Nation of Propriety in the East': A History of Linguistic Ideologies of Korean Honorification" (unpublished manuscript, University of British Columbia, 2018), 12, accessed March 29, 2023, https://open.library.ubc.ca/soa/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0375594.
25 Ryang, Language and Truth, 55.
26 Ryang, 55.
civility and standardization bred desired ideological indoctrination, Our Life and Language does not “reserve [any] use of special honorific terms for Kim Il-Sung,” exhibiting that morality and politeness are qualities shared equally among the North Korean government and citizenry.27
Pre-1966 Policies: Practical Considerations
Even as Kim Il-Sung’s reforms to purify the Korean language required a grandiose vision, he made self-sacrificing, practical considerations to improve the efficacy of his language policies. Published in 1956, the North Korean Academy of Science’s updated Korean dictionary completely altered the traditional 24-letter system to a 40-letter alphabet system.28 While the creation of a new alphabet system would concretize the magnitude of Kim Il-Sung’s purification campaign, as the Korean alphabet served as the foundation of its language, Kim Il-Sung surprisingly eschewed the Academy of Science’s planned language reforms. In 1972, Kim IlSung elaborated in a conversation with Lee Hu-Rak, former director of the National Intelligence Service of South Korea, about his reasoning behind maintaining the traditional alphabet system: A nation should have the same language and customs. Some people suggested that we reform our writing system after liberation. I opposed the proposition because I was concerned that if we reformed the alphabet when we were not yet reunified, we could split into two nations. A revision of our writing system comes about from rash acts and nearsightedness.29
27 Ryang, 59.
28 Yim, "Language Reform," 219.
29 Lee Hu-Rak, "Conversation Between Kim Il-Sung and Lee Hu-Rak," interview by Kim Il-Sung, Wilson Center, last modified May 4, 1972, accessed March 29, 2023, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/conversation -between-kim-il-sung-and-lee-hu-rak.
Although Kim Il-Sung’s language policies lauded large-scale change, he recognized that drastic changes could upend stability and historical social structures. He understood the importance of preserving a monolinguistic society in Korea as much as possible. In a speech to the North Korean public in 1964, Kim Il-Sung also affirmed the detrimental effects a new alphabet system would have on North Korean innovation and politics:
Concerned only with reforming the alphabet, [linguists] have lost sight of the menace of a national split which such a reform would entail. Second, they have not appreciated the fact that an immediate reform of the alphabet would greatly hamper the development of science and culture.30
Science and culture were two critical aspects of nation-building that Kim Il-Sung emphasized after North Korea endured two global wars. Although the North Korean government could have prioritized the creation of a new, native Korean alphabet over the traditional system, Kim Il-Sung recognized that it would obstruct national recovery. He even went as far as to accept the continued use of Sino-Korean words in scientific texts due to their historical predominance, reversing and modifying past decrees that abrogated all Sino-Korean loan words and Chinese characters.31
If Kim Il-Sung’s absolute priority were infusing nativist political ideology among the North Korean populace, creating a new Korean alphabet would be a foundational step one that he would take regardless of its repercussions. By predicting how a new alphabet system could
30 Kim Il-Sung, "Problems Relating to the Development of the Korean Language," speech, January 3, 1964, Marxists Internet Archive, accessed March 29, 2023, http://marxists.org.
31 Lee, "State Ideology," 38.
not only threaten North Korean literacy goals but also North-South political reunification, Kim Il-Sung acted pragmatically, preventing myopic, radical changes with longstanding impacts. In his 1964 address to the North Korean public, Kim Il-Sung also noted that a procedure for filtering loan words ought to be established. Comprehending a drawback in his own policy, he recognized that it was impossible for all foreign words to be eradicated.32 While scholars have criticized many of Kim Il-Sung’s rash humanitarian policies that have disproportionately impacted vulnerable communities in North Korea, his linguistic policies aptly recognized their drawbacks before implementation, allowing for successful, swift yet realistic goals. Furthermore, Kim Il-Sung often recognized how his many linguistic ambitions, such as improving national literacy and elevating social etiquette, clashed. Although North Korea banned the use of Chinese characters and loan words in 1949, Kim Il-Sung recognized that Korean honorifics a key component of Korean cultural and social etiquette often directly implemented words with Chinese etymologies.33 In his 1964 address to the public, written by several government linguists that he chose, Kim Il-Sung adopted a structural mechanism for filtering Chinese characters, either for eradication or preservation: There is, of course, no need to go as far as to abandon those words which have already been adopted from Chinese ideographs and which have already been fully assimilated into our language. What is wrong is the unnecessary use of new words coined from Chinese ideographs.34
32 Il-Sung, "Problems Relating," speech, Marxists Internet Archive.
33 Ryang, Language and Truth, 59.
34 Il-Sung, "Problems Relating," speech, Marxists Internet Archive.
If Kim Il-Sung had prioritized ideological and political initiatives, he would not have permitted the sustained use of any Chinese character, including already assimilated and widely employed vocabulary.
Kim Il-Sung also recognized the importance of permitting the existence of Chinese characters to aid North-South diplomatic relations, a practical reason that would yield immense repercussions. While the North Korean government did not actively promote the use of the Chinese language in everyday conversations, Kim Il-Sung “directed those Chinese characters be kept alive” because South Korea still utilized Chinese characters. He refused to jeopardize mutual intelligibility across the peninsula for his political power.35 In fact, if consolidating imperial power was Kim Il-Sung’s goal, diverging the North Korean language as far away from the South Korean language would benefit him. He could enact tyrannical policies without worrying about infringement from South Korea. However, Kim Il-Sung recognized that reunification was a shared goal between North and South Korea. To achieve such a goal, he had to preserve a sufficient level of linguistic understanding between the two countries’ languages even if it interfered with his own plans.
To maintain such mutual comprehension between the two nations, Kim Il-Sung declared that students ought to study Mandarin at least an hour a week.36 Similar to how he promoted his literacy and language campaign goals through the education sector, Kim Il-Sung used the same mechanism to promote a sliver of classical Chinese education.
Kim Il-Sung recognized the cruciality of eventual reunification, which would only occur if the North and South Korean languages still maintained major similarities. Given that this 35 Kim, "Linguistics and Language," 169. 36 Kim,
policy was implemented a decade later than his initial educational policies, it is evident that Kim Il-Sung enacted this law to modify and adjust his language planning. Relinquishing any ideological framing, Kim Il-Sung opted to modify laws after observing their human impact on the North Korean population, a practical consideration not driven by myopic ideological thinking.
Pre-1966 Policies: Preservation of Cultural Identity
Even before 1966, when Kim Il-Sung’s language reform goals shifted from pragmatic to ideological, Korean cultural tenets of community and unity instituted a key role in initial linguistic policymaking. During the Japanese occupation of Korea, the Korean language became a crucial symbol and vehicle of Korean independence and national identity; the Korean language united individuals during a period of trauma and tragedy.37 Koreans used their shared native language as a bulwark against Japanese imperialism, including covert operations to coin native Korean terms to use as offensives against Japanese imperial overlords.
Undoubtedly, a primary goal of Kim Il-Sung’s language policies was to uplift native Korean culture and repel traumatic foreign influence that historically encroached upon the Korean Peninsula. While Chinese influence on the Korean language far surpasses Japanese influence, the North Korean government’s first linguistic target was to eliminate Japanese loan words in 1946.38 Although Sungkyunkwan University Professor Yong Soon Yim does not further elucidate on why North Korea’s first move was to target Japanese loan words, it is reasonable to believe that they did so to cleanse shared colonial trauma. Korea’s colonial experiences under imperial Japan continued to breed animosity far after Japanese colonialism
37 Lee, "State Ideology," 27. 38Yim, "Language Reform," 217.
officially ended in 1945. A language is more than just grammar and syntax; it serves as history and discourse.” In Kim Il-Sung’s eyes, preserving a language mired by foreign influence was equivalent to preserving memories of inferiority, discrimination, and terror. Thus, Kim Il-Sung’s language reform movements mirrored that of other postcolonial powers seeking to establish a sense of authentic independence after colonialism.
If spewing Juche ideology were Kim Il-Sung’s goal, the magnitude of his language reforms would have mattered. He needed to eliminate as many loan words as possible, sensibly beginning with Sino-Korean loan words with the greatest linguistic influence. However, by targeting Japanese loan words first, Kim Il-Sung reveals that cleansing colonial memory is more crucial than disseminating state ideological influences.
Theories of Juche
Kim Il-Sung’s Juche philosophy, first publicly introduced in a government meeting in 1955, encompasses three tenets: charip (economic independence), chawi (military independence), and chaju (domestic and foreign independence). All three of these tenets rely on national self-reliance.39 The origin of Juche is debated and has been divided into three schools of thought: Instrumental Perspective, Traditional Political Culture, and Individualism.40 The Traditional Political Culture framework buttresses correlations between Juche and Kim Il-Sung’s linguistic policies, providing a robust structure to understand how Kim Il-Sung’s language campaign connected to North Korea’s state ideology.
39 Grace Lee, "The Political Philosophy of Juche," Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs 3, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 105, accessed January 2, 2023, http://www.asia-studies.com.
40 Lee, 107.
The Instrumental Perspective postulates that Kim’s creation of the Juche philosophy was driven by desperation and instability in regime power after the Korean War, compelling Kim IlSung to create Juche as a “domestic instrument of personal cult-building.”41 As Tyler Lutz, scholar from Arcadia University, elaborates, the Instrumental Perspective theory argues that by creating a cult of personality, Kim successfully portrayed an authoritarian dictatorship as a thriving democracy.42
The Traditional Political Culture Perspective asserts that Kim Il-Sung resorted to isolationist policies aligned with Juche to protect North Korea from foreign influence, an experience uncomfortably familiar to residents of the Korean Peninsula.43 Because of the Korean Peninsula’s strategic location in East Asia, Korean politics has long been intertwined with China and Japan, two powerful, global political powers. From Mongol invasions to Japanese colonization, the Korean Peninsula endured persistent intrusion on their sovereignty; Kim IlSung’s Juche philosophy served as a deterrence against centuries of political trauma and foreign encroachment.44
The Individualism Theory asserts that Kim Il-Sung crafted the Juche philosophy from his personal experiences interacting with foreign philosophies, amalgamating other nations’ political ideologies into Juche 45 Individualism Theory helps underscore the contradictory nature of Kim
41 Lee, 107.
42 Tyler Lutz, "Cult of Personality: North Korea under Kim Il-Sung" (PhD diss., Arcadia University, 2015), 2, accessed January 13, 2023, https://scholarworks.arcadia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=senior_theses.
43 Lee, "The Political," 108.
44 Lee, 108.
45 Lee, 108.
Il-Sung’s Juche policy, where he desired to emphasize North Korea’s self-reliance but also inevitably relied on foreign support to bolster North Korean state influence. Although none of the Juche tenets directly correlate to the political intentions of post1966 North Korean policies, language reform is inextricably intertwined with chaju As Sungkyunkwan University Professor Yoon Soon Yim postulates, “language reform is neatly tied to [...] North Korean nationalism manifested in the Juche idea.”46
Kim Il-Sung’s 1964 and 1966 Addresses: Development of Munhwae
Kim Il-Sung produced two conversational speeches with linguists that he gathered in 1964 and 1966, outlining his language reform goals while reaffirming North Korean state power. While Kim Il-Sung had already been implementing his reforms for a decade, these two addresses served not only as an official public declaration of his linguistic goals but also as a tonal shift; his linguistic policies no longer served only pragmatic purposes but also ideological ones.
Kim Il-Sung’s 1964 public address gave birth to prescriptivism, where explicit rules dictated everyday language.47 While the 1964 address started to uncover Kim Il-Sung’s ideological intentions, the 1966 speech solidified the connection between his language reforms and North Korea’s Juche policy. In his 1966 address, Kim Il-Sung coined the term munhwae, meaning cultured language. He juxtaposed the “standard and polished” North Korean language against pyojuno, also known as the South Korean standardized language, which he deemed was tainted by loan words and foreign influences.48
46 Yim, "Language Reform," 227.
47 Kim, "Linguistics and Language," 168.
48 Kim, 168.
While Kim Il-Sung formerly made practical considerations, such as rejecting the creation of a new alphabet system because he understood the importance of maintaining peace with South Korea, his 1966 speech antagonized the nation’s southern neighbor. By degrading the South Korean language filled with foreign influences, Kim Il-Sung reaffirms the Juche ideology: Language is a major indication of national character, and now the speech in South Korea has been bastardized by Western, Japanese, and Chinese words to such a degree that it does not sound like our mother tongue, and the national characteristics of our language are gradually disappearing. A true patriot is a communist. Only communists truly love their mother tongue and endeavor to develop it.49
By malignantly depicting South Koreans as foreign capitalists who have lost touch with their traditional culture, Kim Il-Sung correlated strong patriotism to a nativized national language.
When South Korea’s robust relations with capitalist powers launched the nation’s economic development in private sectors, Kim Il-Sung degraded their position as a capitalist nation by contrasting capitalism and communism. Kim Il-Sung juxtaposed South Korean national identity against the powerful state ideology of Juche.
The North Korean government instantly began implementing policies to emphasize the superiority of munhwae over pyojuno Kim Il-Sung's laudatory commentary on the Korean language in his 1966 address also emphasizes how Korean serves as an ideological vehicle for morality and self-sufficiency:
Our language is so rich that it is capable of expressing with clarity any complex thought or delicate feeling; it can stir people, make them laugh or cry. Our language is also highly
49 Kim Il-Sung, "On Correctly Preserving the National Characteristics of the Korean Language," speech, May 14, 1966, Marxists Internet Archive, accessed March 29, 2023, http://marxists.org/.
effective in educating people in communist morality, because it can express with precision matters of good behaviour. Our national language is so rich in pronunciation that in it we can pronounce almost freely the sounds of any other language in Eastern or Western nations.50
Kim Il-Sung instantly alluded to how the auditory elements of Korean promote and elicit communist loyalty, a vital element to North Korean politics. The Korean language itself has a strong political underpinning in implementing Juche, since every word must be selected cautiously and righteously for Juche to be properly emboldened. Kim Il-Sung’s speech excerpt emphasized not only the shared identity that the Korean language evokes but also highlights the language’s ideological framing.
In 1968, the North Korean government compiled and published a 10,000-word dictionary with no foreign loan words a stark contrast to an earlier 1962 edition that contained many SinoKorean loan words.51 Compared to the 1962 dictionary, which contained over 5,054 pages, the 1968 dictionary only contained 1,350 pages due to the elimination of Chinese characters.52 While the publication of dictionaries and grammar guidebooks mirror policies before 1966 that merged the education and language reform sectors, the framing of post-1966 language reforms was far more aligned with the Juche ideology.
By 1976, Kim Il-Sung had established the National Language Assessment Committee, a key agency for disseminating and publishing linguistic reforms to the North Korean public.53
50 Il-Sung, "On Correctly," Speech, Marxists Internet Archive.
51 Terrell, "Political Ideology," 429.
52 Ryang, Language and Truth, 53.
53 Ryang, 76.
Instead of proudly incorporating foreign loanwords as a signal of globalization and cross-cultural cooperation, Kim Il-Sung leveraged his dictatorial power to create an entire government agency dedicated to creating Korean-rooted words. He antagonized Western nations and South Korea in his speeches and written documents, evoking anti-capitalist rhetoric that often emerged during the Korean War, an ideological proxy war within the Cold War Era.
Post-1966 Policies: Red Book and Cult of Personality
As Professor Daniel Byman at Georgetown University and Professor Jennifer Lind at Dartmouth College define, a cult of personality allows for leaders to be elevated to a godlike status while creating an illusion of democracy.54 By cultivating a cult of personality in North Korea, Kim Il-Sung and successive leaders have promoted the longevity of the Kim Dynasty. Through gradually establishing mutual trust between the North Korean government and citizens, Kim Il-Sung has created an illusion of power that permitted him to circumvent ethical laws and overpower any political rivals.55 A cult of personality allows for an authoritarian leader to bypass as an emblem of political democracy.56
54 Byman and Lind, "Pyongyang's Survival," 51.
55 Byman and Lind, 51.
56 Lutz, "Cult of Personality," 2.
One primary mechanism nationalist leaders use to instill a cult of personality is propagandist media (see fig 1) and standardized education. Propagandist media exaggerated Kim Il-Sung’s role as a hero and savior in North Korean communities. Beyond public art and posters, Kim Il-Sung merged his propagandist ideals in state newspapers, which he knew had high readership levels in North Korea. Immediately after the central government adopted a “Hangul-only” policy, foreign words, except for easily readable Chinese numerals, began to disappear from Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea.57 Because the Rodong Sinmun was North Korea’s main newspaper, Kim Il-Sung’s use of Hangul sent out a message that the nation was shifting toward a general eradication of Chinese characters.
The orientation of Rodong Sinmun altered from vertical to horizontal text, as the horizontal layout of the newspaper improved the readability of Hangul. 58 Such sweeping reform compelled newspaper readers to learn Hangul over former Chinese characters. Because Kim IlSung manipulated newspapers to fit his language policy, North Korean citizens began to recognize that they needed to actively follow up with his linguistic policies if they wanted to continue having access to newspapers. (see fig. 2)
The education system was wielded as a tool to disseminate language reforms and political messaging, both of which intermixed with one another when Kim Il-Sung’s language reform policies became increasingly political post-1966. After his linguists evaluated approximately 5,000 to 6,000 commonly-used, native Korean words, Kim Il-Sung enacted policies that focused on “training teachers and revising elementary materials.”59 With over 35 percent of everyday elementary school curriculum dedicated to political advocacy and indoctrination, the concept of Juche emerged in every course from mathematics to Korean.60 Not only did compulsory
58 Lee, 59.
59 Terrell, "Political Ideology," 430.
60 Byman and Lind, "Pyongyang's Survival," 54.
munhwae education drill students to adopt a vocabulary based on the purified Korean language, but it encouraged children to “correct their parents’ speech” as well especially adults who were accustomed to speaking the pyojuno dialect before 1966.61 By infusing his language reform policies into education, Kim Il-Sung ensured that his political ideology was being disseminated and reinforced throughout all age groups in North Korea. In the 1970s, North Korean literature, including linguistic manuals, embedded, and included tenets of Juche more systematically. As Dr. Sonia Ryang contends, unlike Our Life and Language (1963), Comrade Kim Il-Sung’s Ideas of Language [Created] During the AntiJapanese Armed Struggle and their Brilliant Realization (1970) “unapologetically begins and ends with references to the application of Kim Il-Sung’s Juche.”62 Ryang aptly refers to the 1970 book as “the red book” due to its soft, velvet cover and evident similarities to Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong’s book of the same title.63 While Our Life and Language depicted Kim Il-Sung as a man of equal standing to fellow North Koreans, the red book textually revered Kim Il-Sung bolding, spacing out, and double quoting his spoken words as if they were uttered by a godlike figure.64 In The Standard Korean Dictionary and Speech Art of Korean, example sentences to explicate definitions of vocabulary terms were all bolded quotations from Kim Il-Sung’s manuscripts and speeches idolizing his status.65 A translated excerpt from The Speech Art of Korean, North Koreans were taught through language and
61 Terrell, "Political Ideology," 430.
62 Ryang, Language and Truth, 68.
63 Ryang, 68.
64 Ryang, 68.
65 Terrell, "Political Ideology," 432.
rhetoric to idolize their leader. (see fig. 3)
3: Example sentence idolizing Kim Il-Sung, Speech Art of Korean
With the use of the word gajang, a Korean superlative adjective, the example sentence compels North Korean readers to refer to Kim Il-Sung as the greatest leader. Example sentences in these rhetorical and linguistic guidebooks published after 1966 sought to idolize the Great Leader.
After 1966, Kim Il-Sung also leveraged Koreans’ hatred for their former colonizers, the Japanese, to laud his own personal achievements. By enabling the mass publishing of mythological lore surrounding his military campaigns against Japanese imperialists, Kim Il-Sung garnered popular support among the North Korean populace as an anti-imperialist hero.66 Kim IlSung’s glorified and exaggerated anti-Japanese guerilla fighting campaign in World War II appeared in every textbook, linguistic manual, and dictionary.67 Additionally, a propagandist poster of Kim Il-Sung’s anti-Japanese guerilla fighting that often appeared in language textbooks. (see fig. 4)
66 Byman and Lind, "Pyongyang's Survival," 53.
67 Ryang, Language and Truth, 71.
While former etiquette guidebooks published before 1963 employed a plethora of visual scenarios to explain social etiquette and norms, the new guidebooks added a sentence about Kim
Il-Sung’s military campaigns wherever possible, hoping to imbue North Korean citizens with an ultimate admiration for their leader. Linguistic manuals no longer sought to tackle illiteracy or social etiquette they focused on extolling Kim Il-Sung’s upbringing, education, policies, and livelihood.
National Identity: Comparison with Chinese & South Korean Language Reform
During North Korea’s language reform era, many postcolonial states were undergoing similar decolonization processes, grappling with their colonizers’ languages while reviving their indigenous cultures. As University of Hawaii Professor of Language and Linguistics, Dr. Jae Sun
Lee, postulates, the North Korean language policy making process was particularly unique because “the first North Korean language policy immediately following liberation included the officialization of Korean language as the national language, status planning, [and] the selection
of a new official language.”68 Immediately after Japanese colonization ended, Kim Il-Sung had passed legislation banning Japanese loan words in 1946. Most nations prioritized linguistic recovery, but North Korea championed linguistic purification.
The saga of North Korean language reforms bears a similar narrative to China, their East Asian neighbor. Like North Korea, whose language policies were initiated to elevate an illiterate, poverty-stricken populace after World War II, China’s language policies began after humiliating defeats in the Opium Wars from 1839-1860, when Chinese scholars wondered if their civilization would survive at all.69 After 1949, Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong’s implementation of simplified Chinese script and the pinyin system helped tackle illiteracy in the nation, culminating in an exceptional 97 percent literacy rate by 2018.70 Similar to North Korea, China simplified their language for practical purposes, including improving nationwide literacy.
After China achieved an optimistic trajectory for its pragmatic goals, its language reform campaign also transformed to an ideological operation, one that Tao-Tai Hsia, former Yale University professor, deemed to have “strengthen[ed] Communist propaganda.”71 The depiction of China and North Korea’s language reform campaigns by Western scholars has been overwhelmingly negative, saturated with ideological assumptions about these two communist states from a Western perspective. Nevertheless, it appears common that many communist states,
68 Lee, "State Ideology," 29.
69 Ian Buruma, "How the Chinese Language Got Modernized," New Yorker, January 10, 2022, accessed February 25, 2023, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/17/how-the-chinese-language-gotmodernized.
70 Buruma.
71 Buruma.
such as the Soviet Union and China, undertook language reform campaigns that shifted from practical to ideological.
Under brutal Japanese rule before World War II, Koreans, both from the North and South, were coerced to relinquish their native language in favor of Japanese.72 Separate policies abrogating Japanese loan words ensued in both North and South Korea driven by shared tragedy. Unlike North Korea, whose focus on “combating elitism and anti-nationalism” resulted in the eradication of all foreign loan words, South Korea’s linguistic purification movements purely focused on removing Japanese loan words.73 While both nations employed government language institutes and mass media programs to promote their language reforms, North Korea’s campaign was far more successful in actively altering a language, a phenomenon that perhaps could be tackled in further comparative government scholarship.
While former scholarship emphasizes the ideological impacts of Kim Il-Sung’s language reforms, Kim Il-Sung’s pre-1966 reforms prioritized healing and uniting Korean linguistic identity instead of strengthening the Kim family’s political demagoguery. Regardless of Kim IlSung’s reputation in the international community, his language reform policies uplifted a wartorn nation more swiftly and successfully than its southern counterpart. By tackling illiteracy, establishing guidelines for social etiquette, and implementing procedures to remove foreign loan words, Kim Il-Sung’s language reforms helped Korea shape and solidify its cultural identity after generations of colonialism and foreign encroachment.
There remains a lack of explanation for the abrupt shift of Kim Il-Sung’s language policies in 1966 from pragmatism to ideological dissemination. Perhaps Kim Il-Sung desired to 72 Lew, Brief History, 23. 73 Lee, "State Ideology," 45.
secure the longevity of his dynastic rule, leveraging the Korean language to shape a cult of personality that still manifests itself today through his grandson, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Perhaps Kim Il-Sung’s ideological goals reveal the natural, human course of power consolidation; as his leadership increased, he wanted to further concretize his grasp on political influence. Nonetheless, his ideological language policies merit further discussion.
Large-scale, governmental language reforms implemented in North Korea have culminated in a stark divergence between the South Korean and North Korean language. While Korean remains intelligible on both ends of the Korean Peninsula, linguistic divergence has resulted in disparate vocabularies.
Linguistic divergence begins to unravel cultural homogeneity and individual unity between citizens of both countries. Many North Korean defectors have revealed their difficulty assimilating to South Korea despite the two nation’s ethnic homogeneity; faced with an increasingly apparent language barrier, North Korean defectors are often discriminated against for their dialect and differing lexicon.74
The impacts of North Korea’s historical language reforms extended beyond mutual misunderstandings in everyday conversation. The reforms upend prospects of Korean reunification and diplomacy. Despite not being able to fully understand one another’s language in the 1972 Pan-Korean Conference, North and South Korean diplomats struck a common goal achieving reunification without foreign intervention.75 If the two languages continue diverging,
74 You Gene Kim, "The Odyssey of North Korean Defectors: Issues and Problems in the Migrati on Process" (Master's Thesis, City University of New York, 2015), 32, https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1009/.
75 Michael Edmonston, "The Potential of Korean Unification and a Unified Kor ean Armed Forces: A Cultural Interpretation," Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs, October 31, 2022, https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/JIPA/Display/Article/3212547/the-potential-of-korean-unification-anda-unified-korean-armed-forces-a-cultura/.
which further exacerbates existing cultural and political differences, an imminent nightmare could occur: North and South Korean political representatives will not only fail to strike a common diplomatic objective, but they will fail to understand one another.
The Allied Powers in 1945 may not have recognized the dire impacts that ensued from rashly dividing the Korean Peninsula at the 38th Parallel. In fact, to this day, without the signing of an official peace treaty during the Cold War, the Korean War is technically not over.76 In 2023, the year marking the 70th anniversary of the Korean War’s unofficial conclusion, the Korean Peninsula not only continues to be plagued by a war frozen in time but a language conflict still waiting to thaw.
76 Erin Blakemore, "The Korean War Never Technically Ended. Here's Why.," National Geographic, last modified June 24, 2020, accessed March 29, 2023, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/why -korean-war-never-technically-ended.
Blakemore, Erin. "The Korean War Never Technically Ended. Here's Why." National Geographic. Last modified June 24, 2020. Accessed March 29, 2023.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/why-korean-war-never-technicallyended.
Buruma, Ian. "How the Chinese Language Got Modernized." New Yorker, January 10, 2022. Accessed February 25, 2023. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/17/howthe-chinese-language-got-modernized.
Byman, Daniel, and Jennifer Lind. "Pyongyang's Survival Strategy: Tools of Authoritarian Control in North Korea." International Security 35, no. 1 (2010): 44-74. Accessed January 1, 2023.
Chae, Sonia Seo-young. "Understanding the Korean Language." Interview. Asia Society. https://asiasociety.org/korea/understanding-korean-language.
Cheng, Chin-Chuan. "Directions of Chinese Character Simplification." Journal of Chinese Linguistics 3, no. 2/3 (1975): 213-20. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23749876.
A common piece of propaganda shows Kim Il-Sung in a glowing halo. Illustration. UAB Institute for Human Rights Blog. December 5, 2022.
https://sites.uab.edu/humanrights/2022/12/05/how-the-north-korean-regime-uses-cultlike-tactics-to-maintain-power/.
Edmonston, Michael. "The Potential of Korean Unification and a Unified Korean Armed Forces: A Cultural Interpretation." Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs, October 31, 2022.
https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/JIPA/Display/Article/3212547/the-potential-of-koreanunification-and-a-unified-korean-armed-forces-a-cultura/.
Hamad, Leena. "A Language Split by the Border: What the Division of the Korean Language Means for Reunification." Harvard International Review 39, no. 3 (Summer 2018): 2225. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26617358.
Hu-Rak, Lee. "Conversation Between Kim Il-Sung and Lee Hu-Rak." Interview by Kim Il-Sung. Wilson Center. Last modified May 4, 1972. Accessed March 29, 2023.
https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/conversation-between-kim-il-sung-andlee-hu-rak.
Il-Sung, Kim. "On Correctly Preserving the National Characteristics of the Korean Language." Speech, May 14, 1966. Marxists Internet Archive. Accessed March 29, 2023.
http://marxists.org/.
. "Problems Relating to the Development of the Korean Language." Speech, January 3, 1964. Marxists Internet Archive. Accessed March 29, 2023. http://marxists.org.
Kim, Chin-Wu. "Linguistics and Language Policies in North Korea." Korean Studies 2 (1978): 159-75. Accessed September 13, 2022. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23717719.
Dr. Kim Chin-Wu is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His work covers general Korean linguistics and North Korean language policies. Dr. Chin-Wu not only aptly identifies the shift in language policy objectives in 1964 but also provides direct linguistic analysis to observe Korean language evolution.
Kim, Eunseon. "Language and Politeness in the 'Nation of Propriety in the East': A History of Linguistic Ideologies of Korean Honorification." Unpublished manuscript, University of British Columbia, 2018. Accessed March 29, 2023.
https://open.library.ubc.ca/soa/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0375594.
Kim, You Gene. "The Odyssey of North Korean Defectors: Issues and Problems in the Migration Process." Master's thesis, City University of New York, 2015.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1009/.
Lee, Chung Min. "A Peninsula of Paradoxes: South Korean Public Opinion on Unification and Outside Powers." Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Last modified May 13, 2020. Accessed March 29, 2023. https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/05/13/peninsulaof-paradoxes-south-korean-public-opinion-on-unification-and-outside-powers-pub81737.
Lee, Grace. "The Political Philosophy of Juche." Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs 3, no. 1 (Spring 2003). Accessed January 2, 2023. http://www.asia-studies.com.
Lee, Jae Sun. "State Ideology and Language Policy in North Korea: An Analysis of North Korea's Public Discourse." PhD diss., University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, 2018. Accessed January 11, 2023. http://hdl.handle.net/10125/62321.
Lew, Young Ick. Brief History of Korea: A Bird's-Eye View. New York: Korea Society, 2000.
Long Live the Hero of Anti-Japanese Resistance Kim Il-Sung. Image. Facing Backwards Podcasts. August 20, 2016. Accessed April 12, 2023.
https://isaacmeyer.net/2016/08/episode-161-best-of-frenemies-part-7/.
Lutz, Tyler. "Cult of Personality: North Korea under Kim Il-Sung." Unpublished manuscript, Arcadia University, 2015. Accessed January 13, 2023.
https://scholarworks.arcadia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=senior_these s.
Moon, Hyun-Hee. "Language and Ideology in North Korean Language Planning." Master's thesis, Australian National University, 1998. Accessed September 8, 2022.
"North Korea (10/00) Background Note." U.S. Department of State. Accessed March 29, 2023.
https://2009-2017.state.gov/outofdate/bgn/northkorea/26220.htm.
Ryang, Sonia. Language and Truth in North Korea. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2021.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1pncr13.
Shin, Moon Kyoung. "A Comparative Study of Honorific Systems in North and South Korea: Shifts since 1950." PhD diss., University of York, 2017.
https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/24122/.
Terrell, Jacob A. "Political Ideology and Language Policy in North Korea." Berkeley Linguistics Society 33, no. 1 (2007): 412-23. Accessed September 13, 2022.
https://doi.org/10.3765/bls.v33i1.3545.
Yang, Key P., and Chang-Boh Chee. "North Korean Educational System: 1945 to Present." The China Quarterly, no. 14 (1963): 125-40. https://www.jstor.org/stable/651347.
Yim, Yong Soon. "Language Reform as a Political Symbol in North Korea." World Affairs 142, no. 3 (1980): 216-35. Accessed September 8, 2022.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20671827.