State Ideology and Language Policy in North Korea
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STATE IDEOLOGY AND LANGUAGE POLICY IN NORTH KOREA: AN ANALYSIS OF NORTH KOREA’S PUBLIC DISCOURSE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES (KOREAN) DECEMBER 2018 By Jae Sun Lee Dissertation Committee: Ho-min Sohn, Chairperson Mee-Jeong Park Mary Shin Kim Sang Yee Cheon William O’Grady ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Throughout my academic journey, I have learned that my work is not mine alone but is indebted to so many others, including those researchers who have preceded, inspired and taught me. I would like to thank all the people who have helped and supported my studies. Among them, I would like to express my special gratitude to Dr. Ho-min Sohn for serving as my dissertation chair, continuing even after his retirement. This study was initiated by his advice, when I took his sociolinguistics course as a graduate student largely ignorant of the language policy field. Since then, this study has grown and developed through his guidance. I also feel honored and grateful for the invaluable service and professional counsel of all my committee members, as well as for the University of Hawaiʻi faculty members and graduate students who have encouraged and helped guide my research. I consider myself very fortunate to have been able to access the North Korean public discourse data that undergirded this study, data that is not easy to find. For this, I offer my thanks to the librarians of Hamilton Library at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa who have built the North Korean collection there. I am also hugely indebted to the 21st Century Sejong Project of the National Institute of Korean Language in South Korea, which gathered North Korean public discourse corpus data and allowed me to use it for my study. Finally, I thank my family, friends, and co-workers for their constant care and support throughout my journey. Especially, I want to thank my friend, Daniel Kane, for his expert assistance and valuable feedback on this manuscript. I hope one day I can give back to the world what I have received from all those who have supported me. ii ABSTRACT This study examines how ideology has affected North Korea’s language policy since the beginning of its nation-state-building project in 1945, as well as North Korea’s public discourse as a result of this language policy. This dissertation aims to contribute to the language planning and policy field by shedding light on the ideology and language norms produced by the North Korean authority regarding its language policy and language use. Using discourse analysis and corpus linguistics as methodological approaches in a socio-historical context, this study investigates what ideological/political motivations have driven North Korea’s language planning policies, and the consequential characteristics of the North Korean public discourse, which have rarely been addressed in previous studies. North Korea’s language policy has developed and thrived in conjunction with its state ideology, Juche (self-reliance), which is bound up with a popular ethno-nationalism. Political authority in North Korea has viewed language as an ideological weapon against the enemies of the Korean nation and socialism and as a tool to remold people into patriotic socialists. This ideology has driven language policies in North Korea: the hankul (vernacular Korean script)- only use policy that banned the use of Chinese characters in writing, linguistic purification, linguistic etiquette, and stylistic planning. By examining various data from North Korea’s state- controlled public discourse, including mass media, school textbooks, literature, and magazines, this study suggests that North Korea’s language policies have been generally successful, at least in the public discourse. This study also touches on the critical role of political power in the design and implementation of North Korea’s language policy, mass media, and pedagogy in terms of appropriating and educating the people in the language policy. iii Finally, this study examines linguistic etiquette and stylistic planning as part of corpus planning in North Korea. Discourse analyses on the data in this study demonstrate that one of the major language norms in North Korea is modeling the state leaders’ language styles: using special terms that are predefined by political authorities, quoting the leader(s), using political slogans of the leaders and the Party, using expressions of reverence for the state leaders, and practicing linguistic dichotomy. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................................................ii ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................ iii LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................................. vii LIST OF FIGURES ...............................................................................................................viii LIST OF IMAGES ................................................................................................................... ix ABBREVIATIONS ................................................................................................................... x CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................. 1 1.1 Aims of This Study ........................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Organization of the Study .................................................................................................. 4 CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................. 5 CHAPTER 3. PARADIGM, METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH, AND DATA............... 15 3.1 Critical Paradigm ............................................................................................................ 15 3.2 Critical Language Policy (CLP)....................................................................................... 16 3.3 Methodological Approach: Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Corpus Linguistics .. 17 3.4 Data ................................................................................................................................ 19 CHAPTER 4. NORTH KOREA’S STATE BUILDING AND ITS LANGUAGE PLANNING AND POLICY.................................................................................................... 22 4.1 Background to Language Ideology and Theory in North Korea ....................................... 22 4.2 The Literacy Campaign, Elimination of Chinese Characters, and Standardization: The Early Stage of LPP in North Korea ....................................................................................... 29 4.3 Linguistic Purism and North Korea’s New Standard Dialect (Cultured Language): 1960s Onwards ............................................................................................................................... 35 4.3.1 Linguistic purism in the two Koreas .......................................................................... 36 4.3.2 North Korea’s new standard dialect (Cultured Language) ........................................ 46 4.4 The Role of North Korean Mass Media in Language Planning and Policy ....................... 54 4.4.1 Media’s mobilization for language planning and policy ............................................ 55 4.4.2 Dissemination of language ideologies by the North Korean press (1998–2004) ........ 63 4.4.2.1 Corpus data ........................................................................................................ 63 4.4.2.2 Single-nation ethnicity and single-language ideology ......................................... 68 v 4.4.2.3. Language purism .............................................................................................. 72 4.4.3 Dissemination of language ideologies by the North Korean press in 2014 ................ 76 4.5 Oppressive Policy About the Use of Regional Dialect ..................................................... 82 CHAPTER 5. LINGUISTIC ETIQUETTE ........................................................................... 86 5.1 Address-Reference Terms: Comrade ............................................................................... 87 5.2 Reference Terms for the State Leaders .......................................................................... 100 5.3 Honorifics for the State Leaders: The Core of Propriety in Language Use ..................... 108 5.3.1 Lexico-suffixal patterns of honorifics ...................................................................... 108 5.3.2 Special words for the state leaders .......................................................................... 122 5.3.3 Fixed expressions ................................................................................................... 138 5.3.4 State leader-centered honorific norms .................................................................... 146 CHAPTER 6. DISCURSIVE STYLISTIC PLANNING ..................................................... 156 6.1 The Language of Vilification: Dehumanizing Counter-Revolutionaries ......................... 162 CHAPTER 7. CONCLUSION.............................................................................................. 169 BIBLIOGRAPHY