How Different is North Korean from South Korean? ![]() The show also features some funny moments in which the North Koreans are baffled by South Koreanisms – typically loan words that arrived via the English-speaking world (like “shampoo”), words for technologies that don’t exist in the North, and words that simply came into fashion in the South after the division of the peninsula in 1945. The defector taught the actors words and phrases used in the North - phrases that can be so different from what South Koreans are used to that they often come off as archaic or incomprehensible to the South Korean ear. To prepare for their roles in the drama “Crash Landing On You,” the actors playing North Koreans worked with a North Korean defector, who served as their language coach. In fact, few South Koreans had even heard “Supreme Leader” Kim Jong Un’s deep voice until 2018, when he shook hands with Donald Trump in a summit in Singapore.Ĭrash Landing On You: K-Drama Stars Learn North Korean This means that many South Koreans under the age of 70 have very little familiarity with the North Korean accent at all. Unfortunately, these new arrivals often face discrimination from South Koreans, which only spurs them to drop their accent faster. However,when North Korean defectors arrive in the South, they are encouraged to learn the South Korean accent as quickly as possible, in order to adapt to their new surroundings. There have been a few television shows featuring defectors (including one with the questionable premise of playing matchmaker between North Korean women and South Korean men). What is more, because of those media restrictions (South Korean nationals are not allowed to access North Korean web sites, and most North Koreans don’t have access to the internet at all) South Koreans have very few opportunities to even hear the North Korean accent, and vice versa. Seven decades of war (yes, they’re still technically fighting the Korean War) and major restrictions on media and travel between the two Koreas mean that the Korean people on both side of the Demilitarized Zone have grown apart, and nowadays speak two versions of the language that they share. In the meantime, along with many other Americans and South Koreans, I’ll have to make do with the limited information we can access from outside. I hope I can go back someday in the future, when relations between our two countries are not so fraught. Unfortunately this was before I had started studying Korean, so while I certainly learned a lot about their culture and society, I wasn’t able to make a lot of observations about their language. One commenter on Naver Cafe, a popular South Korean social media platform, mused that the North Korean accent could even become trendy, thanks to the show. Most notably, the romantic male lead (played by Hyun Bin) speaks using the North Korean accent, causing all sorts of confusion among patriotic young drama watchers in the South. Netflix’s new drama “Crash Landing on You” launched last week, and suddenly the Koreasphere was all atwitter about the North Korean dialect, which is heavily featured in the show. How much do you know about the North Korean accent? (Want to skip the history? Scroll down to the List of 21 North Korean Words in Crash Landing On You)
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