Comments on: Another Reason to Improve My Korean

By: Muninn » More Athletes

Muninn » More Athletes — Thu, 25 May 2006 16:53:58 +0000

[...] Last summer, when I was heading on to Norway after a summer of study in Seoul, my fellow passengers and I found ourselves on the plane with the North Korean national soccer team. On Monday I began a repeat of last summer’s travel and next week I’ll begin a second summer of Korean language study at SNU’s program in Seoul. When I boarded the plan from Chicago to Tokyo (where I’m now hanging out for a week before traveling on to Korea) I found myself surrounded by Japan’s national wheelchair basketball team. One of the players was in my seat when I got there, and I got to see a performance of his amazing arm strength as he proceeded to move, with the use of his arms alone, from my seat to the one behind me. [...]

By: Muninn

Muninn — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 13:56:56 +0000

Hey both you, thanks for the details on the nomenclature! I’ll make an effort to not embarrass myself next time (well, at least marginally less). Antti, I think you are right, it is more commen to just use 朝鮮 and I’m just getting it mixed up with Japanese, sorry about that – but on the other hand I am almost sure I have also heard the “bei” used in front for clarification.

By: Antti

Antti — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 07:35:53 +0000

Good to hear from you! I take your sparse blogging to mean that you’ve been studying the language diligently…

The DPRK equivalent of 한국 is 조선; that’s the appropriate name for their country in their presence, and that would’ve been good. As Hwang says, 공화국 should be ok as well. I guess it depends on the political responsibility of the person what the response towards using 북한 would be. For example “North Korean athletes” would be 조선 선수들”.
As for referring to the both Koreas, 남쪽 and 북쪽 can’t go very wrong, but I don’t think using both 한국 and 조선 would provoke any protests…

In China and Japan we called them 北朝鮮
I know that Japanese is kita朝鮮, but is that Chinese as well? As far as I know the Chinese use just 朝鮮 and 韓國 for the Koreas.

By: Hwang

Hwang — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 13:31:45 +0000

I just got back from Japan last Tuesday..
It was very nice trip to take full advantage of being a foreigner in Japan, in that I could use JR Pass for one week to see around from Osaka to Sapporo, a round trip. If possible, you can visit my cyworld blog to see the pictures..

And a comment on the first note to self:
They probably say “공화국” as an abbreviation of the full name of “조선민주주의인민공화국.” I am sure they never say 북한 nor 북조선 when they call North Korea. But just 조선 can be another choice. It is also possible to call just “북” when they talk to a person from “남.” Hope these helpful..^^