Konglish 101

When I was in Germany, I thought the amount of English words used in advertising was excessive, but Korea it seems, takes it one step further.  Konglish, the use of English in a Korean form/way, is pretty rampant here as well. A perfect example, take a look at this carton of milk below.

Goot Mo-Ning

If you could read Korean, you would read the name like this: Goot Mo-Ning Oo You.  That's right, this is Good Morning milk.  I was pretty pleased the first time I realized that, but for a lot of older Koreans and for North Koreans trying to assimilate here, it must be totally baffling trying to wade through and make sense of cutesy Konglishized English.  I even saw a sign which used Konglish, and then proceeded to italicize in English letters which word they were trying to use, in case it wasn't clear to those reading it.  

Konglish can be found everywhere here and while it is a huge help for English speakers, as long as you can read the Korean, there is one catch: you have to learn to say it in the Korean way.  Otherwise they will have a hell of a time trying to understand you.  As I learned while repeatedly trying to tell the restaurant downstairs I want my food for Take Out, instead of Tay-Ik Ow-Tuh.

Want to learn some more 'Korean'?  Here are a few words you'll likely already know:   “romance” (로맨스/romance), “telebijeon” (텔레비전/television), “keompyuteo” (컴퓨터/computer), “keopi” (커피/coffee), “diary” (다이어리/planner) and “handphone” (핸드폰/cellphone).  With a few more that you'll likely know the words, but may not know what the Koreans mean when they use them:

헌팅

"hunting"

searching for a mate

Pronounced 'Hun-Ting'*, rather than it being about shooting animals, it means going out to look for a guy or a girl, being on the 'prowl' so to speak.

미팅

meeting

blind date

This word, which we normally use for business, in Korea is meant as a date, or a blind date.

오바잇

overeat

throw up; vomit

This one threw me for a while, because the Korean spelling doesn't sound so close to the English at first listen.  O-ba- Ee-T, sounds like overeat, however the Konglish meaning is to throw up, or vomit.

There's one even for the Germans, Ah-luh-by-tuh (아르바이트) or 'arbeit', means p/t job in Korean.  They also say 'all-ba' for short.

For a complete list, have a look here.

The Other Koreans

I write this post merely as an observer.  I am by no means an expert on North Korea nor North Koreans, however for some reason, the universe has placed me in a school in South Korea which happens to have a high percentage of orphans and North Korean defectors.  These are some thoughts I've had while dealing with these students over the course of the last six months.

North Korea conjures up all kinds of images. It is haunting and mysterious and yet fascinating.  A place I've grown increasingly interested in since moving to South Korea.  Seoul is less than 190km (118 miles) away from the last Stalinist state in the entire world.  South Korea one of the most wired nations in the world, is butting elbows with a nation where people don't even know what the Internet is.

That dark blog mass there is North Korea.

The stories and the rumors can easily flood your mind with negative images and I remember the first week of school, before I met the students, how curious I was about these defectors from North Korea.  What would they be like?  Would they be like soldiers?  Would they talk with a funny accent?  Would they hate me as an American?  Had they been brainwashed to hate their South Korean counterparts too? 

But when the first week of classes came and went, I realized that I had been unable to identify who had been born on which side of the 38th parallel.  It hadn't been as obvious as I had thought.  As time passed, I started to learn who came from where due to two factors, 1) NKs often speak Chinese and 2) they usually have a much lower level of English than the other kids in their class.

My co-teachers often say the students coming from NK tend to get angry more quickly than others, however as the foreign teacher I don't feel I'm qualified to agree or disagree with that statement.  I don't see them acting all that different from the other kids. We have some loud ones and some quiet ones, some very polite ones and some rather rude ones, but what I've come to see is that once you strip the labels, they are indeed still children.  They do not seem to be ashamed of the fact that they came from North Korea, but they are ashamed of the fact that they cannot speak English as well as their peers, but that is the same case for the students coming from the orphanage.  

I do have a soft spot for them.  When I see them, I often wonder what they have already experienced in their young lives.  What a contrast of worlds!  Maybe some don't remember, but probably many do.  One new student who arrived last week came to South Korea by "crossing over a mountain in the middle of the night and then waiting in an orphanage with her sister until her mother could join her". And there are so many more stories.  Stories that aren't mine to tell, however if you are interested in reading a book that can give you a glimpse into the lives of other NK defectors, I want to recommend to you this book, Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick.  Different from other books or documentaries about the Hermit Kingdom, this writer doesn't just give facts and stats on the regime, she tells the stories of  real people living in that dark mass you saw above.  People with hopes for happiness and love and prosperity the same as everywhere else.  A page turner and a good read.

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