Translation app helps North Korea refugees ‘speak Southern’

[chibi-rei.livejournal.com]

A new smartphone app developed in Seoul aims to help North Korean refugees overcome one of the biggest challenges they face in adjusting to life in South Korea — speaking Korean.



Seven decades of almost total separation have engineered a radical split in the once common language of the two Koreas.

For North Korean defectors who risk their lives escaping to the South via China, this linguistic divergence represents a sizable barrier in their struggle to assimilate when even something as simple as buying an ice cream requires a new vocabulary.

The two Koreas still share the same writing system, known as Hangeul — a phonetic alphabet developed in the 15th century to replace Chinese characters.

So a North Korean refugee would have no trouble reading the transliteration “Ah-ee-sir-ker-rim” that South Koreans use for “ice cream” — but he or she would not necessarily have any idea what the term meant or referred to.

And that is where the Univoca app comes in.

Developed by Seoul’s top advertising firm, Cheil Worldwide, the app offers translations of 3,600 key words culled from South Korean high school textbooks as well as everyday slang expressions.

Tapping in the Hangeul for “ice cream” brings up the word “oh-reum-boseung-yi” (literally “coated ice”), as ice cream is known in North Korea.

Focus on teenagers

Created as a part of the company’s social outreach program, the free app has been downloaded more than 1,500 times since its launch in mid-March, said Choi Jae-Young, the Cheil manager in charge of the project.

“We were looking for ways to help socially marginalized people suffering from communication problems . . . and realized young North Korean defectors have this big language barrier when studying at school,” Choi said.

A group of North Korean defectors, including student volunteers and professionals like former school teachers, helped in the task of identifying — and translating — common South Korean words that may perplex the young refugees.

One of them, 22-year-old college student Noelle Kim, said working on the project had brought back strong memories of her own linguistic struggles when she arrived in Seoul five years ago.

“Even asking for directions on the street was difficult because I couldn’t understand all the words people were using in the answer,” Kim said. “I just felt too ashamed to admit it and ask what those words meant.”

Experts estimate such differences now extend to one-third of the words spoken on the streets of Seoul and Pyongyang, and up to two-thirds in business and official settings.

Baffling English words

Particularly baffling to new North Korean arrivals are the large number of English words that have been phonetically incorporated into the South Korean lexicon.

Where a South Korean would comfortably refer to a “penalty kick” in football, in the North they use a completely different Korean word meaning “11-metre punishment.”

The difficulties are even more pronounced for young refugees who have to cope with the sort of rapidly-changing youth slang common to most countries.

“For North Korean teen defectors, who are more sensitive to cultural differences, the language issue is considered a first priority to solve when settling down in South Korea,” Cheil said in a statement.

According to the Ministry of Education, the number of North Korean student defectors — meaning those of elementary, junior or high school age — rose from 966 in 2008 to 2,183 last year.

Kim recalled her own trouble mastering English words and how reading just a few pages of a South Korean school textbook used to take her hours.

“Something like this app would have been a precious gift to new arrivals like myself five years ago,” she said.

A unified dictionary

The growing language divide between the two Koreas is a source of official concern on both sides, as witnessed by an on-and-off 25-year joint effort to produce a unified Korean language dictionary.

Chief editor Han Young-Un, who took a group of South Korean linguists and lexicographers to Pyongyang to work on the dictionary last November, believes the Korean language split risks becoming as big a barrier to eventual North-South unification as the heavily militarized border dividing the peninsula.

Han said he thought the new app was an “extremely useful tool” that would make a big difference to the daily lives of young refugees.

“It might also help draw more attention to our project, and that’s always welcome,” he added.


sources: Dream Touch For All, The Japan Times

The article is a couple months old, but the video made some rounds on the internet last week.

Comments

[ah0000.livejournal.com]

This sounds like a great and useful app. How wonderful.

[demonology81.livejournal.com]

This is really a great idea!

[pastelpinklace.livejournal.com]

That vídeo was adorable, I really do hope it helps them out

[sayitisso.livejournal.com]

i was thinking it was a wonderful idea until the white guy came in talking about reunification... what? do koreans still truly believe they can reunify two countries with totally opposing ideologies and traditions?

on the other hand, i wonder if they have something similar for other languages like spanish or chinese, i've always found it appalling that people thought you wouldn't need translators for "the same language" when there are such wide disparities in vocabulary and general usage.

[algaee.livejournal.com]

ia with you about the white guy but for reasons more along the lines of why does he care lol?

i can only speak for friends/family but while nobody ardently believes in reunification soon, nobody really dismisses it either... seventy years is long enough for n/s koreans to see each other as estranged, but not so long that they see each other as strangers. idk if that's the best way to put it, and i'm far from the best authority, but yeah.

[sayitisso.livejournal.com]

well yeah lol the white guy comment is bc he's white, why is he there? but i'm mostly surprised about koreans still feeling this way. i understand when the war "ended" everybody felt like reunification was imminent, but when so much time passes and language, culture, political ideologies etc, continue to diverge, it's strange as an outsider to see they aren't dismissing it

[algaee.livejournal.com]

that's understandable and tbh there is definitely greater apathy abt actively seeking reunification, which has a lot to do with people seeing it less as the only or best solution (the practicalities of it, and whether it would even be worth the effort). and like you said, continued divergence only makes it less appealing, but the idea is still floating around is what i mainly wanted to say in my response

[kaninasan.livejournal.com]

The German guy is an expert on how old, communist, eastern Germany is affecting the reunified Germany, so it's not surprising (tbh it's very obvious why) that he was asked for his opinion on this. Germany was only reunified 26 years ago after all.

[algaee.livejournal.com]

i see, thank you for the explanation! i had a kneejerk reaction, but knowing who the guy is makes the video more interesting... i'll remember to do the research next time

[kjc48.livejournal.com]

Yes. Mainly because they believe eventually 1 will "win~". (Obviously most f the world is team #south)

But some SK citizens/politicians have publicly talked about how hard integration will be on the economy, social services, etc. I'm sure NK is also stressed about this lol. So they have this weird almost dreading of the eventual (lol) reunification. Which makes sense since SK has already been doing a pretty bad job at dealing with the defectors the have now.

[sayitisso.livejournal.com]

thank you for the info~ i haven't delved much into modern history there, but it reminds me a lot of Taiwan-China, like they still seem to be riding on a plan of reunification that was feasible in the 60s... but it's 2015 and too much has changed? integration seems almost impossible if reunified, and i don't see how NK leaders would ever let reunification happen unless they governed... which won't happen? i don't know, the whole topic blows my mind!

[dorawa.livejournal.com]

A lot of younger Koreans don't want to reunite much and I understand why. The social and economical pressure to all of a sudden get millions of Koreans who need food, money, housing, jobs, electricity, TOILETS FFS.... it would be crazy. I've talked to a lot of friends about it and they say, "Yes it would be nice, BUT..." and go off on why it would be so tricky/hard.

[sayitisso.livejournal.com]

well, that's one aspect of reunification i haven't thought about. i was going more on the line of ideology and identity. like, while north koreans deserve everything south koreans have, reunification isn't the only solution? and realistically, as more time passes and the generations who have ties with the north die out, it will be more difficult for the south to strive for reunification. but i'm just an outsider, so i can only guess

[bluemaid86.livejournal.com]

while north koreans deserve everything south koreans have, reunification isn't the only solution?

If its a matter of improving living conditions/liberty that could probably be done just by pushing out the current oppressive, backwards regime running the north & replaced it with something considerably more progressive...improve conditions & relations between the two sides without eliminating North Korea's brand of Korean culture....

[kaninasan.livejournal.com]

i mean

25 years ago Germany was reunited, so if anyone should believe it's a German person.
Eastern Germany had (or has) complete different ideologies and traditions than Western Germany. It was a huge undertaking economically for Western Germany and Eastern Germany is still behind in many ways...

edit: I looked up what this institution is where he works, and it's an organisation founded to look into the history of DDR (Eastern Germany) and it's impact on the reunified Germany. So he's pm an expert..

[sayitisso.livejournal.com]

good point, i always forget about germany. thank you for the information :)

[chomsky.livejournal.com]

With regards to the language question:

Mandarin and Cantonese, if that's what you're referring to as Chinese, are considered different dialects but only for political purposes and are pretty functionally different languages. An app like this would be largely non useful because the differences don't exist at only a lexical level, but also at a grammatical/syntactic level, whereas the N Korean dialect and S Korean dialect still maintain their syntactic uniformity. As far as Spanish is concerned, I think the difference there is that, while you're totally right, there is a big disparity in vocabulary, most of the time Spanish speakers who speak a dialect other than the one of their interlocutor can ascertain what colloquialisms, etc. might mean based on context, and they also have the RAE to standardize and globalization to familiarize them, whereas N Korea is so cut off from the rest of the world that an English cognate word like Ice Cream would be totally unfamiliar. Also in the instance of Spanish, as well as many languages in the world, there simply aren't the same societal ramifications of asking for clarification or not knowing a specific word as I imagine there might be for a N Korean defector, and I definitely don't think that dialectical differences in a lot of languages around the world would account for 50+% of a language like this video is citing exists between N and S Korean dialects.

I'm nerding out about this though because linguistics is my jam, haha.

[sayitisso.livejournal.com]

eh no haha i'm a native spanish speaker and i also speak chinese, so i'm familiar with the situation. i was referring to mandarin chinese in, say, bejing, versus mandarin chinese in southern china, taiwan, and singapore, to give some examples. as for spanish, which i'm more familiar with, i speak southeast-spain spanish, and not only do i have trouble understanding, say, argentinians even when i have context, i also have trouble understanding people from the north of spain sometimes. the RAE, from my limited experience in using it, doesn't really provide the same kind of service. i was just trying to say that i feel like there are so many people that speak these languages that the disparity within the same language is large enough to consider more extensive translation tools, like you would use in between different languages. but it's good to know, linguistics is an incredible thing~

[chomsky.livejournal.com]

OHHHh ok hahaha. I speak Spanish fluently but haven't been to Argentina, so mainly my conversations are held amongst Puerto Ricans/Mexicans/Panamanians/Nicaraguans/a few Spaniards and so far I haven't run into any issue insofar as comprehension is concerned but I'm sure the day is coming! Hahahaha. I think what I was trying to say with the RAE is in the event that someone might not understand another person's slang, they can refer back to the RAE for a more suitable word? But in that instance I think I was talking about something different than you were, hahaha.

I totally thought you were comparing Cantonese and Mandarin though because a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that, because they're politically considered dialects, they're mutually understandable or should be, but now I understand. :)

[wi-arae.livejournal.com]

When it comes to the "really believes aspect" there may be many sceptics, but there is a ministry of unification in South Korea (http://eng.unikorea.go.kr/main.do). It is definitely a goal aimed by many.

[sayitisso.livejournal.com]

wow, interesting. definitely did not expect that. thanks for the info!

[kjc48.livejournal.com]

This is nice, but I'm pretty sure a lot of defectors are low-income citizens. Where would they get the money to afford a smartphone. This seems like a very SK solution to the problem, like some seriously thought: hey let's make an app!

[dorawa.livejournal.com]

They get a stipend from the government when they get here and I'm sure they'd all buy a phone with it.

[kjc48.livejournal.com]

This seems like some k-drama logic.

In real life poor people who grew up with nothing don't magically get up and say hey I have an extra $100 let's buy a smartphone. NKs would be more focused on have good food and shelter. At most they'd by a prepaid flip-phone, and only because it would be a necessity. Just the idea of needing a smartphone is something they would be taught over time.

[blackstarnebula.livejournal.com]

It's for when they get to South Korea. And South Korea is so wired and connected that I can't imagine that getting the defectors smart phones wouldn't be a priority. Similar to getting them clothing and shelter.

[chomsky.livejournal.com]

I'm no expert on this, but I recently read Escape from Camp 13, and the book goes into detail about how there's a kind of camp for recent defectors to teach them how to do things like use a computer, smart phone, the subway system, etc. and train them in some kind of marketable skill before they are left alone in Seoul or wherever the case may be, but also smart phones and computers etc. do exist in N Korea too.

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

Poor people have smartphones though.

Sometimes they don't have computers, and their phone is out of date w a cracked screen, but they still have a smartphone.

[kjc48.livejournal.com]

That's why I said it's k-drama logic. But irl lol

[wi-arae.livejournal.com]

There are definitely affordable smartphones which could run this app costing less than 200$ (Samsung releases 50 phones per year in all shapes sizes and prices - including low end)
Honestly I feel like you can't really live these days without a phone, especially if you're trying to integrate South Korea society.

[kjc48.livejournal.com]

I actually have lived without a smartphone (or any cellphone) on and off for years. It really depends on your lifestyle and what you would use it for. But I live in Canada which is less weird than SK.

Still it's hard to imagine someone with no family, friends, job needing a smartphone. But I guess they could job hunting on their phone. Or just become addicted to SNS and games like the rest of us lol

[algaee.livejournal.com]

love the idea... also that they both chose the nk way to say ice cream at the end, it's cute and falls in with the goal of greater transparency/exchange the app wants to encourage. thank you for the post op!

[kaninasan.livejournal.com]

I've always wondered how the languages have become different through the years, this was really interesting.

[921227.livejournal.com]

Wow, this seems like a really helpful tool tbh
I can't imagine speaking the same language as someone but still being unfamiliar with 50 - 75% of what they said. I imagine it's something similar to the differences in Mexican v Spain Spanish or mandarin v Cantonese

[audiograms.livejournal.com]

that seems really useful.

[sra-interesante.livejournal.com]

how nice to see people creating this kind of app to help north korea refugees, i know this is nothing like a sign of reunification but willing to understand each other is a great progress :)

[huanyia.livejournal.com]

this is great that they are working to change something

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

This video is kind of sad. 50%!