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Comment by kyllo

13 years ago

>"...we have been invited by the leader of the republic of Korea..."

That's the wrong one, though.

Republic of Korea = South

Democratic People's Republic of Korea = North

18 comments

kyllo

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chimeracoder  13 years ago

Is it possible that people in the DPRK refer to themselves as the 'Republic of Korea' in an attempt to deny/disqualify the existence of any other 'Republic of Korea'? (ie, 'The one true Republic of Korea' or something like that).

  • EliRivers  13 years ago

    I have been to the DPRK on holiday and whilst I was there it was explicitly made clear that the people of the DPRK (or at least, the ones I met who are presumably on-message) do refer to "Korea" as one Korea.

    That's not denial of the existence of other Korea, and not "we're the true Korea"; it's more that there is only one Korea, it's the entire peninsula, and this unfortunate state of affairs where there are currently two separate governments isn't an indication that there are two Koreas. There's one Korea. The whole thing.

    I asked the guides specifically so I think I've got it more or less right.

    • kyllo  13 years ago

      However, the two countries do use a completely different word for "Korea" in the Korean language.

      In South Korea, they call South Korea "Hanguk" which means "Land of the Han" (Han people being the Korean ethnic group). They call North Korea "Bukhan" which is just "Northern Han."

      In North Korea, they call themselves "Joseon" which means "morning calm" and was the name of the last Korean kingdom.(cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseon) Meanwhile they call South Korea "South Joseon."

      So, they each call themselves and the other "Korea" in a sense, but they disagree on what the word for "Korea" is in Korean.

      "Korea" is itself a romanization of "Koryo," which was the name of a much earlier Korean kingdom.

      3 replies →

  • astrodust  13 years ago

    Why do communist countries insist on calling themselves "democratic"? If you're such a firm believer in that philosophy, why not have some pride?

    • Cushman  13 years ago

      Communism and democracy are orthogonal. Your question is why dictators represent themselves as democracies, but I don't think that's a very complex question; it's propaganda 101.

      2 replies →

    • rmc  13 years ago

      There's a joke about how many "democratic"'s or "repulic"'s are in the countries name that the more un-democratic and un-republican they are. :P

      1 reply →

    • IvyMike  13 years ago

      I read a joke somewhere that as countries become more and more totalitarian, they add more and more freedom-implying qualifiers.

      So (for a not-quite-correct example) things would progress Congo -> Republic of Congo -> Democratic Republic of Congo -> People's Democratic Republic of Congo.

    • ryusage  13 years ago

      Communist countries aren't the only ones that use nicer sounding terms than what they really are.

    • rgbrenner  13 years ago

      You are interpreting 'democratic' in a western sense, and then take it further by claiming they have no pride in communism. It's really not a mystery/contradictory.. you just need to pick up a few books by Lenin, Marx, Mao, et al.

      A "people's democracy" is a country in transition from bourgeois democracy to socialism. In this stage there is more than one class, the largest being the proletariat, led by the Communist Party, which is therefore the dominant power.

      The other common country name includes "people's republic." In both cases, it's important to understand the definition of "people". People are communists. Look up "People's dictatorship" for more information on this. Essentially, a "People's republic" is a country that is ruled by a communist party.

    • Uchikoma  13 years ago

      It's the same when countries insist on being "free". You do not need to tell everyone obvious things.