Comment by 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.

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EliRivers

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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.

  • samatman  13 years ago

    I was kind of blown away when I realised that the Han (Chinese) refer to the Koreans as "Han", also. Their own autonym is pronounced closer to "Hen".