Understanding Korea

By Yun Chung

Jon Huer, a sociology professor-turned-columnist, has been writing the ``Understanding Korea'' series in The Korea Times.

The editor's note said: ``He specializes in American society and considers himself an avid observer of all things Korean. He will take a critical approach to describing Korean society and culture in a way that will help foreigners better understand Korea and show Koreans how foreigners view Korea and them.?

What has emerged is a series of many articles that misrepresent Korea. I will discuss only a few of them.

In his July 20 article, ``Is Korean Language Scientific,'' Huer stated, ``The upper-echelon Korean is virtually 90-percent Chinese, very little of which is understood by the lower-echelon Koreans.'' Is Korean an offshoot of Chinese? No.

Like all languages, the Korean language uses ``loan'' words and ``pure'' Korean words. For example, the names of towns are Sino-Korean, meaning Chinese character based Korean, like Busan or Incheon. Seoul, meaning the capital in Korean, is the only exception.

According to J. J. Song (The Korean Language), the Comprehensive Dictionary of Korean (1991) lists 164,125 entries, of which 52 percent are Sino-Korean and 45 percent ``pure'' Korean words. By comparison, more than 80 percent of English words are loan words from French, Latin, and Germanic.

Native English speakers do not care if words like church or avocado are loan words. Likewise, Koreans do not regard names like Busan or words like gicha (train) as Chinese words. The Chinese would use different Chinese characters for the word train. Native Koreans cannot always tell if a given word is a Sino-Korean or a pure Korean.

Huer stated, ``What aggravates this further is that this upper-class, Chinese-based language is written in Korean, which guarantees that few will ever understand it.'' This is unsubstantiated barroom banter, not a statement of a professor.

South Korea is a media-rich country, thanks to a literate audience. There are 116 daily newspapers, including three children's dailies, with a total circulation of 9.4-million.

Three major dailies have a circulation of over 2 million each, on a par with the USA Today or the Wall Street Journal. In 2007, South Korean students scored the highest in a global reading literacy survey of 400,000 15-year-olds of 57 countries.

The Korean people have no problems in understanding the Korean language, written or spoken. There is no upper echelon Korean or lower class Korean.

The British linguist, Geoffrey Sampson, said hangeul is the most scientifically based of all writing systems, about 300 in the world. Prof. Diamond of UCLA stated: Hangeul has been ``described by scholars as `the world's best alphabet? and `the most scientific system of writing.''?

The linguistics, philology, and phonetics department of the University of Oxford, renowned for linguistics research, evaluated 30 writing systems for their rational, scientific, and unique characteristics in the mid-1990s. They ranked hangeul at the top.

The Korean language is, however, as unscientific as other languages, including English. That is, they are all illogical, particularly to non-native speakers.

Huer has written several articles, more bashing than critique, on Korea, based on his erroneous or incomplete understanding of Korean words. For example, he said the Korean word wonhan is deep han. The two are very different.

In another article, he said boyak is a precious medicine. Boyak means health supplements. There were more errors. Nothing was more disturbing than when he concluded the Korean people are tribalistic and herd like because of ``their collective reference to the nation of Korea as `uri nara,?literally `our country.''?

He could have easily learned that uri has a second meaning, my. My Korean-English dictionary translates uri nara as my country. I call my wife uri-wife, meaning my wife, not our wife. I can even say ``uri Jon,'' meaning my beloved Jon. ``Uri nara'' can be our country, my country, or this country depending on the context.

Huer asserted that ``To foreigners, this easy and unconscious habit of Koreans calling their nation `our country?can be unnerving as it gives the feeling of irrational nationalism and emotional tribalism,'' all based on his erroneous understanding of one simple Korean word, uri.

After being in the U.S. for many years, I am frustrated with the simplest words like a, on, in, at, the, etc., which I often misuse. So, I can understand the frustration of native English speakers, like Huer, in learning Korean.

His qualifications as a Korea critic are questionable, however, because he cares not about the correct meaning of Korean words or how they are used. Knowing the language is a prerequisite to understanding the culture of the land.

Huer says foreigners can never decipher the ``secret code'' of the Korean language. The KBS-World TV program, ``Chitchat of Beautiful Ladies,'' is a talk show of young women from different countries. They seem to have broken the ``secret code'' in only several years. Korean is no more impenetrable or ``weird'' than English is.

Huer even muddied the late President Roh Moo-hyun, who had eye surgery to correct an excessive sagging of the upper eyelid, known as ptosis. In his article, Roh was a man who just wanted to have double eyelids for a Westernized look. This is a prime example of his lack of journalistic acumen. Huer's misinformation about Korea begets more misinformation among expats.

Korea can use thought-provoking critiques, like ``A Nation of Cowards'' for the U.S. Almost all articles by Huer contain errors or half-truths about Korea, which is unscholarly. Write good intentioned Korea critique articles, befitting a sociology professor. Meditate on a Korean saying, ``the heads of rice stalks bow down as they ripen,'' before writing another piece on Korea.

The writer is a Korean residing in California. He can be reached at yunchung2@comcast.net