Welcome to K-land

By Andrew Salmon

Have you noticed how it is increasingly common to use acronyms rather than full phrases?

Business may have started it. International Business Machines became IBM; General Electric, GE; General Motors, GM. Here in Korea, Lucky Goldstar became LG, while an LG spinoff revered back to GS (i.e. Gold Star). Korean Air Lines became KAL; Korea Telecom, KT; Kookmin Bank, KB and so on.

Likewise, organizations go by acronyms rather than their full, unwieldy names. Hence a staffer at the U.N. who hails from the EU might, during his stint at his organization’s HQ in NYC, be so alarmed by the news on CNN, that he chooses not to rely on the protection of the NYPD, but arms himself after joining the NRA.

Entire professions have embraced the concept. The military has turned abbreviated jargon into an art form.

A GI (government issue) starts his career by dressing in BDU (battle dress uniform). He is then taught to be a soldier by DIs (drill instructors) overseen by DS (directing staff).

He learns to fire such noisy things as GMPGs (general purpose machine guns) and LAWs (light anti-armor weapons). After all this training, he may find himself moving forward at a crouch as he approaches a real FEBA (forward edge battle area).

In fact, the habit has passed to entire countries.

Here, as with organizations, there are good reasons to abbreviate. With apologies to my American chums, I have to say that the United States of America is a pain in the arse to say, and a bigger pain in the arse to write or type.

Given that the four words comprise 24 characters (including spaces) to write and nine syllables to say, the acronyms U.S.A. and U.S. make sense as, respectively, noun and adjective. Hell, I hail from the U.K. (United Kingdom ― 13 characters to write, five syllables to say) myself.

Let us turn to this nation. We live, officially, in the Republic of Korea; ROK is a convenient abbreviation of an inconveniently long term. However, it is more common just to use the word Korea. At five characters and two syllables, Korea is short to write and easy to say. But recently, it is becoming common to replace the national adjective, Korean, with K-.

It started, I think, with K-pop, which, I suppose, was OK. It was even appropriate, as the K-popscape was inhabited by abbreviated bands like HOT, GOD and SES. (Fortunately, nobody talked about K-rap, which could easily be misconstrued if one dropped the dash between “K” and “rap.”)

Then the K-habit spread.

Soon, we were watching K-films, following K-soaps and even reading K-literature. This nation of 50 million is apparently no longer populated by ajumma (middle-aged women) and ajeosi (middle-aged men), but is, instead, overrun with K-girls and K-guys. (There may even be K-B-boys ― i.e. Korean guys who break dance, not under-aged male staffers of Kookmin Bank.) And I know that we have K-moms, because I read about them right here in the K-Times.

What do K-people eat? Why, K-food of course ― notably K-imchi ― and if there is K-food, there is also presumably K-drink. Perhaps K-cuisine transmits the K-virus, for it has crossed borders. Today, if you live in a Korean neighborhood in the U.S., you can’t call it a Korea Town; it is a K-town. No doubt, Korean-Americans will soon be re-dubbed K-Americans.

Less pleasantly, there was the K-war, one result of which is the continued existence of North-K. Or should that be N-Korea? Or simply NK? This benighted land is where you will find K-missiles and K-nukes and is home to the most famous/notorious K-family in history, the Kims.

But enough! I ask: Is the word “Korean” so uncool that we need to rebrand the national adjective as “K-”?

I suggest not, and find this endless K-ing crass, irritating and slightly pretentious. I also wonder why K-nationalists (there are many) have not launched an indignant campaign to reclaim the national adjective and nail the K- firmly back into the -orea.

It is not as if we are talking an onerously long word or phrase that needs to be trimmed down to a one-letter acronym. I mean, is Korean really that much harder to enunciate than K-? How many more milliseconds does it take to type Korean than K-?

To me, the time lag is immaterial, but I appear to be a minority. I suppose for the digital generation, whose thumbs are muscled like a Spartan’s abs from high-speed, smartphone keyboard tapping, the K-acronym does, indeed, enable swifter K-ommunication.

Ah, well. As the K-D-generation takes over K-media, I suppose it is time for CLOOFs (clapped out old farts) like myself to either go with the flow or to get out of K-land.

Andrew Salmon is a Seoul-based reporter and author. Reach him at andrewcsalmon@yahoo.co.uk.