What is it about?
The paper examines the attempts to forge a standardized ‘Soviet’ Korean written language during the decade or so of intense cultural work among the Soviet Korean populace in the Russian Far East before all Soviet Koreans there were deported to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan in autumn of 1937. Was there a ‘Soviet’ variety of Korean, and if so, did it happen by happenstance or by design?
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Why is it important?
The paper helps show an alternative track along which a different modern standard Korean _could_ have developed--a linguistic path not chosen (or rather, closed off). It also sheds comparative light on the divergence we see today between North and South Korean standards and divergence.
Perspectives
Like a number of other ethnic minorities in the USSR, the Soviet Koreans straddled an arbitrary political border. I compare the case of ‘Soviet’ Korean to those of Karelian and Moldavian during the same period and conclude that, through a combination of pre-existing Korean dialect constellations on the ground, ideologically motivated orthographic choices that (coincidentally) reinforced salient dialect differences, Soviet indigenization policies, and the workings of the Piedmont Principle (Soviet Koreans as a shining beacon for their oppressed brethren across the border in Japanese-occupied Korea), ‘Soviet’ Korean was well on its way to emerging as a new and distinct Korean ‘Kultur’-dialect (Haarmann 1975) when these developments were nipped in the bud by the forced deportation of 1937, an act that made of the Soviet Koreans yet another ‘rag doll nation’ (Schrad 2004).
Ross King
University of British Columbia
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Another ‘language that failed’?, Korean Linguistics, May 2024, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/kl.00007.kin.
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