Учебник - The Korean Language Structure, Use and Context

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Korean. Third, ethnic Koreans are beginning to realize the importance of

their linguistic and cultural heritage but many of them, because of their

inability to speak it (well enough), may already be (at risk of) failing to

transmit the language to their offspring. Far more frequently than not,

many such ethnic Koreans may have an incomplete or inadequate

understanding of Korean culture. Indeed, they would have to embark on

the study of Korean language and culture almost from scratch. This is most

clearly demonstrated by increasing numbers of ethnic Koreans enrolling in

Korean courses at universities around the world. Thus this book is intended

to be accessible to such ethnic Koreans. I hope that they will have a good

understanding of their heritage by the time they have reached the last page

of the book. Finally, large numbers of native English speakers, particularly

from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA, go to South Korea to

work for extended periods (e.g. teaching English, working for international

corporations). They may not necessarily choose to stay there long enough to

learn Korean, let alone become ﬂuent in it. None the less, such long-term

visitors could do well with a general introduction to the language, culture

and history of their host country. This book will help them to understand

why Koreans speak and behave in the way they do and thus avoid mis-

understanding or miscommunication.

The writing of this book beneﬁted from the assistance and generosity of

many people. In particular, I am indebted to Alan Hyun-Oak Kim (Southern

Illinois University), Sang Hwan Seong (University of Bonn) and Kyu Suk

Shin (Curtin University of Technology), who, despite their own busy

schedules, read and commented on the whole draft of the book. Their

comments, especially from the perspective of teaching Korean as a foreign

language (or TKFL), contributed to the quality of the book, although,

needless to say, none of the remaining shortcomings should be attributed to

them. I am grateful to Jaehoon Yeon (University of London) and Gi-Hyun

Shin (University of New South Wales) for unwittingly serving as a sounding

board for some of my ideas contained in the book and also helping me to

track down obscure references. The inﬂuence on the writing of this book of

A. E. Backhouse’s The Japanese Language: An Introduction (Melbourne,

1993) – in terms of orientation, presentation and structure – must also be

acknowledged here. Last but not least, special thanks must go to Fran

Hackshaw, who offered valuable comments from the perspective of a

prospective English-speaking learner of Korean, and to Les O’Neill, who

most kindly prepared the maps for me.

I formed the idea of writing this book on one hot summer afternoon

in Leipzig, Germany, where I spent three months as Visiting Scientist in

the Department of Linguistics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary

Anthropology. It is somewhat difﬁcult to explain why it happened there and

then, but it (and other exciting ideas) must have been owing to the intellectual

PREFACE

milieu and the warm hospitality provided by the Institute, for which I would

like to record here my gratitude to Bernard Comrie, Martin Haspelmath,

Julia Cissewski and Claudia Büchel.

Jae Jung Song

Dunedin, New Zealand

PREFACE

xii

ABBREVIATIONS

acc accusative

c command

gen genitive

hon honoriﬁc

lk linker

nom nominative

nr nominalizer

p proposal

pfv perfective

pl plural

pst past

q question

rel relative (or adnominal ending)

s statement

top topic/contrast

xiii

A NOTE ON ROMANIZATION

AND KOREAN PERSONAL

NAMES

Unless indicated otherwise, the Yale Romanization System is used throughout

the book, except for proper names which are well established in other

romanization systems (e.g. King Sejong, Yi Choson, Kim Tae-Jung, Kim Il

Sung, Seoul, Pyongyang). In Korean, surnames precede given names, and

this is the practice adopted in this book (with the exception of the present

author’s own name). For example, in Kim Tae-Jung, Kim is a surname and

Tae-Jung a given name. Moreover, some Korean given names are romanized

with a hyphen between their component syllables (e.g. Kim Tae-Jung), and

others with or without a space (e.g. Kim Il Sung or Kim Shinwoong).

xiv

Map 1 North and South Korea

NORTH

KOR E A

SOUTH

KOREA

CHINA

RUSSIA

Yellow Sea

Sea of Japan

Pyongyang

Seoul

0 100 200 km

MONGOLIA

JAPAN

CHINA

RUSSIA

North

Korea

South

Korea

Taiwan

0 1000 km

Pacific Ocean

Sea

Okhotsk

Sea

Japan

Yellow

Sea

Map 2 Korea and the region

xvi

KOREA

History, culture and language

This book is an invitation to the Korean language (known as Hankwukmal

in South Korea and Cosenmal in North Korea). The bulk of the book is

devoted to the description of the structure and use of the language, i.e.

sound patterns, vocabulary, word and sentence structure, discourse and

writing systems. That description is also situated in the historical, socio-

cultural context in which the Korean language has ‘evolved’ into what it is

today, because no languages develop or exist in a socio-cultural vacuum.

The shape and form of a given language are inevitably the outcome of its

historical origins, developments and changes. To fail to understand this

fundamental fact is to fail to understand where languages have come from

or how and why they have become what they are. Moreover, although some

linguists may choose to regard them merely as a collection of linguistic

rules, languages are inﬂuenced by the need to communicate in socio-cultural

contexts. In other words, language use is, more often than not, dictated by

socio-cultural conventions, values and expectations. As a consequence, lan-

guages reﬂect various socio-cultural factors within their structural properties,

including not only vocabulary but also grammatical rules. (Needless to say,

some languages are more likely to do so than others.) This is particularly

true of Korean, as is amply attested in the rest of the book. More to the

point, discussion of the historical, socio-cultural context of the Korean

language is indispensable in a book like the present one because the majority

of readers are likely to come from a Western cultural background – very

different indeed from Korean culture – or to have little prior knowledge of

Korean culture and society. Thus the ﬁrst chapter of this book is designed

to provide an informative account of the geographical, historical and socio-

cultural context of the Korean language and its speakers.

Geography: land and population

Korea is a peninsular country bounded in the north by China and Russia, in

the south by the Korea Strait, in the east by the Sea of Japan (or Tonghay,

‘the East Sea’, as Koreans prefer to call it) and in the west by the Yellow Sea

KOREA

(or Hwanghay ‘the Yellow Sea’ in Korean) (see Maps 1 and 2). The shape

of the Korean peninsula reminds Koreans of that of a rabbit standing on

its hind legs. Korea and eastern China (i.e. the Shandong Peninsula) are

separated by 200 kilometres, and the shortest distance between Korea and

Japan across the Korea Strait is also 200 kilometres. The northern boundary

with China and Russia is clearly demarcated by the Yalu River (or

Amnokkang in Korean) and the Tumen River (or Tumankang in Korean).

The whole peninsula, together with its islands, lies between the 33° 06′ 40″ N

and 43° 00′ 39″ N parallels and 124° 11′ 00″ E and 131° 52′ 42″ E meridians.

Longitudinally, Korea is situated near the Philippines or central Australia,

while the latitudinal location of the Korean peninsula is similar to that of

the Iberian peninsula and Greece to the west and the state of California to

the east.

There are about 3,000 islands within Korea’s territory, the majority of

which are located around the Yellow Sea. The largest, Cheju Island, lies

145 kilometres off the south-west corner of the peninsula. The total area

of the territory, inclusive of the islands, is 221,154 square kilometres. About

45 per cent of this area is occupied by South Korea, and the rest by North

Korea. The combined area of North and South Korea is about the size of

Britain or Guyana, with South Korea about the size of Hungary or Jordan.

Nearly 70 per cent of the Korean peninsula is made up of mountains and

hills. Mt Paektu (or Paektusan) (2,744 metres), the highest mountain in

Korea (and indeed throughout Manchuria as well), is located at the North

Korea – China border, and this is the source of the Yalu and Tumen Rivers.

The highest mountain in South Korea, Mt Halla (or Hallasan) (1,950 metres),

is located on Cheju Island. The preponderance of mountains and hills in the

Korean peninsula means that only about 20 per cent of the land can be

cultivated for agricultural purposes. The arable area is conﬁned largely to

plains in the west and south. These plains, however, do not compare in size

with those in China or Japan.

Unlike its southern neighbour Japan, Korea is a stable landmass with no

active volcanoes and rare earthquakes. The two best known mountains in

the Korean peninsula, Mt Paektu and Mt Halla, have volcanic origins. It

is said, however, that in terms of seismic activities the Korean peninsula is

more stable than Japan but less stable than Manchuria, and South Korea in

turn is seismically less stable than North Korea.

Most of Korea’s major rivers ﬂow into the Yellow Sea or the Korea

Strait, except for the Tumen River, which empties into the Sea of Japan.

The longest river is the Yalu River (790 kilometres), with the Nakdong

River (525 kilometres) the second longest. Like elsewhere in the world,

Korea’s principal rivers support arable plains and major cities by providing

irrigation and hydroelectric power. Seoul, the capital of South Korea, is

situated near the mouth of the Han River, and the Taedong River ﬂows

through Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. The Taedong River also

KOREA

provides water for the single large plain in North Korea, the Pyongyang –

Chaeryong plain. In South Korea, on the other hand, the fertile plains are

supported by three major rivers, the Kum, Yengsan and Nakdong.

The Korean peninsula has a coastline of about 8,700 kilometres. There is

a distinct topographical contrast between the coastline in the east and those

in the west and south. The eastern coastline is relatively smooth, with few

islands offshore, whereas the west and south coasts are characterized as

irregular, with indentations or protrusions, bays and offshore islands in

great numbers. This irregularity is more conspicuous on the south coast

than on the west coast.

South Korea (48 million) has more than twice as many people as North

Korea (22 million). South Korea is, in fact, regarded as one of the most

densely populated countries in the world, with 440 people per square

kilometre. North Korea, on the other hand, has 181 people per square

kilometre. The population density of South Korea exceeds those of most

Asian countries including China and India. In South Korea, however, most

people are concentrated in major cities such as Seoul (almost 11 million)

and Pusan (over 4 million). Other major cities, including Taegu, Inchon,

Kwangju, Taejon and Ulsan, have over 1 million people each. This

urbanization of the population, triggered and fuelled by South Korea’s

industrialization in the 1960s and 1970s, means that over 85 per cent of

South Korea’s population now live in these major cities. North Korea, on

the other hand, was about 60 per cent urban as of 1987, with its capital

Pyongyang being the only city with more than one million residents. The

next biggest city is Hamhung, with a population of slightly over 700,000.

More than half of North Korea’s population live in cities with fewer than

100,000 people. This is probably due not as much to North Korea’s slow

urbanization as to the North Korean government’s restrictions on people’s

migration or movement, very much as was the case in China until the late

1980s or the early 1990s.

History

The history of Korea can be best understood in terms of the way Koreans

have interacted with their neighbours in the north (i.e. China, Manchuria

and, more recently, Russia) and in the south and the east across the Korean

Strait and the Sea of Japan (i.e. Japan and, more recently, the USA). The

geographical position of the Korean peninsula between China, Manchuria

and Russia on the one hand and Japan on the other has no doubt had a

signiﬁcant bearing on the history of Korea.

The origins of the Korean people are far from clear. This hardly comes as

a surprise. The origins of many other peoples in the world are equally

unclear. Scholars, however, generally agree that the Korean peninsula was

settled by humans migrating from the north, not from the south. The Late