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In North Korea, talking in a South Korean accent can get you expelled from faculty and despatched to work within the coal mines.
That’s precisely what occurred to 4 North Korean college college students who had been caught final month talking on their cell telephones with the softer accent and phrases of endearment utilized by their neighbors to the south, sources contained in the nation advised Radio Free Asia.
The scholars doubtless picked up the way of speech from listening to outlawed songs, films or tv dramas akin to “Crash Touchdown on You” or “Squid Recreation” which can be smuggled into the nation on USB flash drives.
Talking this fashion is seen as extra subtle by their friends, the sources stated.
However North Korean authorities view it as a counter-revolutionary crime.
“The phenomenon of utilizing a ‘puppet accent’ is outlined by the Central Committee as an unforgivable act of sympathizing with the enemy’s plot to infiltrate bourgeois ideology and tradition,” a resident of North Hamgyong province advised RFA.
Up to now, these caught doing so had been required to jot down a press release of self-criticism promising that they’d by no means once more use the accent, stated the resident, who declined to be recognized in order to talk freely.
However these days, authorities have “ordered robust countermeasures, saying that the phenomenon of utilizing the South Korean accent is a counterrevolutionary crime that may disintegrate our inner affairs,” he stated.
Executed for distributing South Korean films
North Korea has clamped down after it enacted a regulation in December 2020, the Rejection of Reactionary Thought and Tradition Act, with short-term punishment of as much as two years of onerous labor for individuals who converse, write or sing in South Korean fashion.
Authorities impose harder punishments of as much as 15 years of onerous labor for these caught watching South Korean movies, with the potential of the demise penalty for individuals who distribute them.
That is the regulation that led authorities in October to execute two youngsters who had been caught promoting thumb drives containing South Korean films or TV exhibits.
Hey babe
Within the early December incident, one of many college students from an agricultural school in Chongjin was overheard by an enforcement agent uttering the phrase jagiya, which implies “honey” or “babe” in English, in a South Korean accent within the ready room of an area railroad station. The opposite three had been caught making comparable remarks.
The case got here to the eye of the provincial Staff’ Occasion of Korea committee, and was then reported to the Central Committee, the social gathering’s chief policy-making physique.
The scholars had been expelled from school and assigned to work at a coal mine in Onsong county, close to the Chinese language border.
Following the incident, authorities have ordered a crackdown on such speech and strengthened ideological schooling for younger folks, in response to the sources.
“A crackdown is underway on the precise use of the puppet tone by all school college students in downtown Chongjin in addition to on the agricultural school the place the incident occurred,” stated the North Hamgyong resident.
‘Eradicate anti-socialist habits’
Regardless of sharing the identical language, North and South Koreans sometimes have totally different accents and the terminology and the way of speech may also be fairly totally different.
For instance, within the South, a spouse can name one’s husband an “oppa,” however not within the North, the place it’s used just for older male siblings.
Authorities even have cracked down on officers of the Socialist Patriotic Youth League in North Hamgyong Province and Chongjin metropolis for failing to correctly educate and management the school college students, stated a resident of adjoining Ryanggang province.
“The authorities instructed the Socialist Patriotic Youth League to totally implement a youth schooling mission to eradicate anti-socialist habits on this event,” stated the supply.
Relying on the seriousness of the issue, officers deemed to have irresponsibly performed the youth schooling mission throughout the youth league’s inspection are anticipated to be dismissed and be punished by being despatched to carry out labor in rural or different distant areas of the nation for a set interval, he stated.
“The league officers are nervous,” he added.
North Korea’s Central Committee warned league officers and those that lack the desire and accountability to eradicate “anti-socialist phenomena” that they’d be positioned below ideological assessment, in response to the supply.
“Nonetheless, regardless of how strongly youth schooling is pushed, the officers would not have the facility to alter the accents [used by] younger folks,” he stated. “The league officers are complaining concerning the greater authorities’ angle of shifting accountability to them each time one thing occurs.”
Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee and Leejin J. Chung for RFA Korean. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. Edited by Malcolm Foster.
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