Dynamics of Ethnolinguistic Nationalism and Language Education on the Korean Peninsula Following the End of the Colonial Period

Abstract

This study analyzes the meaning of ethnolinguistic nationalism in Korea after colonial liberation (August 15, 1945). It focuses on orthographic standardization and examines the state of Korean language education during 1945-1948. The issue of orthography was deeply connected to the imposition of orthographic standards for the education of Japanese language in colonial Korea, and it was central to the ethnolinguistic nationalism that identified the Korean language with the Korean ethnicity. In the colonies, orthography was the basis for countering linguistic imperialism and preserving unassimilable territories within empires. The Korean Language Society’s Proposal for the Unification of Korean Orthography (1933) opposed imperialist phonecentrism with morphological orthographic norms. These were inherited as “national” orthographic norms after the liberation of Korea. However, it paradoxically functioned as a mechanism to suppress the various linguistic experiences that existed in the form of “voice.” Teachers involved in the teaching of Korean as a national language endeavoured to overcome this situation by shifting the focus of language education from the written to the vocal, or voice-centered. While maintaining a tense relationship with ethnolinguistic nationalism, Korean language education was a place where another form of nationalism was proposed.