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Language Awareness
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmla20
‘I don’t want to be distinguished by others’:
language ideologies and identity construction
among North Korean refugees in South Korea
Mi Yung Park
To cite this article: Mi Yung Park (2021): ‘I don’t want to be distinguished by others’: language
ideologies and identity construction among North Korean refugees in South Korea, Language
Awareness, DOI: 10.1080/09658416.2020.1867563
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2020.1867563
Published online: 04 Jan 2021.
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LANGUAGE AWARENESS
‘I don’t want to be distinguished by others’: language
ideologies and identity construction among North Korean
refugees in South Korea
Mi Yung Park
Asian Studies, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
ABSTRACT
This study explores how North Korean refugees in South Korea navigate
different ideologies about language and construct their own language
ideologies and identities while adjusting to and learning a new variety
of Korean. Drawing on interviews with four North Korean refugees, the
study finds that they have suffered from stigmatization because of their
socially marked North Korean accents, leading them to internalize a
hierarchical view of the two varieties of Korean and to strive to speak
like South Koreans. The participants have at times strategically con-
cealed their identities in order to pass as non-North Korean and protect
themselves from discrimination. However, the participants have also
positioned and repositioned themselves and their linguistic and cultural
resources through imagining different possible futures. Challenging the
inferior identities imposed on them by the mainstream society, they
have constructed imagined identities as valuable assets for a future,
reunified Korea. In doing so, they have used their bidialectal and bicul-
tural skills to differentiate themselves from South Koreans and empower
themselves. The findings of the study shed light on the complex inter-
actions between language ideologies, language use, and identity con-
struction, with implications for refugee language-support programs.
Introduction
Growing numbers of North Koreans are defecting to South Korea, arriving as refugees in
search of freedom, economic betterment, and a modern lifestyle. As of December 2018,
there were 32,467 North Koreans living in South Korea (Ministry of Unification, 2019). Despite
shared ethnicity and South Korean government support, many of these refugees have dif-
ficulty integrating into South Korean society (Kim, 2016). According to previous studies,
North Koreans in South Korea are often socially marginalized because of cultural differences
and the political tension between the two countries, compounded by the perceived lower
education level and socioeconomic background of the refugees (Kim & Hocking, 2018). One
highly visible difference is language; communication problems have been featured in the
media as one of the biggest obstacles to North Koreans’ social adaptation (BBC News, 2019;
The Korea Times, 2017).
https://doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2020.1867563
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 30 December
2019
Accepted 14 December
2020
KEYWORDS
Language ideology; North
Korean refugee; imagined
identity; language use;
accent; linguistic
stigmatization
© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
CONTACT Mi Yung Park miyungp@gmail.com
2M. Y. PARK
Although the Southern and Northern varieties of Korean are mutually intelligible and
share the Korean alphabet, there are noticeable differences (King, 2007; Song, 2005). North
Korean has changed little since the national division following World War II, whereas South
Korean has evolved rapidly due to exposure to foreign cultures and technology. There are
now many spelling and pronunciation differences, and North Korean can sound old-fashioned
to South Korean speakers. North Korean refugees ‘face ridicule due to the stigma that South
Korean society places on North Korean accents’ (Lee et al., 2016, p. 293). South Korean comedy
shows sometimes parody Northern pronunciation and make fun of North Korean words not
used in the South. The biggest sources of language differences are Sino-Korean words and
English loanwords (Lee, 2016). In North Korea, the use of Chinese characters and Sino-Korean
words and phrases has been abolished, and the majority of loanwords from English, Japanese,
and Russian are translated into ‘pure’ Korean (Song, 2015). For example, for commonly used
English loanwords such as ‘remote control’ and ‘skin toner’, North Koreans use literal descrip-
tions, calling them makdaegi ‘bar’ and salgyeolmul ‘skin water’, as opposed to the translitera-
tions rimokeon (a contracted form of ‘remote control’) and seukin, which are used in the South.
The South Korean government is aware of the language problem. Language education
is part of the mandatory refugee program run by the Resettlement Support Center for North
Korean Refugees, commonly known as Hanawon. Administered by the Ministry of Unification
since 1999, Hanawon provides newly arrived North Korean refugees with a three-month-
long educational program to help them settle into South Korean society (Ministry of
Unification, 2019). The goal is to help the refugees regain emotional stability, overcome
cultural differences, and become socially and economically independent. As of 2019, the
400-hour program comprises five components: (1) emotional stability and health (31 hours),
(2) understanding South Korean society (119 hours), (3) career counseling and vocational
training (166 hours), (4) initial resettlement support (57 hours), and (5) life planning (27 hours).
The language-support program makes up 41 hours of the ‘understanding South Korean
society’ component, which is approximately 34% of that component’s hours and 10% of the
overall program. It covers differences in the Northern and Southern varieties of Korean,
South Korean standard pronunciation, loanwords, and basic English.
However, North Korean refugees do not emerge from the Hanawon program speaking
like South Koreans, and North Korean ways of speaking continue to be stigmatized in South
Korea (Lee et al., 2016). According to a language awareness survey conducted by South
Korea’s National Institute of Korean Language in 2016 (N = 305), more than 40% of the North
Korean refugee respondents reported experiencing discrimination due to their accent
(National Institute of Korean Language, 2016). In spite of this, the struggles and challenges
faced by North Korean refugees in terms of their language use and identity construction
have not been investigated in depth. This study explores how North Korean refugees in
South Korea navigate different ideologies about language and construct their own language
ideologies and identities while adapting to and learning a new variety of Korean. By reporting
on the lived experiences of North Korean refugees residing in Seoul, South Korea, this study
aims to provide insight into their language practices and identity construction processes,
and to contribute to a better understanding of their language-related challenges and the
support they need to integrate into their host society.
LANGUAGE AWARENESS 3
Language ideologies, language use, and identity construction
Connections between language ideologies, language use, and identity construction have
been considered in different migrant contexts within a variety of theoretical frameworks (e.g.
Çavuşoğlu, 2019; Gu, 2014; Jeon, 2007; Lee, 2016; Lee & Ahn, 2016; Park, 2020; Song, 2012).
In this study, to examine the experiences of North Korean refugees, I draw on the notions of
language ideology and identity. According to Silverstein (1979), language ideologies are ‘any
sets of beliefs about language articulated by the users as a rationalization or justification of
perceived language structure and use’ (p. 193). These beliefs encompass ‘ideas about the
status of specific languages, the appropriateness of some expressions in particular contexts,
and how language should be taught to children’ (Song, 2012, p. 510). Because language
ideologies are ‘constructed from the sociocultural experience of the speaker’ (Kroskrity, 2004,
p. 496), they vary widely across individuals and societies. Individuals’ attitudes and beliefs
about language are influenced by broader social and cultural norms and ideologies, and
impact their motivations, goals, and investment in language learning and use. In the present
study, this notion of language ideologies enables us to analyze the connection between
North Korean refugees’ language behavior and their attitudes and beliefs about North Korean
and South Korean ways of speaking. These ideologies, having been internalized from their
societal contexts, outwardly manifest in their self-description and language behavior.
To explain the relationship between the participants’ language use and their identities,
the present study also employs the notions of identity and imagined identity, specifically
Norton’s (2013) conceptualization. Norton used ‘identity’ to refer to ‘how a person under-
stands his or her relationship to the world, how that relationship is constructed across time
and space, and how the person understands possibilities for the future’ (p. 4). This concep-
tualization shows the fluid, shifting, and multilayered nature of identity, revealing the pos-
sibility of forming self-identities not only in past and present contexts, but also in a future,
imagined community. Kanno and Norton (2003) claimed that imagined communities are
‘no less real than the ones in which learners have daily engagement and might even have
a stronger impact on their current actions and investment’ (p. 242). They theorized that future
membership could shape how one perceives the value of language and educational prac-
tices. This notion of imagined identity helps us explore how the participants in this study
project themselves into an imagined future life within their new adopted society and con-
ceptually position themselves and their linguistic and cultural resources in line with that
prospective identity.
A small but growing body of research has studied migrants’ language ideologies in relation
to standard and non-standard varieties of language and their identity construction. The
three studies below illustrate the complexity of these relationships and how language ide-
ologies and conceptualizations of identity—one’s own and that of others, and whether
remembered from the past, felt in the present, or imagined for the future—impact individ-
uals’ interactions with different varieties of a language.
Investigating the language ideologies of Southeast Asian marriage-migrant women in rural
South Korea, Park (2020) showed the effects of ideologies on their language use and identity
construction. The women had learned a regional dialect rather than standard Korean and expe-
rienced stigmatization, especially in the workplace. In response, they invested in building pro-
fessional identities by shifting from the local dialect of their community and the households
into which they had married to the prestige variety of standard Korean. However, standard or
4M. Y. PARK
prestige varieties are not necessarily universally favored. Working with school-age children
attending Turkish language schools in the UK, Çavuşoğlu (2019) examined their language ide-
ologies regarding standard Turkish and Cypriot Turkish, a dialect spoken by the Turkish Cypriot
diaspora to which the children belonged. The children resisted the language ideologies imposed
by the teachers of standard Turkish as the prestige variety, viewing it as irrelevant to their daily
lives. In a study of mainland Chinese migrant students attending Hong Kong secondary schools,
Gu (2014) found that they regarded their accented mainland Cantonese as a barrier to gaining
legitimacy in their school and community, and they therefore attempted to acquire ‘standard’
Hong Kong Cantonese despite taking a relatively long time to adapt to it; this was true even
for those from China’s Guangdong province, where Cantonese is a majority language. However,
rather than accepting a language ideology that would marginalize their native mainland
Chinese varieties, the students resisted shifting to the prestige dialect by constructing imagined
identities of themselves as multilinguals operating within a larger context.
These studies demonstrate that ideologies developed in specific societal contexts can
be deeply intertwined with migrants’ language use in new and different contexts. The
Southeast Asian women in Park’s (2020) study were new and non-native speakers of their
regional Korean dialect. Having already largely given up their native tongues for a regional
dialect of their adopted society, they were potentially less resistant, in terms of language
ideology and identity, to exchanging it for an equally foreign but more prestigious variety.
In the case of the UK Turkish Cypriots in Çavuşoğlu’s (2019) study, pressure to speak the
standard dialect was limited to their school context, with other ideologies favoring other
languages and varieties coming from their social contexts and wider society. Finally, while
Hong Kong Cantonese in Gu’s (2014) study was the standard dialect in the students’ imme-
diate context, mainland China’s political and national prestige may have contributed to the
students’ unwillingness to accept their own mainland varieties being marginalized or dimin-
ished. Meanwhile, North Korean refugees in South Korea—yet another unique context and
the focus of the present study—are established native speakers of the language variety they
are pressured to surrender. The language ideologies exerting this pressure are widespread
both socially and institutionally within the host society.
By focusing on the unique experiences of four North Korean refugees, this study sheds
light on the complex dynamics of language ideologies, language use, and identity construc-
tion. Research such as this also helps to make visible language-related issues of a community
with very little visibility in mainstream South Korean society.
Language-related experiences of North koreans in South Korea
The language ideologies and language use of North Korean refugees in South Korea, and
their particular context as East Asian refugees in an East Asian host country with a shared
ethnicity and distinct varieties of the same language, remain under-researched. Among the
few studies on the topic, Salo and Dufva (2018) analyzed two North Korean refugees’ expe-
rience of multilingualism and the emotions they attached to each of their language varieties.
Although the two participants both viewed South Korean as a prestigious variety, they held
different attitudes towards North Korean: One participant embraced the two varieties of
Korean equally, while the other strove to get rid of her North Korean accent. In a study drawing
on audio-recorded data collected from student meetings, Lee and Ahn (2016) explored how
North Korean university students communicated with their South Korean peers and
LANGUAGE AWARENESS 5
constructed their identities. The patterns of their interactions revealed that the North Korean
students tended to express agreement with the South Korean students, tried not to speak
with a North Korean accent, and avoided discussing topics related to North Korea. The authors
claimed that these interactional patterns were connected to the North Koreans’ peripheral
position in South Korean society. In Lee et al. (2016) study, North Korean refugee students
were found to use South Korean as a base form to be accepted by South Korean society, while
treating the Northern variety as an inner-circle language. Lee et al. observed the students’
use of the Southern variety even among themselves when a South Korean was present,
apparently to avoid drawing attention to the fact that they were North Korean.
These studies demonstrate that North Korean refugees have difficulty communicating
with South Koreans and feel pressure to assimilate. This situation has the potential to threaten
individuals’ identities and the nation’s linguistic and cultural diversity. Given the important
role language plays in identity and social integration, there is a need to understand how
North Korean refugees adjust to their new linguistic environment and form their language
ideologies and identities if the government’s stated goal of supporting the integration of
North Korean refugees into South Korean society is to be realized. However, there are very
few empirical studies on the language-related experiences of North Korean refugees. To
address this gap, this study investigates how North Korean refugees in South Korea adapt
to a new variety of Korean and construct their own language ideologies and identities. This
paper highlights the ongoing challenges North Koreans face in adjusting to the new linguistic
environment of South Korea owing to the language ideologies and perceived identities
imposed on them by their host society. It also demonstrates how they can be empowered
by constructing an imagined identity as useful citizens of a future reunified Korea whose
linguistic and cultural resources are valued.
The study
This study draws on data collected in 2019 through in-depth interviews with four North
Korean refugees from North Hamgyong Province, North Korea’s northernmost province:
Hayoon, Hyunsoo, Inho, and Wonmi (all pseudonyms). Table 1 summarizes their demographic
backgrounds. I focus on the experiences of these four participants to provide a rich descrip-
tion of the focal phenomena. I got to know one of the participants, Hayoon, through a North
Korean acquaintance. From this initial contact, the snowball sampling technique (Creswell,
Table 1. Participant profiles.
Name Age Gender
Residence in South
Korea Education Occupation
Inho 29 M 8 years High school (North Korea);
Attending a 4-year university
(South Korea)
University student
Hyunsoo 34 M 3 years 5-year university
(North Korea)
Fabric company worker
Hayoon 45 F 3.5 years 2-year college (North Korea);
Attending a 4-year university
(South Korea)
University student
Wonmi 49 F 6 years 5-year university (North Korea);
Attending a graduate school
(South Korea)
Graduate student
6M. Y. PARK
2005) was used to recruit more participants. Without this method, it would have been very
difficult to find other research participants as North Korean refugees are generally reluctant
to reveal their background.
Separate interviews, each lasting about two hours, were conducted with each participant.
Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed in Korean, and translated into English by the
author. During the pre-interview phase, I explained to the participants my research interest
in exploring the lives of migrants in South Korea and how my own life trajectory as a migrant
had inspired me to study this topic. I believe that this dialogue helped me to develop rapport
with the participants. During the interviews, I asked the participants to discuss their expe-
riences of linguistic adaptation and language use, attitudes towards different varieties of
Korean, challenges they faced in adapting to their new society, and future goals. I began
each line of inquiry with an open-ended, non-directive question to encourage them to
discuss any relevant issues freely. However, I recognize that I may have inevitably affected
the participants’ conduct and how they answered the interview questions.
A thematic approach was used to analyze the interview data, adopting the procedures
recommended by Braun and Clarke (2006). The first procedure involved reading and re-read-
ing the interview transcripts while noting down initial ideas and impressions. After this
familiarization stage, codes were created by identifying segments of data related to the
research topic (language use, language ideologies, and identity construction). The resulting
codes were then grouped into potential themes, and relevant data excerpts that fit each
potential theme were selected for inclusion in this paper. The themes that emerged through
this process were identified as resisting English loanwords, speaking like South Koreans, and
constructing imagined identities as valuable assets for a reunified Korea. The themes were
refined continuously by checking them against the participants’ transcripts, and the themes
and the quotations in this paper were reviewed with the participants in order to ensure
accurate representations of their experiences. In the following sections, each theme is pre-
sented along with supporting quotations.
Results
Resisting English loanwords
Language policy and education in North Korea promote linguistic purism, which devalues
language borrowing or mixing (King, 2007; Song, 2015). North Korea’s language purification
policies, born of the official state ideology of juche (‘self-reliance’), have led to the replace-
ment of many foreign loanwords with native Korean words, reflecting North Korea’s claims
of cultural purity and cultural superiority (Terrell, 2007). According to Song (2015), the ratio-
nale for these language policies is that ‘[i]f not independent of influence from other lan-
guages, the national language will not be able to serve as a proper vehicle for the Juche
ideology’ (p. 484). In contrast, in South Korea, English is viewed as a symbol of affluence,
prestige, and upward mobility, and English loanwords are pervasive and an established
aspect of the typical South Korean’s linguistic repertoire (Tan & Tan, 2015). As Lee (2016)
reported, and the current study supports, loanwords from English and Sino-Korean words
are one of the greatest challenges for North Korean refugees. Three of the participants com-
mented that language differences were the biggest challenge to their adaptation to South
Korean society and all four reported great difficulty in adjusting to the new linguistic
LANGUAGE AWARENESS 7
environment due to language differences, especially in terms of English loanwords. Their
values and beliefs, cultivated in North Korea, conflicted with the new ideologies they encoun-
tered in South Korea.
Excerpt 1 demonstrates how Hyunsoo’s North Korean identity influenced the way he
responded to the English-dominant linguistic landscape of Seoul:
Excerpt 1
All the shop names are written in English, and South Koreans even write English in the Hangeul
script. English is everywhere. When I first saw that, that’s when I realized the difference between
North Korean and South Korean. While getting social adaptation education at Hanawon, I [still]
thought Korean people should use Korean only. [So when I saw that] South Korea has brought a lot
of foreign words into Korean, it damaged my self-esteem [as a Korean]. Because I had learned the
‘ideology of ethnic superiority’ (joseonminjok jeiljuui), which says that ethnic Koreans are the best.
The ‘ideology of ethnic superiority’ perpetuated in North Korea (Kang, 2011) had instilled
in Hyunsoo the belief that Koreans constitute an ethnic group with a distinct language and
culture superior to those of others. This led Hyunsoo to regard North Korean as ‘more pure’
because of its lack of foreign loanwords, and to view South Koreans’ enthusiasm for English
negatively. Encountering South Korea’s widespread use of English loanwords felt like an
assault on his national identity, and accepting it meant not only challenging, but eventually
abandoning, his existing ideologies.
Inho described a similar confrontation with English loanwords:
Excerpt 2
My middle school teachers said, ‘The South Korean language is contaminated with many for-
eign words and has become a mixture of different languages’.… I had a lot of complaints when
learning South Korean. Why do people use so many English words when speaking in Korean?
When [I was] working at a car factory, my co-workers did not use Korean but English. They said,
setting-haera ‘set it up’ and scan-haera ‘scan it’. What do they mean?
Inho was challenged by his co-workers’ prevalent use of English loanwords, which he was
unable to make sense of initially. South Koreans’ enthusiasm for English is different from
their use of other foreign languages. For example, while Chinese and Japanese may be
studied, they are rarely sources of borrowing in contemporary times. However, English words
are commonly inserted into phrases and sentences, as shown in setting-haera ‘set it up’ and
scan-haera ‘scan it’, where the English words are combined with haera ‘do’ to make a Korean
verb phrase. Inho took a negative stance towards this practice as he believed that ‘[i]nter-
jecting a foreign word into every utterance jeopardizes the integrity of the Korean language’.
It is important to note that the participants’ views on English loanwords had gradually
changed through interacting with South Koreans and participating in the social adaptation
program at Hanawon. Hyunsoo reported that he asked his South Korean language teacher
why South Koreans use a lot of English loanwords. His teacher’s explanation, according to
Hyunsoo, was that using English is a way to learn the culture of a developed country:
Excerpt 3
I told my teacher that [in North Korea] we use native Korean words in place of foreign words
when foreign goods are imported and that the South Korean way of adopting foreign words is
8M. Y. PARK
not right. I asked her, ‘Don’t you think it can endanger the Korean language?’ She said, ‘You’ve
got a point there. But using English loanwords is a global tendency and we need to learn the
linguistic and cultural practices of developed countries’.
The spread of English loanwords in South Korea is intimately linked to the ideology of
globalism, which imposes the assumption that Western cultures are inherently superior to
non-Western cultures (Kuppens, 2013) and requires the latter to adapt their practices in
accordance with global (i.e. Western) trends. In the face of such trends appearing both nec-
essary and unstoppable, Hyunsoo experienced a reduction in his resistance towards learning
loanwords ‘out of necessity for daily communication’.
Speaking like South Koreans
The participants reported that Hanawon’s resettlement education stressed the importance
of acquiring a South Korean accent. Hyunsoo recalled being told to ‘adapt [his] accent to
sound more South Korean through watching Korean dramas’. While still at Hanawon,
although they felt pressured to adjust to South Korean, they did not feel ashamed of their
accent as they were surrounded by other North Koreans. However, as they interacted with
more South Koreans, they often experienced stigmatization because of their accent, which
led them to internalize a hierarchical view of the two language varieties.
As explained by one of the participants, although many South Koreans are familiar with
North Korean accents from the media, they do not expect to actually meet North Koreans,
who form a relatively small proportion of South Korea’s population. Believing that revealing
their North Korean identity would hamper their integration into the new society, the par-
ticipants responded to this anticipated prejudice by employing a strategy of trying to speak
like South Koreans. This strategy has potential as a means of obscuring a North Korean origin,
owing to the ethnic homogeneity of North Koreans and South Koreans (Kim & Hocking,
2018). However, avoiding being identified as North Korean does not mean being taken for
South Korean: All four participants reported that people often asked them whether they
were joseonjok ‘ethnic Koreans from China’ or gyopo ‘overseas Koreans’. In Excerpt 4, Hayoon
reflects on her experience of linguistic stigmatization:
Excerpt 4
Since I’m still young, I tried to get a job at a big company. My qualifications were fine. I got my
university degree and all the certificates you can get. But, whenever I called the companies or
went in for an interview, people first asked me, ‘Are you gyopo?’ I was so embarrassed that I
decided to attend a speech academy.
Her accent acted as a barrier to getting the office job she wanted. Her authenticity as a
native Korean speaker was challenged as she was perceived as an overseas Korean, implying
that she had not acquired Korean fully or spoke it with a foreign accent. The perceived inau-
thenticity created a sense of linguistic insecurity, which led her to sign up for a speech
academy for accent reduction training. She tried to change her pronunciation and intonation
by listening to her own recorded speech and imitating the accent of a South Korean news
anchor. These efforts, however, did not help her overcome her linguistic insecurity. As Hayoon
explained, ‘If people recommended a job that required a lot of speaking, I revealed my North
Korean background and told them that I wasn’t the right fit’.
LANGUAGE AWARENESS 9
Hayoon preferred to reveal her North Korean background over being mistaken for an
overseas Korean. However, negative perceptions of North Koreans present North Korean
refugees with other barriers to constructing positive identities, building social relationships,
and finding employment. In South Korea, North Korean refugees are widely viewed as uned-
ucated and ignorant. This is based on the South Korean understanding that North Korean
schools serve primarily to indoctrinate students into socialist ideologies through ‘highly dis-
torted and politically charged rhetoric’ (Horton, 2018, p. 206), as well as the knowledge that
North Koreans have limited access to the outside world, outside information, and modern
technology such as computers and the internet. Wonmi described her frustration with how
her accent marks her as North Korean and the social ramifications of this imposed identity:
Excerpt 5
I want to change my accent. Because South Koreans wouldn’t know I’m North Korean if I don’t
speak. There is a general image of North Koreans. As soon as they find out I’m from North Korea,
they think that I don’t know anything, regardless of the topic. They look down on me. I hate it.
Wonmi wanted to hide her North Korean identity in order to avoid being confronted with
the stereotypes of ignorance and lack of education (Salo & Dufva, 2018). She strove to gain
a South Korean accent to keep her background hidden and avoid being prejudicially posi-
tioned as an ‘ignorant other’ (Horton, 2018, p. 197).
Hayoon similarly attempted to speak with a South Korean accent because of negative
perceptions of North Koreans. She found the process difficult: ‘Speaking with a South Korean
accent is like a newborn baby trying to eat a regular meal’. When people noticed her accent
and asked her where she was from, she sometimes adopted a false identity in order not to
disclose her North Korean background:
Excerpt 6
If people said my accent was strange, I would tell people that I have a unique accent due to a
mixture of regional dialects. At first, I told them I’m from North Korea. People were very sur-
prised and said comforting words to me. But I didn’t like it because I felt like they treated me as
poor and helpless because I’m from North Korea. They saw me as someone who needs to be
rescued.
While acknowledging her non-standard accent, Hayoon tried to pass it off as the result
of growing up in more than one rural province of South Korea. This enabled her to preclude
follow-up questions about her background and language and keep her identity hidden.
Thus, Hayoon could avoid the consequences of revealing her origin, a stigmatized identity,
and its undesirable associations.
Hyunsoo also worked hard to master South Korean by ‘carefully listening to South Koreans
and trying to match [his] accent to [their] accent’. In Excerpt 7, he explains his reasons for
hoping to master South Korean and the prestige dialect of Seoul:
Excerpt 7
I want to speak like South Koreans. I don’t want to be distinguished by others. People from
Daegu or Busan who move to Seoul want to use Seoulmal (Seoul speech). They wouldn’t like
hearing, ‘Oh, you’re from Daegu or Busan’. It’s the same thing. So I’m trying hard to change my
accent… If they’re from Daegu, people can just assume that their hometown is Gyeongsang
Province. But, they think about all the negative stereotypes attached to the region.
10 M. Y. PARK
Hyunsoo believed that people from regions of South Korea other than Seoul would dislike
being identified by the accent of the region they are from and described his own wish to
not be perceived as North Korean as being no different. He viewed standard South Korean,
specifically Seoulmal, as a prerequisite for successful adaptation, and worked on modifying
his accent to blend into the mainstream society. However, he reported that it was not easy:
‘Although my accent has improved, I still find it very difficult to speak like South Koreans,
having lived in North Korea for 30 years’.
Inho felt pressured to change his accent, even while being expected to utilize his North
Korean identity. South Korean churches often invited him to speak about why he had
defected and how he had become a Christian. He described being laughed at because of
the way he spoke during a presentation at a church in Seoul:
Excerpt 8
All the people laughed because the way I spoke was strange. I felt embarrassed. [They said] I
sounded like [I was] fighting for my country. During my presentation, I said that people should
behave as Christians—’be loyal’ (chwungsengul tahata) and be able to ‘devote their lives’ (mok-
swumul kelta). Everyone laughed because my North Korean accent came out. (In a quiet voice)
But I liked how I presented.
Although he thought sharing his experiences with others was meaningful, Inho found it
challenging to speak to South Korean audiences because of his ‘North Korean speaking style’.
The congregation might have been laughing not only at his accent but also at his word
choices (e.g. ‘be loyal’, ‘devote their lives’), which South Koreans associate with North Korean
ideologies and militaristic nationalism. According to Inho, the experience made him feel
‘inadequate’ and ‘inferior’, which motivated him to ‘keep writing, deleting, and rewriting [his
presentation scripts] to sound like a South Korean’. Inho reported that this process was so
time-consuming and stressful that he stopped and asked himself, ‘Why do I need to do this?’
He reported that self-reflecting and engaging in this inner dialogue enabled him to become
aware of power structures and issues of inequality, and to challenge the cultural norms that
undermined his linguistic behavior.
Hyunsoo and Wonmi also discussed how their desire to speak like South Koreans impacted
them even within North Korean linguistic contexts. Even when meeting their North Korean
friends, Hyunsoo and Wonmi tried to speak with South Korean accents because they consid-
ered using North Korean to be detrimental to their progress in learning and adapting to South
Korea. Wonmi reported that her North Korean accent re-emerged when she spent time with
her friends who had strong North Korean accents. Therefore, even when she felt socially iso-
lated among South Koreans, she was hesitant to socialize much with her North Korean friends
because she felt stressed by the perceived negative linguistic consequences of doing so.
Constructing imagined identities as valuable assets for a reunified Korea
Over time, the participants sought to challenge their undesirable, imposed identities as
North Korean refugees and to construct more desirable and potentially useful identity posi-
tions through imagining legitimate membership (Kanno & Norton, 2003) in a future, reunified
Korea. The participants’ narratives show how imagining change in the sociopolitical context
caused a shift in their attitudes towards their language, their identities, and their language
ideologies. That is, their imagined belonging to a future community enabled them to move
from hiding their North Korean accents in favor of acquiring South Korean accents to valuing
LANGUAGE AWARENESS 11
the North Korean language and themselves as native speakers of it. This shift took place
when they considered the importance of being able to speak both varieties of Korean in the
event of reunification; they could imagine themselves as valuable assets in this new nation.
The participants therefore tried to develop skills and knowledge that complemented these
identities and in areas they had identified as promising for when the two Koreas eventually
reunify, including social work and theology.
Wonmi, who had been a school teacher in North Korea, chose to study social work in
South Korea in the hope of someday helping other North Koreans transition to a newly
unified society. She expressed the fear that ‘North Koreans will have no place in reunited
Korean society, just like us’. According to Wonmi, the majority of North Korean refugees
engage in low-paid menial jobs and are economically marginalized in the host society.
Moreover, she anticipated the economic landscape to be more inhospitable after reunifica-
tion. This is because she expects reunification to occur only after the collapse of the North
Korean regime and imagines that a reunified Korea would attract more migrants from all
over the world, making it even harder for North Koreans to compete in the job market. She
therefore hoped to work as a vocational counselor so that she could assist North Koreans in
making career decisions and developing the necessary skills to land good jobs. This imagined
future role resulted in a shift in her linguistic identity and language ideologies: In addition
to her ability to navigate a North Korean cultural and linguistic space, being identifiable by
her speech style as a native North Korean would now be seen as an asset. In Excerpt 9, Wonmi
describes the imagined future nation and her career aspirations as a counselor:
Excerpt 9
There will be so many things to do when we are reunified. Language-related jobs will be the
most promising. If effective communication does not occur, nothing can be achieved. We have
already experienced language barriers, so we will be needed. North Koreans do not open up
when South Korean counselors talk to them… No matter how competent they are, they won’t
be able to understand North Koreans’ problems and will have difficulty understanding their
speech. But we can.
This excerpt reflects the distance Wonmi perceived between South Koreans and North
Koreans, and her recognition of the importance of cultural sensitivity in counseling North
Korean refugees. Based on her own resettlement experience, she saw herself as a potentially
competent counselor who could understand and relate to refugees. In doing so, she used
her knowledge of the North Korean language, along with her North Korean identity and
prior experiences struggling with language differences and social integration, to distinguish
herself from South Koreans and empower herself.
Similarly, Hayoon, who had graduated from a two-year college in North Korea, was cur-
rently studying social work at a four-year university in Seoul. Her envisioning of an imagined
community and her engagement with her imagined identity within it shaped her academic
motivation; she decided to pursue university study in order to gain skills and knowledge that
could contribute to building a thriving reunited country where both South Koreans and North
Koreans would be supported. In Excerpt 10, she explains why she chose to major in social work:
Excerpt 10
Because I wanted to study welfare. I became more interested in it after listening to professors’
lectures. I hope the two countries get reunified, but we don’t know when that will happen. So
we need to prepare. If we get reunified, I want to open a community center to care for elderly
12 M. Y. PARK
people from North Korea. Because of that dream, I started studying… I think I can do a better
job compared to South Koreans because I can understand both languages and cultures.
When I followed up with Hayoon on her reasons for wanting to help elderly people from
North Korea in particular, she explained her sense that ‘they would find it very difficult to
adjust to a new linguistic and cultural environment’ and that ‘their well-being would be
pivotal to the reunited country’. She believed that her academic training, along with the
bidialectal and bicultural knowledge she had acquired through living in both North Korea
and South Korea, would make her better qualified than South Koreans to do the kind of work
she was anticipating would be needed.
Inho also hoped for the reunification of the Korean peninsula, and thought that he could
make a valuable contribution as a missionary in the future. Passionate about his faith, he
planned to spread Christianity to North Koreans. He was therefore studying theology at a
Christian university in Seoul and participating in short-term overseas missionary trips in
order to gain hands-on experience promoting Christianity:
Excerpt 11
We know both North Korea and South Korea. South Koreans don’t know about North Korea so
we have an advantage. We’re preparing to do big, important work for a reunified Korea…
Currently, there are no North Korean missionaries. South Koreans can’t do a good job [with
North Koreans]. North Koreans should be hired to do missionary work because we know the
language and culture.
Inho constructed an empowered identity as a future missionary by positioning himself
(and North Korean refugees in general) as more knowledgeable in terms of the two Koreas,
giving them an ‘advantage’ in the job market in comparison with South Koreans. Rather than
reacting to his experience of stigmatization due to his way of speaking, he viewed his knowl-
edge of the North Korean language and culture as a resource that could assist him in suc-
cessfully fulfilling his role in this imagined future.
Discussion and conclusion
North Koreans and South Koreans may have a shared Korean ethnicity but they speak distinct
varieties of the Korean language. By reporting on the lived experiences of four North Korean
refugees in South Korea, this study examines the dynamic and complex interaction of lan-
guage ideologies, language use, and identity construction at work. North Korean refugees
represent a particularly vulnerable population forced to adapt to a new way of life. Despite
their unique background as refugees, little scholarly attention has been paid to the lan-
guage-related experiences of North Koreans in South Korea, especially in terms of identity
issues (Lee & Ahn, 2016). Based on the participants’ interview data, this study highlights how
they used their linguistic and cultural resources to move from internalizing an inferior posi-
tion in society to constructing new, empowered identities as legitimate and competent
members of an imagined future community (Kanno & Norton, 2003; Norton, 2013; Norton
& Pavlenko, 2019).
First, the findings demonstrate that the socialization process of North Korean refugees is
fraught with obstacles. There is a discrepancy between the ideologies the participants
acquired in North Korea, which reinforce Korean ethnic superiority and linguistic purism,
LANGUAGE AWARENESS 13
and the new ideologies they encountered in South Korea, which promote western values
and code-mixing. This discrepancy led to conflicts of values and ideological struggles for
the participants. This finding is consistent with that of Kim (2016), who showed that a major
challenge for her North Korean participant while learning English was the conflict between
her desire to maintain her ‘original self’ and her need to construct ‘a new self’ (p. 9).
The participants in the present study also suffered stigmatization because of their socially
marked North Korean accents, which led them to become aware of the power differences
between the language varieties and to internalize language ideologies that devalued their
linguistic resources. A linguistic identity was imposed on them in which they were margin-
alized as inauthentic or inferior Korean speakers and constantly perceived as impoverished,
incompetent, and uneducated (Lee, 2015; Park, 2010). This further diminished their ability
to experience legitimacy and social inclusion. Such experiences led them to accept the
hierarchical view of the two varieties of Korean and strive to speak like South Koreans (Kim
& Hocking, 2018; Lee et al., 2016). They faced great pressure to assimilate linguistically and
culturally, to the extent that they avoided identifying themselves as North Koreans and
adopted various strategies to stop speaking with North Korean accents.
For these participants, speaking South Korean was social capital (Bourdieu, 1991) that
would help them gain entry into their new society. Even though they were more comfortable
speaking their native dialect, they viewed South Korean as a highly valuable commodity; the
difficulty of speaking South Korean was outweighed by the benefits it bestowed and the costs
associated with speaking North Korean. Some of the participants were even reluctant to use
North Korean as an ‘inner-circle language’ (Lee et al., 2016) to maintain co-ethnic social net-
works because they were concerned that using North Korean would interfere with their acqui-
sition of South Korean. The participants’ language ideologies were heavily influenced by their
experiences of discrimination and the negative stereotypes attached to North Korean iden-
tities (Lee, 2015; Park, 2010). Although North Korean and South Korean are generally mutually
intelligible, gaining a South Korean accent was extremely important to the participants as it
was integral to accessing opportunities in work, education, and other areas of social life, as
well as avoiding being categorized as ‘ignorant others’ (Horton, 2018, p. 197). Acceding to the
message they received from their host society and its integration program, they viewed lan-
guage differences as a problem to be overcome, and invested in acquiring a South Korean
accent in order to pass as non-North Korean and protect themselves from discrimination.
Although the participants felt enormous pressure to learn how to speak with a South
Korean accent, their limited knowledge and social networks (see Norton, 2013) were barriers
to doing so. They lacked opportunities to engage in meaningful contact with South Koreans,
which limited their exposure to the South Korean dialect. All the participants reported that
building relationships with South Koreans had been extremely challenging because South
Koreans tend to keep their distance upon finding out that someone is from North Korea
(Kim & Hocking, 2018). According to the participants, they were uncomfortable being around
South Koreans they did not know, and they felt the need to be very careful about who they
disclosed their background to. They experienced high levels of anxiety about their North
Korean background being revealed to South Koreans for fear of the consequences of this
discovery (e.g. marginalization, social exclusion). Thus, although the participants were aware
of the importance of hearing and using South Korean language in order to acquire it, they
also attempted to avoid social interactions with South Koreans to prevent or minimize the
risk of their origins being discovered (Salo & Dufva, 2018).
14 M. Y. PARK
The findings illustrate that the participants positioned and repositioned themselves and
their linguistic and cultural resources through imagining their futures and the possibilities
therein (Kanno & Norton, 2003; Norton, 2013; Norton & Pavlenko, 2019). Their perceived
marginalized position in contemporary South Korean society and their limited upward social
mobility may have reinforced their view of the future community as a site of belonging, or
at least of enhanced career opportunities. Although they were aware of the established
social norms, they also saw these norms as open to negotiation based on contextual factors.
When transitioning to a new linguistic environment, the participants struggled to develop
their identities and initially accepted the identities of inferiority imposed on them by the
mainstream society. Yet, during the course of their adaptation process, they learned to estab-
lish a legitimate identity outside the present sociopolitical context. Although they generally
continued to link their origins to social limitations in their current lives in South Korea, some
participants appreciated the potential socioeconomic utility of North Korean language and
identity and reframed them as valuable assets that could enhance their marketability in the
context of a reunified Korea. Like Kim’s (2016) participant, who ‘saw her place in a reunified
Korean society in relation to North Koreans’ (p. 13), this study’s participants associated their
knowledge of North Korea with the possibility of getting jobs, helping North Koreans, and
contributing to a new idealized society. In this imagined world, knowledge of North Korea
is capital (Bourdieu, 1991). Their North Korean identity and language would still differentiate
them from South Koreans, but in ways that would make them more desirable and useful
citizens of a future reunified Korea. This imagined identity and the ideologies it engenders
disrupt the dominant discourses currently circulating in mainstream South Korean society,
which view North Korean language and culture as undesirable, irrelevant, and inferior to
those of South Korea.
The findings of the study offer implications for refugee language-support programs. It is
important for refugee educators to have a deep understanding of the social prejudice and
other challenges that refugees face in their adaptation process, and to realize the significant
impact these challenges can have on refugees’ identities. Refugees struggle to develop,
negotiate, and renegotiate their identities and their sense of belonging within the host
society. Understanding their unique experiences, struggles, and needs is the first step
towards facilitating their smooth integration. In addition, replacing the host society’s focus
on assimilation with recognition of linguistic and cultural diversity is vital in addressing the
refugees’ linguistic stigmatization. The language-support programs for North Korean refu-
gees should embrace pedagogies that acknowledge and build on refugees’ existing linguistic
repertoire while adding the ability to communicate in a new variety. This is consistent with
Çavuşoğlu’s (2019) argument that diverse cultural and linguistic identities need to be main-
tained in diasporic contexts. By promoting flexible and plural language ideologies (Gu, 2014)
in the classroom, and viewing the use of the two varieties as a resource rather than a disad-
vantage, teachers could help foster positive identities and support refugees’ engagement
in the bidialectal and bicultural practices that constitute their daily lives, both now and in
the future they see themselves as part of. At the same time, these educators have the oppor-
tunity to help refugees gain critical awareness of the power inherent in language practices,
challenge dominant ideologies, and negotiate diverse norms for communication. If refugees’
hybrid language use were legitimized and valued in this way, destructive feelings of linguistic
insecurity and inauthenticity could be mitigated. Three participants in this study (Wonmi,
Hayoon, and Inho) had found ways to use their ‘socially unfavorable’ linguistic variety and
LANGUAGE AWARENESS 15
cultural knowledge to construct empowered and differentiated identities; their experience
suggests how newly arrived refugees could be supported to draw on their multiple lan-
guages, ideologies, and identities to their advantage. Moreover, integration programs could
train and employ North Korean migrants. Not only would this provide avenues for North
Korean refugees to utilize their bidialectal and bicultural capital as useful members of South
Korean society in the present—not only in an imagined future—but such teachers would
be able to understand the refugees’ experiences and positively influence their learning and
identity construction, acting as mentors and models.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the editor and anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of
this manuscript. I would also like to thank Laurie Durand and Alec Redvers-Hill for their editorial
assistance.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Funding
This work was supported by Core University Program for Korean Studies through the Ministry of
Education of the Republic of Korea and Korean Studies Promotion Service of the Academy of
Korean Studies (AKS-2017-OLU-2250001).
Notes on contributor
Mi Yung Park is Senior Lecturer in Asian Studies in the School of Cultures, Languages and Linguistics
at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Her research interests include language ideology, her-
itage language maintenance, and language and identity. She has published her work in such jour-
nals as International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, Language and Education,
Language and Intercultural Communication, Journal of Pragmatics, and Classroom Discourse.
ORCID
Mi Yung Park https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1210-0709
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