植民地下 朝鮮에서의 言語支配

The Mechanism of the Language Policy in Colonial Korea the Standardization of Korean

This paper intends to examine the procedure of the standardization of Korean under Japanese colonialism. Although many historians have considered the language policy in colonial Korea as the abolishment of the Korean language, the reality of the policy has not been explored. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the language policy conducted by the Government-General of Korea through the standardization of Korean, especially the Korean spelling system. The Department of Education in the Government-General of Korea enacted 'the Korean Spelling' as standard of textbooks in 1912 and revised it twice: in 1921 and in 1930. The Department of Education published the Korean textbooks according to the Korean Spelling, which was part of the education policies. However, after the March First independent movement, the educators as well as the public had growing interest in 'the Korean Spelling', with which they generally did not agree. As the number of Korean newspapers and magazines increased in the 1920s and the Japanese authorities encouraged Japanese individuals in Korea to speak Korean, the standardization of Korean was urgent. In order to standardize Korean and revise the spelling system, the Department of Education consulted with the Society of Korean Language Study. which was influential in the academic community. The result was 'Korean Spelling Rules' announced in 1930. But, throughout the 1930s, 'Korean Spelling Rules' produced a lot of controversies between the Society of Korean Language Study and the Society of Korean Linguistics, represented by Park Seung'bin. The language policy of colonial government was influenced by the Korean standardization movement based on Korean language nationalism while, on the other hand, the language policy of the colonial government was as important factor of Koreans' movement. Education of the Korean language. of course, greatly reduced since the late 1930s and the Korean press was prohibited in the 1940s by the Japanese authorities. That means the Japanese did not need to standardize the Korean language any more. Korean standardization movement has been thought as resistance against the Japanese rule. However, during the movement, Koreans responded with complicated, different opinions to the Japanese language policy. The Japanese language policy makers tried not only to standardize Korean, but also to force Koreans into using Japanese. I want to investigate the problem in another paper.