My tongue-in-cheek look at the flowery language of Korean newspaper columnists and politicians yesterday received some interesting responses.
One reader (you know who you are), suggests that the Koreans who use such language are merely trying to show off their knowledge of ancient Chinese proverbs and don't really care whether the reader understands the references. An older Korean editor at the JoongAng I work with is constantly telling me the same thing. It sounds a little ridiculous, but there's probably some truth in the idea of the indulgent author.
Another idea brought up was the influence of foreign languages in all of this. Korean students dedicate so much energy to learning English, the logic goes, that they no longer have time to properly learn the art of Korean writing.
It's interesting to note that writing in Korea has been a battleground for these sort of cross-cultural tensions for years: up until a few decades ago, after all, most high-level literature and academic books were written in Chinese. The rare book market here is nosediving because young people are learning English instead of Chinese and can no longer read older books.
Obviously, not everyone thinks that this move away from the old style of writing is a bad thing. This editorial is a harsher than usual look at the use of metaphors in political debates in Korea. It suggests that "in the battle of idioms, Korea loses."
As Confucius always said:
ReplyDeleteThe scholar who smelt it is most likely the one who dealt it.