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| An English sign stands in front of Hwigeomjae in Bukchon Hanok Village in Jongno District, Seoul, publicizing the Seoul Beauty Travel Week event that ended earlier this week. The Korean name for the event, written at the bottom, is simply the phonetic pronunciation of the English name. Courtesy of Seoul Metropolitan Government |
By Ko Dong-hwan
The Seoul Metropolitan Government plans to cut down on the use of English names for policies promoted by the city government, in order to promote the use of the Korean language.
The use of English by the city government and its sub-institutions has drawn criticism for allegedly neglecting the Korean language and vocabulary.
Starting this month, the city government, with the help of a group of Korean language experts, began searching for existing cases. The search, continuing until the end of this year, will look for problems in the names and titles of policies and events promoted by the city government, its sub-institutions, partner businesses and investors.
The city government said Friday it will start surveying the problems regularly each year with the help of a committee under the city that is made up of 10 Korean language experts.
Apart from the survey, all organizations under the city government must have the titles and names of their policies or events checked by the committee before introducing them to the public. So far, such checks by outside experts were not mandatory but optional.
With the help of Korean language experts, the city government from surveyed from May to September 46 promotional leaflets and posters published by the authority to find any signs of excessive uses of English. They spotted, for example, "green network," "local food" and "busking" phonetically written in Korean and used in place of actual Korean words. The committee has also discovered almost 560 cases of incorrect uses of the Korean language by employees of the city government.
"We admit that news outlets have from time to time criticized our government's inadvertent use of a foreign language in our policy names," said Choi Won-suk from the Public Communication Bureau under the city government. "With Hangeul Day (which marks the invention and proclamation of Hangeul, the Korean alphabet) on Monday, we will trace back to find any cases of misused foreign language in our administrative works and replace them with Korean words instead."
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