SEOUL (Reuters) - In North Korea, they ask whether you speak "chosun-mal". In South Korea, they want to know whether you can converse in "hanguk-mal". A different name for their ostensibly common language is a measure of how far North and South Koreans have grown apart during 60 years of division. And it does not stop there. If South Koreans ask North Koreans how they are, the instinctive answer sounds polite to Northerners but conveys a different message to Southern ears -- "Mind your own business". In the years following the 1950-1953 Korean War, North Korea tried to purge foreign words, especially English and Japanese expressions, from its language. Political expressions in the isolated communist country have also become alien and incomprehensible to those in the more outward-looking South.Newspeak North Korean style. Shades of 1984.
North and South divided by common Korean language