Report of 3rd Research Meeting of East Asia Culture Research Meeting of 2012

Date: 27th June 2012

Time: 18:30-20:30

Venue: Hosei University Ichigaya Campus, ’58 Building 2F Research Center for International Japanese Studies Seminar Room

Speaker: Olivier Bailble (Post-doctoral Researcher, Peking University)

Theme: Chinese Loan Words in Korean Language and the influence of the Japanese Lexicon

Translator: Wang Xueping (Lecturer, University of Tokyo)

Chair: Ming Wan (Professor, Hosei University Research Center for International Japanese Studies)

Executive Summary
Korean lexicology is characterized by many foreign elements that have gradually become integral components of the language. For many centuries, Korea was politically and culturally subordinate to the cultural influence of China. As a consequence, the first wave of these “linguistic borrowings” was almost entirely Chinese and was realized through the use of Chinese written characters. These characters were actually used as a means to represent Korean phonology, as the Korean language lacked its own writing system. Chinese characters were also the essential elements which permitted the enlargement of the Korean lexicography and brought to Korean a large quantity of new words which were lacking in the language. Later, during the 19th Century, the Japanese of the Meiji Period produced a large number of new terms which were then borrowed by both Korea and China. A second phase of borrowing began in the middle of the 1950s when the United States intervened on the side of the United Nations during the Korean War (1950-53). The first part of the present study examined the major phases of Chinese borrowings on the Korean peninsula, from the period of the four garrisons of the Han Dynasty in China until the language-cleansing policy conducted by Kim Il-S?ng in North Korea during the 1960s. In the second part, this study proceeded to a synchronic analysis of Sino-Korean words which allowed us to understand how these words of Chinese origin have evolved in modern Korean. A lexical analysis, in particular a study of loan words by subject area, allowed us to observe the nature of Chinese cultural influences as well as Japanese influences.