
December 2023 to January 2024 saw the biggest ideological change in North Korea in half a century. The country, which since its inception has asserted that its sacred goal is to reunify with the South, has, at the behest of its ruler, made a complete reversal. Kim Jong Un stated that unification is no longer a goal and that South Korea is now considered a separate and hostile nation by the North.
A profound new development was the change of the naming of South Korea in the North. Before Jan. 16, 2024, it has been Nam Choson. Now, it’s Hanguk. This column aims to explain the significance of the change.
A long history of names
Of all other nations divided after the end of the Second World War Korea stands unique as the South and the North use a different name to call themselves – the Koreans. In West and East Germany, the people were still the same Deutsche. Vietnam, too, was divided in half – yet, on both sides of the demarcation line lived the same Người Việt, the Vietnamese. After Chiang Kai-shek’s government retreated to Taiwan, the Taiwanese people were officially the same Zhōnghuá Mínzú as the mainlanders.
Not so in Korea. The North calls itself Choson, while the South uses the name Hanguk, literally “the State of Han.” Both names have a long history. Choson, the Land of Morning Calm, is one of the oldest names for Korea, mentioned in Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian. In 1392, when the last Korean royal dynasty was founded, it was presented to Korea’s suzerain – China – as a potential name for the country and Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang endorsed it.
Choson endured as the moniker for centuries – until 1897, when, under pressure from the Japanese, Korea formally severed its vassalage to China and declared independence. The name of this new Korean Empire, Tae Han Che Guk, translated to “The Imperial State of Greater Han.” It drew upon the legacies of three ancient states predating Korea’s assimilation into the Sinosphere. Each of these states bore a “Han” character in its name, rendering “Han” a fitting designation for a self-reliant Korea. Perhaps that’s why, following Japan’s annexation of the country, Korea’s name was reverted to Choson by its Japanese masters.
Choson was the name still in use after Korea’s independence was restored in 1945. The North simply continued to use it. The South, however, changed it. This undoubtedly happened due to the efforts of the country’s founding figure, Syngman Rhee. Back in the colonial era, Rhee chaired an organization of independence activists called “the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea.” This ROK was called Tae Han Min Guk, literally “The People’s State of Greater Han.” Naturally, it invoked the name of the Korean Empire before it, just the “Imperial” part was substituted for “People’s.” On July 6, 1948, the South Korean Constituent Assembly voted to adopt this name for the country, and on Jan. 16, 1950, Seoul passed a regulation explicitly instructing only this name to be used: “The full name of our country is the People’s State of Greater Han. In the common parlance, the State of Han or Greater Han can be used, while the name Choson shall not – to firmly divide ourselves from the puppet regime of the Northern Han.”
The “Northern Han,” as the readers have probably guessed, was the South Korean name for the North. The North, in turn, called the South “Southern Choson.” Thus, ever since, while both countries called themselves Korea in English, in Korean the North called Korea Choson, and the South called it Hanguk, or the State of Han.
Initially, when the yearning for unification was a nearly universal one, both terms meant “the entirety of Korea,” as so many Koreans genuinely perceived themselves as living in a divided country. As time went by, however, the language started to adapt. In the South, Hanguk started to mean not Korea, but “South Korea.” Most dictionaries fail to adapt and if you ever heard a person saying “I am from Korea” instead of “I am from South Korea,” then this is probably your reason. They meant to say “I am from Hanguk” and they saw in a dictionary that “Hanguk” means “Korea” in English – but did not realize that this is an old, obsolete, translation.
Another poignant indication of the fading dream of unification in the South was evident in the maps of the era. Scarcely any maps published in the 1950s and 1960s delineated a distinct South Korea. Instead, they portrayed the entire peninsula under the auspices of the Republic of Korea. However, as the years progressed, maps exclusively showcasing the South became increasingly prevalent, gradually supplanting their predecessors.
In the North, things were different. Naturally, all the maps were published by the state, so until 2024 it would be unthinkable to see a North Korean map featuring a divided country. Yet the state could not control the language – and, although in a different way from the South, this also reflected the decades of division.
Since the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” is as a mouthful in Korean as it is in English, the Northerners often shorten it to just “the Republic.” Officially, “the Republic” was supposed to be the entirety of Korea – and the North was to be referred to as its “Northern half.” However, in actual North Korean language “the Republic” started to mean just “North Korea,” despite what the state tried to push.
In other words, while initially the Southern and the Northern languages tried to assert the unity of Korea, these days they both reflect the reality of division. Yet, until 2024, neither variation of Korean denied that the people of both nations are the same. They may be called the people of Southern and Northern Han or of Northern and Southern Choson; nonetheless, they were part of one greater community.
An ingenious move by North Korea’s leadership
And this is what Kim Jong-un changed in January 2024. Kim Jong Un weaponized South Korea’s own name, Hanguk or the “State of Han,” against unification. “You are not like us, not Choson people,” asserts Pyongyang. “You are different. You say you are the people of Han – you are not like us.”
One should acknowledge that this is an ingenious move. South Korea cannot and will not stop using its own name. But from now on, every time a Northerner hears the word Han uttered – by a South Korean official, by a radio broadcaster, or by any person from South Korea – they will remember what they were told by the state: “They are not like us! They even have a different name for themselves.”
Of course, it is too early to confidently say how many Northerners will embrace the new discourse. However, leveraging South Korea’s own language against the dream of unification was undoubtedly one of the shrewder tactics the North Korean regime has employed.
Edited by Robert Lauler.