Conflicting Languages, Echoing Languages: The Differences in South Korean and Japanese Language Usage as Demonstrated by the 2019 South KoreanJapanese Conflict, and their Implications

Abstract

The 2019 South Korean-Japanese trade row made clear that the gap in historical perceptions between Japan and its former colony also had an important linguistic side. South Korea and Japan operate with two mutually incompatible sets of historical terms, especially regarding the most sensitive historical issues. Moreover, both governments have been making conscious efforts in language policing, attempting to control the ways in which their respective media refer to anything supposed to be potentially controversial between the two states. Furthermore, the war between the two language-policing regimes across the Straits of Korea has a civil war aspect as well: right-wing historical revisionists in South Korea have been actively appropriating the terminology of their Japanese colleagues while consolidating their opposition to the preferred terminology of the current South Korean government. They have also been exporting to Japan some of the terms they have coined. The present article deals with all the interrelated aspects of the South Korean-Japanese language war. It attempts to explore the ways in which state-level language management regimes have been operating and the interactions between language policies and media language conventions. At the same time, it proposes solutions for overcoming limitations of state language policing and linguistic nationalism.