hankyoreh

President Lee Myung-bak’s administration has at times been associated with English loan words, of its own choosing, that are sometimes either English words not previously used in public Korean discourse or that members of his administration have deliberately given new Korean pronunciations to.

A member of Lee’s presidential transition team, complaining about the state of English language education, once proposed a new pronunciation for the word for “orange,” the fruit. Her version of how it should be pronounced when it is in Korean han’geul spelling appeared to be motivated by a desire to have it pronounced like it was still a word functioning in English, more so than as an English loan word that has become part of Korean.

Meanwhile, however, the skyrocketing costs of the extracurricular private tutoring parents need to pay just to have their children stay ahead in school is killing the parents.

President Lee recently preached the virtues of “job sharing,” and used the English term as he spoke.

Meanwhile, the wages are falling through the floor, killing workers in the process.

President Lee is cutting taxes for the rich while U.S. President Barack Obama is making the rich pay more.

“You sure like our language,” says Obama. “But in terms of policy, you’re going in the opposite direction.”

(Hankyoreh Geurimpan, 28 February 2009)