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50-562: The Korean Central News Agency ( KCNA ) ( Korean :  조선중앙통신 ) is the state news agency of North Korea . The agency portrays the views of the North Korean government for both domestic and foreign consumption. It was established on December 5, 1946, and now features online coverage. KCNA works under the Korean Central Broadcasting Committee , through which it is ultimately controlled by

100-484: A Korean influence on Khitan. The hypothesis that Korean could be related to Japanese has had some supporters due to some overlap in vocabulary and similar grammatical features that have been elaborated upon by such researchers as Samuel E. Martin and Roy Andrew Miller . Sergei Starostin (1991) found about 25% of potential cognates in the Japanese–Korean 100-word Swadesh list . Some linguists concerned with

150-480: A core vowel. The IPA symbol ⟨ ◌͈ ⟩ ( U+0348 ◌͈ COMBINING DOUBLE VERTICAL LINE BELOW ) is used to denote the tensed consonants /p͈/, /t͈/, /k͈/, /t͡ɕ͈/, /s͈/ . Its official use in the extensions to the IPA is for "strong" articulation, but is used in the literature for faucalized voice . The Korean consonants also have elements of stiff voice , but it is not yet known how typical this

200-640: A delay of two days. The Director General of KCNA is Kim Chang-gwang. KCNA has a sports team in the annual Paektusan Prize Games of Civil Servants. KCNA articles generally revolve on several specific themes: KCNA employs language, such as "traitors", "warmongers" or "human scum", for governments (especially those of South Korea and the United States), organizations and individuals who are deemed characteristic of those terms. In contrast, Kim Jong Un, Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung are credited for their "outstanding wisdom", "unique abilities" or "noble virtue". As

250-612: A denuclearized Korea and for a slowdown of tensions between the two Koreas, has for the first time, mentioned the rising light industries of the DPRK, given as a reason for an upcoming upsurge in the national economy in the new year and for the achievement of the Kangsong Taeguk national mission. The 2012 joint editorial edition, the first under Kim Jong Un's leadership, started with a great tribute to Kim Jong Il and aside from recurring calls for improving inter-Korean relations and for

300-557: A few diplomats and aid workers were allowed into the country to assess the disaster. The cause and nature of the accident have been the subject of considerable speculation, with several different accounts being reported. KCNA , the state news service, apparently confirmed the Xinhua report by stating the incident was "due to the electrical contact caused by carelessness during the shunting of wagons loaded with ammonium-nitrate fertilizer". North Korean leader Kim Jong-il passed through

350-545: A later founder effect diminished the internal variety of both language families. Since the establishment of two independent governments, North–South differences have developed in standard Korean, including variations in pronunciation and vocabulary chosen. However, these minor differences can be found in any of the Korean dialects , which are still largely mutually intelligible . The Chinese language , written with Chinese characters and read with Sino-Xenic pronunciations ,

400-519: A news service in accordance with the idea and intention of the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung, establish Juche firmly in its work and fully embody the Party spirit, the working class spirit and the spirit of serving the people. It must pay serious attention to each word, to each dot of the writings it releases because they express the standpoint of our Party and the Government of our Republic. Under

450-574: A possible relationship.) Hudson & Robbeets (2020) suggested that there are traces of a pre- Nivkh substratum in Korean. According to the hypothesis, ancestral varieties of Nivkh (also known as Amuric ) were once distributed on the Korean Peninsula before the arrival of Koreanic speakers. Korean syllable structure is (C)(G)V(C), consisting of an optional onset consonant, glide /j, w, ɰ/ and final coda /p, t, k, m, n, ŋ, l/ surrounding

500-599: A tradition since 1996, KCNA, along with the three main state run newspapers in North Korea, publishes a joint New Year editorial that outlines the country's policies for the year. The editorials usually offer praise for the Songun policy , the government and leadership, and encourage the growth of the nation. They are also critical of the policies of South Korea, Japan, the United States and Western governments towards

550-619: Is also generated by longstanding alliances, military involvement, and diplomacy, such as between South Korea–United States and China–North Korea since the end of World War II and the Korean War . Along with other languages such as Chinese and Arabic , Korean is ranked at the top difficulty level for English speakers by the United States Department of Defense . Modern Korean descends from Middle Korean , which in turn descends from Old Korean , which descends from

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600-656: Is an agglutinative language . The Korean language is traditionally considered to have nine parts of speech . Modifiers generally precede the modified words, and in the case of verb modifiers, can be serially appended. The sentence structure or basic form of a Korean sentence is subject–object–verb (SOV), but the verb is the only required and immovable element and word order is highly flexible, as in many other agglutinative languages. Question 가게에 gage-e store- LOC 가셨어요? ga-syeo-sseo-yo go- HON . PAST - CONJ - POL 가게에 가셨어요? gage-e ga-syeo-sseo-yo store-LOC go-HON.PAST-CONJ-POL 'Did [you] go to

650-511: Is closer to a near-open central vowel ( [ɐ] ), though ⟨a⟩ is still used for tradition. Grammatical morphemes may change shape depending on the preceding sounds. Examples include -eun/-neun ( -은/-는 ) and -i/-ga ( -이/-가 ). Sometimes sounds may be inserted instead. Examples include -eul/-reul ( -을/-를 ), -euro/-ro ( -으로/-로 ), -eseo/-seo ( -에서/-서 ), -ideunji/-deunji ( -이든지/-든지 ) and -iya/-ya ( -이야/-야 ). Some verbs may also change shape morphophonemically. Korean

700-399: Is mainly reserved for specific circumstances such as newspapers, scholarly papers and disambiguation. Today Hanja is largely unused in everyday life but is still important for historical and linguistic studies. The Korean names for the language are based on the names for Korea used in both South Korea and North Korea. The English word "Korean" is derived from Goryeo , which is thought to be

750-399: Is of faucalized consonants. They are produced with a partially constricted glottis and additional subglottal pressure in addition to tense vocal tract walls, laryngeal lowering, or other expansion of the larynx. /s/ is aspirated [sʰ] and becomes an alveolo-palatal [ɕʰ] before [j] or [i] for most speakers (but see North–South differences in the Korean language ). This occurs with

800-544: Is the native language for about 81 million people, mostly of Korean descent. It is the national language of both North Korea and South Korea . Beyond Korea, the language is recognized as a minority language in parts of China , namely Jilin , and specifically Yanbian Prefecture , and Changbai County . It is also spoken by Sakhalin Koreans in parts of Sakhalin , the Russian island just north of Japan, and by

850-747: Is well attested in Western Old Japanese and Northern Ryukyuan languages , in Eastern Old Japanese it only occurs in compounds, and it is only present in three dialects of the Southern Ryukyuan language group . Also, the doublet wo meaning "hemp" is attested in Western Old Japanese and Southern Ryukyuan languages. It is thus plausible to assume a borrowed term. (See Classification of the Japonic languages or Comparison of Japanese and Korean for further details on

900-521: The Koryo-saram in parts of Central Asia . The language has a few extinct relatives which—along with the Jeju language (Jejuan) of Jeju Island and Korean itself—form the compact Koreanic language family . Even so, Jejuan and Korean are not mutually intelligible . The linguistic homeland of Korean is suggested to be somewhere in contemporary Manchuria . The hierarchy of the society from which

950-527: The yangban aristocracy, who looked down upon it too easy to learn. However, it gained widespread use among the common class and was widely used to print popular novels which were enjoyed by the common class. Since few people could understand official documents written in classical Chinese, Korean kings sometimes released public notices entirely written in Hangul as early as the 16th century for all Korean classes, including uneducated peasants and slaves. By

1000-736: The Associated Press , the latter of which has a permanent bureau in Pyongyang. KCNA journalists have trained abroad with the BBC and Reuters. KCNA is a member of Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies since 1982. The agency employs 800 people. According to its website, KCNA "speaks for the Workers' Party of Korea and the DPRK government". The agency has been described as the "official organ." In June 1964 on one of his first official activities, Kim Jong Il visited KCNA headquarters and said

1050-589: The Proto-Koreanic language , which is generally suggested to have its linguistic homeland somewhere in Manchuria . Whitman (2012) suggests that the proto-Koreans, already present in northern Korea, expanded into the southern part of the Korean Peninsula at around 300 BC and coexisted with the descendants of the Japonic Mumun cultivators (or assimilated them). Both had influence on each other and

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1100-568: The Three Kingdoms of Korea (not the ancient confederacies in the southern Korean Peninsula), while " -eo " and " -mal " mean "language" and "speech", respectively. Korean is also simply referred to as guk-eo , literally "national language". This name is based on the same Han characters ( 國語 "nation" + "language") that are also used in Taiwan and Japan to refer to their respective national languages. In North Korea and China ,

1150-870: The Workers' Party of Korea 's Propaganda and Agitation Department . In December 1996, KCNA began publishing its news articles on the Internet with its web server located in Japan . Since October 2010, stories have been published on a new site, controlled from Pyongyang , and output has been significantly increased to include world stories with no specific link to North Korea as well as news from countries that have strong DPRK ties. In addition to Korean , KCNA releases news translated into English , Russian , Chinese , Japanese , and Spanish . Access to its website, along with other North Korean news sites, has been blocked by South Korea since 2004 and can be accessed only through

1200-889: The 17th century, the yangban had exchanged Hangul letters with slaves, which suggests a high literacy rate of Hangul during the Joseon era. In the context of growing Korean nationalism in the 19th century, the Gabo Reform of 1894 abolished the Confucian examinations and decreed that government documents would be issued in Hangul instead of literary Chinese. Some newspapers were published entirely in Hangul, but other publications used Korean mixed script , with Hanja for Sino-Korean vocabulary and Hangul for other elements. North Korea abolished Hanja in writing in 1949, but continues to teach them in schools. Their usage in South Korea

1250-408: The 20th century. The script uses 24 basic letters ( jamo ) and 27 complex letters formed from the basic ones. When first recorded in historical texts, Korean was only a spoken language . Since the turn of the 21st century, aspects of Korean culture have spread to other countries through globalization and cultural exports . As such, interest in Korean language acquisition (as a foreign language )

1300-461: The accident may have been a miscommunication related to the changes in train timetables due to Kim Jong-il's itinerary. Other observers have suggested that the poor state of North Korea's railway system may have contributed to the disaster. It accounts for about 90% of freight transport; a lack of fuel forces most vehicles off roads. The railway, built by the Japanese during their occupation of

1350-560: The agency should be "propagating the revolutionary ideology of the leader ( Kim Il Sung ) widely throughout the world." However, the agency is also said to offer a unique insight into the North Korean "mentality." A talk given to officials at KCNA on June 12, 1964, outlines the function of the news agency: In order to become a powerful ideological weapon of our Party, the Korean Central News Agency must provide

1400-455: The beginnings of words. /l/ becomes alveolar flap [ɾ] between vowels, and [l] or [ɭ] at the end of a syllable or next to another /l/ . A written syllable-final ' ㄹ ', when followed by a vowel or a glide ( i.e. , when the next character starts with ' ㅇ '), migrates to the next syllable and thus becomes [ɾ] . Traditionally, /l/ was disallowed at the beginning of a word. It disappeared before [j] , and otherwise became /n/ . However,

1450-611: The border in China. (Satellite pictures published by the BBC purported to show widespread damage in the town, but these were later retracted; they actually show Baghdad from an earlier date, and the strong black-white contrast was misinterpreted. ) The Red Cross reported that 1,850 houses and buildings had been destroyed and another 6,350 had been damaged. On 23 April 2004, the United Nations received an appeal for international aid from North Korea's government. The following day,

1500-525: The country. On January 1, 2006, the agency sent out a joint-editorial from North Korea's state newspapers calling for the withdrawal of American troops from South Korea . While annual January 1 editorials are a tradition among the papers, that year's brought attention from Western media outlets , by calling for a "nationwide campaign for driving out the U.S. troops". The editorial made several references to Korean reunification . The 2009 editorial received similar attention, as criticism of United States policy

1550-399: The first Korean dynasty known to Western nations. Korean people in the former USSR refer to themselves as Koryo-saram or Koryo-in (literally, " Koryo/Goryeo persons"), and call the language Koryo-mal' . Some older English sources also use the spelling "Corea" to refer to the nation, and its inflected form for the language, culture and people, "Korea" becoming more popular in

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1600-546: The first New Year speech on television in 19 years. Following the purge and execution of Jang Song-thaek , KCNA conducted its largest censorship operation on its webpage. Some 35,000 articles of Korean-language original reporting were deleted. Counting translations, a total of 100,000 articles were removed. Additionally, some articles were edited to omit Jang's name. Not all of the deleted articles mentioned Jang directly. Korean language Korean ( South Korean : 한국어 , Hanguk-eo ; North Korean : 조선어 , Chosŏnŏ )

1650-525: The fulfillment of the October 4 Declaration of 2007, also called on the whole nation to give priority to do Kim Jong Il's 2012 mission of Strong and Prosperous Nation , continue his and his father Kim Il Sung's legacies to the entire country and the socialist cause, and to build up and encourage the various sectors that compose the nation to become contributors to national progress in all areas at all costs. This practice ended in 2013 when Kim Jong Un delivered

1700-920: The government's authorization. As well as serving as a news agency, it also produces summaries of world news to North Korean officials and publishes the Korean Central Yearbook  [ ko ] . It is also alleged to conduct clandestine intelligence collection. Based in the capital Pyongyang , at 1 Potonggang-dong, Potonggang District , KCNA has bureaus in several municipalities. KCNA also has press exchange agreements with around 46 foreign news agencies, including South Korea 's Yonhap . Its closest partners, however, are TASS and Xinhua News Agency . KCNA has correspondents and bureaus in six countries, including Russia and China . The correspondents are located in Russia, China, Cuba , Iran , India , and Egypt . KCNA also collaborates with Reuters and

1750-479: The inflow of western loanwords changed the trend, and now word-initial /l/ (mostly from English loanwords) are pronounced as a free variation of either [ɾ] or [l] . All obstruents (plosives, affricates, fricatives) at the end of a word are pronounced with no audible release , [p̚, t̚, k̚] . Plosive sounds /p, t, k/ become nasals [m, n, ŋ] before nasal sounds. Hangul spelling does not reflect these assimilatory pronunciation rules, but rather maintains

1800-408: The issue between Japanese and Korean, including Alexander Vovin, have argued that the indicated similarities are not due to any genetic relationship , but rather to a sprachbund effect and heavy borrowing, especially from Ancient Korean into Western Old Japanese . A good example might be Middle Korean sàm and Japanese asá , meaning " hemp ". This word seems to be a cognate, but although it

1850-578: The language is most often called Joseon-mal , or more formally, Joseon-o . This is taken from the North Korean name for Korea (Joseon), a name retained from the Joseon dynasty until the proclamation of the Korean Empire , which in turn was annexed by the Empire of Japan . In mainland China , following the establishment of diplomatic relations with South Korea in 1992, the term Cháoxiǎnyǔ or

1900-472: The language originates deeply influences the language, leading to a system of speech levels and honorifics indicative of the formality of any given situation. Modern Korean is written in the Korean script ( 한글 ; Hangeul in South Korea, 조선글 ; Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea), a system developed during the 15th century for that purpose, although it did not become the primary script until

1950-455: The late 1800s. In South Korea the Korean language is referred to by many names including hanguk-eo ("Korean language"), hanguk-mal ("Korean speech") and uri-mal ("our language"); " hanguk " is taken from the name of the Korean Empire ( 대한제국 ; 大韓帝國 ; Daehan Jeguk ). The " han " ( 韓 ) in Hanguk and Daehan Jeguk is derived from Samhan , in reference to

2000-515: The population was illiterate. In the 15th century King Sejong the Great personally developed an alphabetic featural writing system , known today as Hangul , to promote literacy among the common people. Introduced in the document Hunminjeongeum , it was called eonmun ('colloquial script') and quickly spread nationwide to increase literacy in Korea. The Korean alphabet was denounced by

2050-475: The principle and guideline on the work of ideological propaganda and agitation put by the country's ruling party, the Workers' Party of Korea, the agency generally reports only good news about the country that is intended to encourage its people and project a positive image abroad. Nonetheless, it has on occasion acknowledged food shortages in the country. The Ryongchon disaster was also reported in April 2004, after

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2100-577: The region, but little information has been made public by the North Korean government. Shortly after the accident, the North Korean government cut telephone lines to the outside world. As of 2024, it remains the second-deadliest rail accident in North Korea, and the third-deadliest in Korean history, being surpassed by the Gupo Mugunghwa-Ho Derailment (South Korea) and the Dancheon train disaster (North Korea). The Red Cross

2150-669: The short form Cháoyǔ has normally been used to refer to the standard language of North Korea and Yanbian , whereas Hánguóyǔ or the short form Hányǔ is used to refer to the standard language of South Korea. Korean is a member of the Koreanic family along with the Jeju language . Some linguists have included it in the Altaic family, but the core Altaic proposal itself has lost most of its prior support. The Khitan language has several vocabulary items similar to Korean that are not found in other Mongolian or Tungusic languages, suggesting

2200-401: The station several hours before the explosion as he returned from a meeting in China. It was suggested that the explosion might have been an assassination attempt, but South Korean intelligence services believed that it was an accident. One theory is that one of the trains involved was carrying fuel from China. If the incident did involve a train collision, it has been suggested that the cause of

2250-417: The store?' Response 예/네. ye/ne AFF Ryongchon disaster The disaster occurred when flammable cargo exploded at Ryongchon Station at around 13:00 local time (04:00 GMT). The news was released by South Korean media outlets, which reported that up to 3,000 people had been killed or injured in the blast and subsequent fires. The North Korean government declared a state of emergency in

2300-441: The tense fricative and all the affricates as well. At the end of a syllable, /s/ changes to /t/ (example: beoseot ( 버섯 ) 'mushroom'). /h/ may become a bilabial [ɸ] before [o] or [u] , a palatal [ç] before [j] or [i] , a velar [x] before [ɯ] , a voiced [ɦ] between voiced sounds, and a [h] elsewhere. /p, t, t͡ɕ, k/ become voiced [b, d, d͡ʑ, ɡ] between voiced sounds. /m, n/ frequently denasalize at

2350-464: The underlying, partly historical morphology . Given this, it is sometimes hard to tell which actual phonemes are present in a certain word. The traditional prohibition of word-initial /ɾ/ became a morphological rule called "initial law" ( 두음법칙 ) in the pronunciation standards of South Korea, which pertains to Sino-Korean vocabulary. Such words retain their word-initial /ɾ/ in the pronunciation standards of North Korea. For example, ^NOTE ㅏ

2400-409: Was absent, and the admission of severe economic problems in the country. The editorial also made reference to denuclearisation on the Korean peninsula , in what analysts claimed was a "hopeful" sign. This was echoed again in its 2010 editorial, which called for an end to hostilities with the United States and a nuclear free Korean Peninsula . The 2011 joint editorial edition, aside from its calls for

2450-440: Was allowed into the area, in an unusual concession from the North Korean authorities, becoming the only outside agency to see the disaster area. According to the initial agency report, 160 people were killed and 1,300 were injured in the disaster. However, official casualty reports the following day listed 54 deaths and 1,249 injuries. A wide area was reported to have been affected, with some airborne debris reportedly falling across

2500-487: Was first introduced to Korea in the 1st century BC, and remained the medium of formal writing and government until the late 19th century. Korean scholars adapted Chinese characters (known in Korean as Hanja ) to write their own language, creating scripts known as idu , hyangchal , gugyeol , and gakpil. These systems were cumbersome, due to the fundamental disparities between the Korean and Chinese languages, and accessible only to those educated in classical Chinese. Most of

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