Quite some time ago I recall seeing a letter in one of our national dailies from a reader suggesting that Koreans need to change their language if they really want to achieve "true equality across age and gender." Although the writer of the letter was an expat, he backed up his argument with quotes and examples from Koreans, probably to show that he was not simply expressing his own Western cultural prejudices.

He mentioned a JoongAng Daily article in which Choi Seong-hwa complained about the Korean subtitles on such American TV shows as "Ally McBeal" because the dialogue was translated "so that the male characters speak to the women casually, while the women use honorific expressions to men." He also related an anecdote about a middle school girl who was harassed because she refused to use honorifics on students in higher grades, and he added that Koreans could learn a lesson from American feminists, who introduced the use of "Ms." as a title for women instead of "Miss" or "Mrs."

I don't mean to pick on the fellow who wrote the letter. I'm just using it as a jumping-off point because it seems to be representative of complaints I've heard over the years about the different levels of speech in the Korean language. In my experience, however, when Koreans make such complaints, it is not so much because of a feeling of inequality as because they sometimes find it difficult to be sure which forms are appropriate to use in a given situation or because they feel that someone else has slighted them by addressing them in forms that are too low or too familiar. When differences in speech levels are berated as reflecting "inequality" or "undemocratic attitudes," it is almost invariably a nonnative speaker of Korean who is doing the complaining. That is why I can't help wondering whether the examples the writer gave were not generated in one of those conversation classes where the teacher poses leading questions to get the students to talk.

It's a very common misconception that English is a "democratic" language whereas languages like Korean or Japanese oppress their speakers by forcing them to adhere in their speech to undemocratic habits that need to be obliterated. Many years ago in Daegu I heard an American acquaintance of mine address a primary school student very formally, saying "Sillyehamnida—malsseum jom mutgesseumnida" in order to ask directions. The student was obviously embarrassed but answered as best he could and went on his way.

When I asked my friend why he had used such high forms, he said, almost indignantly: "I refuse to use low forms on anyone. It's just not democratic, so I address everybody the same, the way we do in English."

"But you wouldn't go up to a child in an English-speaking country and say, 'Excuse me, Sir, but might I bother you for directions?'" I pointed out.

"It's not the same thing at all," he stubbornly objected. "In Korean it's built right into the verbs."

Well, that's true enough. It is indeed "built right into the verbs" in Korean, while in English such differences are shown by choosing different vocabulary and different turns of phrase. (Actually, Korean complicates matters by sometimes using different vocabulary as well as different verb forms.) Nevertheless, the fact remains that even in English, we don't speak to our bosses, our parents, or our teachers the same way we speak to our army buddy or the little kid from next door. And if you've ever been through hazing in school, you'll remember that you weren't supposed to mouth off to upperclassmen the way you could with your fellow freshmen.

Men and women don't talk the same in either language, either. Listen to the conversations among the male and female workers in a Korean office, and you'll hear the women using the politer "-yo" forms a lot more than the men. That explains why the subtitles in "Ally McBeal" are translated the way they are: they reflect the prevailing practice in an equivalent Korean office. The fact that women speak differently from men does not make them subservient or inferior to men. By the same token, having the National Academy of the Korean Language declare that from this day forth women shall all have to speak just like men wouldn't guarantee social equality across gender lines, either.

Language changes to suit the circumstances in which it is used, and the last century has seen tremendous changes in the Korean language, including the complete disappearance of the type of language that was used by slaves and indentured servants to their masters and of the extremely formal levels of speech used in the royal households and government offices of the Joseon Dynasty.

The point of all this is twofold: First, you can't force linguistic change in order to bring about changes in society, but when society changes, then language always follows appropriately. Second, just because language reflects differences in age and gender, that doesn't make it undemocratic.

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Korean term used:

실례합니다. 말씀 좀 묻겠습니다.

'Excuse me. I'd like to ask you something.'

In our supposedly enlightened 21st century, with all the international exchange that goes on and the amount of effort and money spent on learning other languages, you'd think that the attitudes illustrated by the following story would have long since disappeared. Well, they haven't. Just a couple of evenings ago, I overheard a small group of Korean teachers from a local hagwon (a private institute of learning, sometimes referred to as a "cram school" in English) arguing about which language was richer and more expressive, Korean or English. Years ago I used to hear such discussions quite often and sometimes even foolishly became involved in them myself, but it had been quite a while since my last such experience, so I had been living under the delusion that things had improved.

That got me to thinking it would be a good topic to write about, but then, why reinvent the wheel? So I dug out an old newspaper column of mine from the summer of 1991 that pretty much says what needs to be said, and I'm recycling it here. (Don't be surprised if I do this from time to time, when it seems appropriate.)

Except for certain obvious embellishments added for humor's sake, the story is a true-to-life synthesis of snippets of real conversations, including a reference to a violent incident that actually happened in the Seoul subway system that summer, all put together into one "epic drama" I call "The Battle of the Colors."

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It started off as a quiet, pleasant evening, just a few of us sitting around a table in one of our local pubs, chatting over beer about our upcoming summer vacations. The consensus was that nobody wanted to spend a week stuck in traffic on some expressway, so we all decided we'd just stay in Seoul and spend the week getting together for some more beer.

Just as we were about to order our second round, in walked a casual acquaintance of ours, a type-A personality we call Andy the Absolutist, with one of his coworkers, Suncheol the Superior, in tow.

"Mind if we join you?" asked Andy rhetorically as he pulled up a couple of chairs and the two of them sat down.

"Please, have a seat," I answered equally rhetorically, since they were already ensconced and motioning to the waiter to bring two more cold drafts.

We knew from experience that, whenever these two met, it was hard to get a word in endwise, much less edgewise, but at least before this time the conversation had always remained civilized.

"Boy, talk about your xenophobia and nationalism taken to extremes," Andy said, slurping the head off his beer.

"What do you mean?" slurped Suncheol.

"Surely you heard about the kid who was beaten to death in a subway station for speaking English," Andy explained.

"Oh, that. Yeah. It's terrible the way people resort to violence to express their opinions these days. They should have just chided the fellow, you know, told him that as a Korean he should be speaking Korean instead of getting his tongue all curled up with English."

"Hey, wait a second. What's wrong with speaking English? You're speaking English right now." Andy sounded a little testy.

"That's just because your Korean's so lousy. Whenever possible, I always prefer speaking Korean. It just sounds better. It's, dare I say, superior." Suncheol chugged the rest of his beer as if to emphasize his point.

"Superior?" Andy's voice was getting louder. He downed the rest of his beer, too, and held up his mug for more. "What's so superior about it?"

"Well, for one thing, it's a richer language. We have a richer vocabulary for talking about many things." Suncheol spoke with calm self-assurance.

"Oh, yeah? Like what, for instance?" Andy was squinting at Suncheol, and the glint of daggers emerged from his eyes.

"Like colors. Take the color red, for example. In English you have to get along with red and reddish, while we have an abundance of words like bukda, ppalgata, bulgeuseureumhada . . ." Suncheol was counting on his fingers as he spoke.

"Yeah? Well, we've got scarlet, crimson, vermilion . . ." Andy inserted.

But Suncheol went on as if he hadn't been interrupted. "And then there's the color of the peppers when they're just ripening from green to red; we call that bulgeujukjukhada. Then there's bulgeurehada and bulgeudengdenghada. Do you have names for those colors?" Suncheol challenged.

Andy seemed at a loss to match those specific colors, so he retorted with "Come off it. You guys can't even tell the difference between blue and green!"

Suncheol tilted his head to one side. "It's true that the general term pureuda does cover both those colors, but then we can always distinguish them by using namsaek or noksaek. In English, you don't enjoy the convenience of the general term."

Andy looked flustered. You could see his mind racing through its index of colors for a comeback. "Oh, yes we do," he said a bit shakily. "There's lavender."

"Lavender?" said a whole chorus of voices in unison.

Andy looked around at our quizzical eyes staring at him in disbelief. He sounded defensive. "You know, like in the song: Lavender's blue, dilly dilly, lavender's green."

It was painfully obvious that Andy wasn't going to be able to handle this alone. An Australian voice at the other end of the table suggested: "Try turquoise, Andy. Turquoise can be blue or green."

Soon most of the English speakers were feeding Andy colors to use as ammunition. The other Korean customers in the place piped in with support for Suncheol. I chose to remain aloof and just watch. The landlord and the waiter stood with mouths agape, watching the words flying back and forth across the room.

In the ensuing melee, I thought I heard someone say, "You'll be charcoal and indigo all over when I'm through with you!" I just barely missed being hit by a "buyeota" and a loud "geomyangbit" as they zoomed by my head. The waiter had to duck to keep from being knocked out cold by "heliotrope," and a stentorphonic "fuchsia" hit the landlord square in the face, leaving him with a purplish bruise on his nose. Finally, the place fell silent as everybody suddenly ran out of colors.

Andy fell back in his chair, sweat pouring from beneath his dishwater-blond hair. I noted that, from exhaustion, Sucheol's complexion had turned a color no one had thought to use; I raised my hand sheepishly and offered, "nurikkirihada?"

"Traitor!" shouted the English speakers, descending on me en masse.

After the Korean customers pulled them off me, we managed to get Andy and Suncheol to sign a truce stating that all languages were created equal. But who knows how long that will last.