Is Korean diverging into two languages?, part 2

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To make sense of the story that follows, one must understand that the Korean word "agassi 아가씨" used to refer to a young lady from the upper class, but now in North Korea means “slave of feudal society” and has a very negative connotation there.

"Hidden meaning of Korean term 'agassi' leads to murder", by Choi Jae-hee, The Korea Herald (5/3/22)

Because the linguistic psychology that lies behind the tragic crime recounted in this article is intricate and subtle, it is necessary to recount it at some length:

An error in a mobile translation application recently prompted a 35-year-old Chinese man in Jeongeup, North Jeolla Province, to murder a Korean resident.

On Sunday, the Jeonju District Court delivered a 20-year prison term to the foreigner charged with killing his female coworker’s Korean husband, according to court officials. 

It was the Korean term “agassi” that triggered a fistfight between the two men of different nationalities, which eventually turned deadly. 

On Sept. 6 last year, at around 10:00 p.m., the Chinese national turned on the Chinese-to-Korean mobile translation app while drinking with the couple and said, “Let’s hang out with sister (his female coworker) again some other time,” in his mother tongue. 

Both Koreans and Chinese use familial titles for people older than them. In Korean, when addressing women, there is the title for “older sister”which has two versions based on gender. Men would address older women as “noona,” while women would address older women as “unnie.” When addressing men, there are two terms for “older brother.” Women would address older men as “oppa,” while men would address older men as “hyung.” 

In Chinese, the terms include “jiejie” for females and “gege” for males.
But as soon as the mobile app translated the Chinese term “jiejie” into “agassi” instead of “noona,” the husband got outraged and started to punch the Chinese man in the face several times.

To avenge the humiliation he received in front of his coworker, the foreign national stabbed the Korean man to death near the victim’s house at around 2:00 a.m. the next day. The Korean man was taken to a hospital but died a short time later. The murderer turned himself in to police. 

So what’s wrong with “agassi”?

According to the dictionary of standard South Korean language, the term “agassi” has three definitions. 

First, it refers to a young, unmarried woman. In general, single women in their late 20s or 30s are called agassi in Korea. 

The term is also used to describe a husband’s younger sister, regardless of her marital status. 

Meanwhile, in traditional hierarchical Korean society, it indicates a single woman of noble blood. 

By definition, it seems appropriate to use the term to refer to noble young ladies or to a man’s female siblings. But in some cases, it represents a group of women working for clubs, bars, room salons and other nightlife establishments.

For instance, when you’re having a drink with friends at a bar, the term is likely to refer to the female bar hostess or women offering sexual services.

This explains why the Korean victim felt insulted when the murderer called his wife “sister” in Chinese, which was translated into “agassi” by the mobile translation app.

Although the article goes into considerable detail concerning the meaning of the contested word "agassi", it leaves a lot of crucial aspects of the case unexplained.  For example, it doesn't mention North Korea at all, yet the negative connotations of "agassi" developed in North Korea.  How did the negative connotations of the term get involved in this altercation that took place in South Korea?  Was the Korean victim from North Korea?  If not, why would he instantaneously react so violently when he heard it being applied by the translation software to his wife?  Or are some North Korean usages seeping into South Korean? 

 

Selected readings

[Thanks to Mark Swofford]



27 Comments

  1. Derek Lin said,

    May 4, 2022 @ 7:50 am

    Here in Singapore, 小姐 is used pretty much to mean "Miss" as in 李小姐 (Miss Lee) or 那位小姐 (that young lady over there). I've never been to China, but I hear it's a deadly insult over there on the other side of the pond, so to speak, akin to "hostess/woman offering sexual services". I wonder if anyone can speak further to the differences in nuance, if any, between the Korean and Chinese examples. To the best of my knowledge, the Japanese お嬢さん, while sometimes used patronisingly, is not at the level of a deadly insult (yet).

  2. Benjamin Orsatti said,

    May 4, 2022 @ 7:52 am

    Oh, I'm not so sure we can pin this one on technology. Don't get me wrong — AI is a scourge on humanity that should be given no quarter, but it didn't kill this guy. And neither did "language", for you Chomskians out there.

    35-year Old Chinese guy working in Korea. His Korean "work wife" invites him over to her place for drinks. At least, that's what he thinks — he's not quite "conversational" with the ol' hangugo just yet. So, he shows up, but who greets him at the door? — Work wife's hubby! Oh, joy! How do you say "three is a crowd" in Korean? Well, might as well get started with the heavy drinking — what could possibly go wrong? Let's pick up the article here:


    On Sept. 6 last year, at around 10:00 p.m., the Chinese national turned on the Chinese-to-Korean mobile translation app while drinking with the couple and said, “Let’s hang out with sister (his female coworker) again some other time,” in his mother tongue.

    That don't wash. Here's my guess — what he said into the translation app in Chinese was EXACTLY what came out of the translation app in Korean (pace Pierce, Husserl, Eco). It's 10:00 at night, this guy's been drinking for hours, and there's no sign that hubby is at all inclined to wander away and go put on horns. So, he decides to throw down the verbal gantlet, drop the mic, what have you, but doesn't quite make it out of the chair before his face finds itself participating in a taekwondo exhibition.


    To avenge the humiliation he received in front of his [*AHEM*] coworker [*AHEM*], the foreign national stabbed the Korean man to death near the victim’s house at around 2:00 a.m. the next day. The Korean man was taken to a hospital but died a short time later. The murderer turned himself in to police.

    Yep. Went home, washed my face, changed my clothes, had some ginseng tea, grabbed my trusty ginsu, and got to work with the premeditated murder.

    That dog don't bark. Think of every time you've been in a "situation", and you hear something that sounds like it could be an insult, but you're not sure (say, for example, YOU'RE TALKING THROUGH A TRANSLATION APP!). Do you launch in immediately with the fisticuffs? No, of course not. Every single time, without fail, you will respond (even rhetorically) with something like, "What did you just say"?" / "What did you say to me?" / "I know you didn't just [etc.]".

    There IS a story here, but the reporter just copied the pleadings from the criminal docket, and you won't find it there. I'll bet the 20 years was a plea deal that depended on the "legal fiction" of a "translation malfunction"?

    Linguists — prove me wrong.

  3. GH said,

    May 4, 2022 @ 8:14 am

    @Victor Mair, are you certain that the North Korean sense of "agassi" is involved here? The article makes it sound more like the issue is that the word is sometimes used (in South Korean) as a euphemism for sex workers, and was taken in this sense. (Cf. perhaps "madam" as a honorific and to refer to a female brothel-keeper.) It seems to me that this could easily be a completely independent development based merely on the sense of a young unmarried woman.

    @Benjamin Orsatti:
    The court would almost certainly have had access to the translation app log, or could reconstruct it, so they would know what he had said in Chinese (as reported in English translation in the article), and would presumably be able to judge whether it was offensive in the original language. In any case, it's tangential to the case itself.

  4. Jonathan Smith said,

    May 4, 2022 @ 10:27 am

    Yes, it seems to be the South Korean implications that were unwelcome… if instead misunderstood by husband as 'slave of feudal society', perhaps all are alive and well…

    re: Benjamin Orsatti's reconstruction — interesting but speculative :D it turns out the woman involved was Chinese, they were out drinking with Chinese friends in a situation where the (later murdered) husband was the single Korean present… etc.

  5. Scott P. said,

    May 4, 2022 @ 10:50 am

    I guess this means Andre Agassi shouldn't plan any trips to North Korea in the near future?

  6. Victor Mair said,

    May 4, 2022 @ 1:10 pm

    From Bill H:

    The example of Korean 아가씨 is hilarious. I recently bought a novel Làm đĩ by the Vietnamese author Vũ Trọng Phụng. The novel is said to be one of his best (and happened to be in stock). I bought it based on the author's reputation, not the title, which according to a V-E dictionary is a term for a young niece or some such.

    The problem is the verb Làm (do, be, act as), which here I thought meant "being (in the sense of Chinese 当) someone's niece." In fact, the composite term means "slut." I hope I didn't spend $15 on pornography. So far, it appears to be a sociological critique of attitudes toward gender.

    As for the Korean language bifurcating, you will recall [deleted]'s complaint decades ago that this was already well on the way. I'm finishing the fourth volume of a Korean novel about a (hypothetical) Sino-Korean war. Many passages where NK persons are speaking are spelled in hangul as they would be said. The pronunciation and grammar differences are truly striking.

  7. Julie S said,

    May 4, 2022 @ 4:13 pm

    Wow, so many examples above of benign words for "woman" and "sister" morphing into pejoratives. How many examples are there of "man", "sir", or "brother" becoming an insult?

  8. KWillets said,

    May 4, 2022 @ 6:45 pm

    A Yonhap article on the case states that the victim understood the term to mean "noraebang waitress" ("노래방 접대부"), which is more consistent with ROK usage in that context, ie a bar hostess.

  9. David Morris said,

    May 4, 2022 @ 9:38 pm

    I experimented with six online translators. They translated 姐姐 as 누나 (nu-na – older sister (of male)), 여동생 (yeo-dong-saeng – younger sister), 언니 (eon-ni – older sister (of female) or 자매의 (ja-mae-eui – sister (which is less used in Korean)).

    The 2016 Korean movie 아가씨 was rendered as The handmaiden in English, but that was set during the colonial period, probably before the contested meaning developed.

  10. Jean-Sébastien Girard said,

    May 4, 2022 @ 9:42 pm

    >> Wow, so many examples above of benign words for "woman" and "sister" morphing into pejoratives. How many examples are there of "man", "sir", or "brother" becoming an insult?

    There's the French beauf (literally a shortened form of "brother in law") and the Quebec French mononcle (originally a casual word for "uncle").

  11. Andreas Johansson said,

    May 5, 2022 @ 12:48 am

    @Julie S:

    The ancestor of "churl" appear to've meant simply "(grown) man" in Common Germanic. By the time it's attested in Old English, it meant a man who is neither a noble nor a thrall.

    (The second part of the change exemplifies a common pattern were words for "common man" take on negative connotations: other English examples include "villain" and "boor".)

    The Swedish cognate karl is a slightly archaic or rustic word for "man, guy, bloke". Thanks to Charlemagne, there are a number of Slavic derivatives meaning "king".

  12. GH said,

    May 5, 2022 @ 1:00 am

    There's also churl, knave, chav, boy (as a racist term), bro in the sense glossed by Wiktionary as "fratboy (or someone that espouses the fraternity bro culture)", and occasionally mister (Wiktionary: "Use of the term, enunciated with extra emphasis, may express scorn").

    However, I don't perceive that the insulting force of most of these (bro excepted) is gendered to the same extent as with disparaging words for women, but has more to do with class or ethnicity. Perhaps that is a consequence of the cultural history of male as the "default gender."

    Then you have nice guy and white knight, which have recently developed pejorative slang senses that are strongly gendered.

  13. ohwilleke said,

    May 5, 2022 @ 1:36 am

    @Benjamin for the win.

    I think you've got it spot on. The online translation mistake leading to instantaneous violence theory doesn't ring true, while the concealed for appearances subtext theory is precisely the sort of thing that the South Korean criminal justice system might very well do and the scenario proposed is eminently plausible.

  14. Philip Taylor said,

    May 5, 2022 @ 3:17 am

    "How many examples are there of "man", "sir", or "brother" becoming an insult ?" — Can dude not have pejorative overtones, when used in a particular manner ? That is certainly how I have interpreted it when used in American films, television programmes, etc.

  15. Jongseong Park said,

    May 5, 2022 @ 5:27 am

    The use of 아가씨 agassi to mean women working for nightlife establishments, often offering sexual services, has nothing to do with how the meaning of the term evolved in North Korea. It's a completely independent development that took place in the South.

    The term agassi originally referred to an unmarried woman of noble blood, but this meaning is marked as outdated in South Korean dictionaries. Today, it is used for any unmarried woman, at least according to dictionaries.

    But presumably because the term was used to address unmarried women in low status occupations, it developed the pejorative secondary meaning that is central to this story. I have seen this attributed to the popularity of the so-called "hostess films" genre in South Korea in the 1970s. So if you hear agassi in a bar nowadays, this is what is certain to be understood. Compare English "hostess" or "madam" if used in a drinking establishment or a brothel.

    Because of this relatively recent semantic development (you still don't find this in dictionaries that I've checked), you rarely hear agassi used in the neutral sense in everyday Korean these days except in a literary or slightly artificial register. It would be fine for a translation app to suggest in a literary context, but especially in Korean, context is everything.

  16. KeithB said,

    May 5, 2022 @ 8:01 am

    Julie:
    There is also "boy" in relation to African-americans.

  17. Michael Watts said,

    May 5, 2022 @ 10:36 pm

    Here in Singapore, 小姐 is used pretty much to mean "Miss" as in 李小姐 (Miss Lee) or 那位小姐 (that young lady over there). I've never been to China, but I hear it's a deadly insult over there on the other side of the pond, so to speak, akin to "hostess/woman offering sexual services".

    This may be true in parts of China, but it's certainly not the norm there. 小姐 is the female title opposed to 先生 that appears on government forms. And at least in Shanghai, it is polite address to an unfamiliar woman; the 李小姐 example carries over perfectly.

    Compare English "hostess" or "madam" if used in a drinking establishment or a brothel.

    The relevant sense of "madam" that I know is the proprietress of a brothel, and I'm not sure it can be used as a vocative address.

  18. Philip Taylor said,

    May 6, 2022 @ 2:10 am

    "Madam" can most certainly be used as a vocative address — when working front-of-house at my wife's hotel, I address all men as "Sir" and all women as "Madam".

  19. Noel Hunt said,

    May 6, 2022 @ 2:33 am

    The connotations that have attached to 아가씨 agassi in Korean, are no different to those that have attached to お姉さん, oneesan, 'older sister', in Japanese. It is, or was, common to address a young woman thus in a bar or izakaya , but unpleasant associations have become attached to it. Those kinds of businesses in Japan are called 水商売, mizu shoubai, literally, 'water business', and the very nature of those businesses invite misunderstandings as to the nature of what services may be offered or hinted at.

  20. Alexander Browne said,

    May 6, 2022 @ 10:41 am

    Vocative "madam" sounds deliberately archaic, but not offensive, to this American. For what Philip Taylor describes, I'd expect and use "Ma'am" (with /æ/).

  21. Philip Taylor said,

    May 6, 2022 @ 10:49 am

    In British English (and to the best of my belief), "Ma'am" is reserved for addressing Her Gracious Majesty — all lesser female mortals are merely "Madam".

  22. Alexander Browne said,

    May 6, 2022 @ 11:06 am

    Philip Taylor: I could be sure I hear police officers using "Ma'am" to address their superiors in British mystery TV shows with a contemporary UK setting. And is the pronunciation is different? One is /mam/ (or /mæm/ ?) and the other /məm/? But I can't remember which of those is for the Queen.

  23. Philip Taylor said,

    May 6, 2022 @ 12:18 pm

    You are, of course, quite correct Alexander. Female senior officers in the police are indeed portrayed as being addressed as "Ma'am" in television programmes, which probably reflects reality. And I imagine that female senior officers in the armed (and related) forces are similarly addressed. As to the pronunciation, I would say /mɑːm/ but others may well say /mæm/.

  24. Philip Taylor said,

    May 6, 2022 @ 2:31 pm

    I see on consulting my copy of Debrett's Etiquette and Modern Manners that I would be wrong in so doing — Debrett's says :

    The Queen and the Queen Mother should be addressed as ‘Your Majesty’ for the first time and as ‘Ma'am’ (pronounced like ‘am’ not ‘arm’) on subsequent occasions.

  25. Michael Watts said,

    May 6, 2022 @ 5:16 pm

    "Madam" can most certainly be used as a vocative address — when working front-of-house at my wife's hotel, I address all men as "Sir" and all women as "Madam".

    But that isn't what I said. I said I wasn't sure that "madam" in the sense "owner of a brothel" can be used as a vocative address. I don't believe you're giving examples of that sense?

  26. Michael Watts said,

    May 6, 2022 @ 5:17 pm

    /mɑːm/ of course cannot be used in American English to refer to anyone except your mother.

  27. Philip Taylor said,

    May 7, 2022 @ 2:17 am

    You are quite correct, Michael — I incorrectly took "it" to refer to "madam" rather than to « [t]he relevant sense of "madam" ».

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