North Korean

plural North Koreans

1. A citizen or resident of North Korea.

   Average North Koreans had little time for the news except maybe those enjoying cushy jobs in Pyeongyang.

   2006, Richard Saccone, “Becoming Familiar with My New Home”, in Living with the Enemy: Inside North Korea, Hollym, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 42

1. not comparableOf, from, or pertaining to North Korea, the North Korean people or the North Korean language.

   Throughout October the campaign in Korea made excellent progress. Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, was taken on October 19, and day after day MacArthur's forces were on the march.

   1956, Harry S. Truman, chapter 24, in Memoirs of Harry S. Truman: Years of Trial And Hope, volume II, Doubleday & Company, →OCLC, page 371

   1 more example

   In the 1960s the Chinese government decided to standardize the Korean-language education for Korean Chinese and adopted the Joseoneo dialect used in North Korea instead of Hangugeo used in South Korea. As a result, Joseonjok in South Korea speak North Korean–accented Korean, which is easily recognizable in South Korea.

   2013, Melody Chia-Wen Lu, Shin Hyunjoon, “Ethnicizing, Capitalizing, and Nationalizing: South Korea and the Returning Korean Chinese”, in Xiang Biao, Brenda S. A. Yeoh, Mika Toyota, editors, Return: Nationalizing Transnational Mobility in Asia, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, →ISBN, page 165

1. rareThe version of Korean spoken in North Korea.

   As the Orientals gradually worked into combat it became necessary to have a separate controller to speak North Korean and Chinese.

   a. 2011, Walker M[elville] Mahurin, Honest John, Pickle Partners Publishing, published 2016, →ISBN

   3 more examples

   When you came back you sat in the dark and when someone asked you to speak North Korean, or Chinese, you would do it in your head while saying, "I forgot all that over there."

   1995, Center for the Study of the Korean War, The Hermit Kingdom: Poems of the Korean War, Dubuque, Ia.: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 38

   “He was clearly upset, but what was even more interesting was that he didn’t look North Korean, he looked American.” / American? That was definitely unusual. Most Americans didn’t speak North Korean, and those who were fluent in another language gravitated toward Spanish, French, Italian, and even Russian. / Not a dialect from North Korea. / “And you’re sure about that,” she said, trying to wrap her mind around the information. / “Yeah.” He shrugged. “Could be a coincidence.” / “You know it’s not.” Sun didn’t believe in them. Especially not an American who could speak North Korean.

   2021, Laura Scott, Target for Revenge, →ISBN

   Chunmi (aged twenty-six) had lived in South Korea for ten years with her parents who, having arrived in the country in their fifties, had not changed how they spoke. She described how a colleague of her father had heard him speak “North Korean” (pukhan-mal), and promptly reported him to the authorities because they thought he was an illegal immigrant. “If you don't change how you talk, they will think you are Chinese,” she said.

   2023, Jennifer Hough, “The racialization of North Koreans in South Korea: diasporic co-ethnics in the South Korean ethnolinguistic nation”, in Sylvia Ang, Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho, Brenda S.A. Yeoh, editors, Asian Migration and New Racism: Beyond Colour and the ‘West’ (Ethnic and Racial Studies), Abingdon, Oxon; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN