MAL-MO-E and the story of the Korean Language Society

Language is more than a series of letters jumbled together; it acts as a conduit for the culture and way of life for a group of people. It reflects a sense of community and belonging, one which is unique to the people who speak the language. Philosopher and literary critic George Steiner once argued that “When a language dies, a way of understanding the world dies with it, a way of looking at the world.” The very existence of the Korean language was threatened when Japan invaded Korea in 1910 and afterwards, when the Japanese colonial period began. What came next was a wave of actions that sought to wipe out any semblance of Korea’s national and cultural identities. Hangul and the Korean language were some of the key targets. Even within the schools, it was forbidden to speak and learn Korean. To save the Korean language from being lost forever, a group of people set out to record and preserve the Korean language by creating a dictionary. In 1908, they formed a society known as the Society for the Study of the National Language, led by a scholar by the name of Ju Si-gyeong. Although Ju Si-gyeong tragically died just three years after starting work on this dictionary, others in the society picked up where he left off by forming a committee on Hangul Day in 1929; their intent was to complete the work that he had started. Less than 50 years later, Ju Si-gyeong’s goal of creating a Korean language dictionary was realized when the sixth and final volume of the first Korean language dictionary was published. It is this society-nowadays known as the Korean Language Society-and its story that rests at the heart of the 2019 movie MAL-MO-E. While these characters are fictional, it’s believed that some of them, such as the character Jeong-hwan, are based on actual members of the society.

 

The story in MAL-MO-E begins in the 1930s, in the later years of the Japanese colonial period. A local gangster known as Pan-soo ends up working at the society as a hired hand after having had a few run-ins with the man who runs it, Jeong-hwan. Pan-soo originally questions why these people would go to such great lengths and risk all these dangers to collect what he described as “just words.” At the time of this story, the members had spent 13 years collecting and recording words from regions all across the country. It isn’t until Ja-young-one of the society members-explains the importance of language and its role in a nation and amongst people that Pan-soo finally begins to understand what is at risk if Korean is wiped out by the Japanese Imperial government. Fearing that his younger sister would be severely punished for speaking Korean when she enters school, even Pan-soo’s own son begins asking that he not speak Korean to her. While some parts have been dramatized for the movie, these society members, just like the movie characters, were intimidated, imprisoned, tortured, and some even died as a result of their efforts to create this dictionary. And while it may be impossible to believe, the dictionary was in fact discovered by coincidence after the liberation of Korea in 1945. It was after Korea re-established its independence that the society gained its name that it currently holds today.

 

While in the movie we only see the activities of the members who were working to record the data to print this dictionary, in reality there are other branches of this organization that carried out other activities. These include, but are not limited to, creating textbooks, running programs to reduce the illiteracy rate, funding research, and providing training to Korean language teachers. Once at risk of being wiped out, the Korean language is thriving now more than ever, in part due to the work that these people undertook. Every year the number of people learning Korean as a foreign language is increasing, and organizations from all across the globe are working tirelessly to promote it, along with other aspects of Korean culture.

 

Even with Korea being liberated in 1945 from Japanese occupation, without the efforts of these people of the Korean Language Society, so much more could have been lost. Who knows how many important aspects, such as unique dialects, would never have been written down? Or worse, how much more effective the Japanese government might have been at erasing any traces of the Korean language and Hangul. Movies like MAL-MO-E can draw interest to these important events and figures of Korea’s history, serving as a reminder that history must never be forgotten.

 

Written by: Nicole Bradshaw

Senior at University of Hawai’i at Manoa majoring in Korean for Professionals as part of the Korean Language Flagship Program. Previous student at Sogang University’s Korean Language Education Center. Currently participating in an internship at Voluntary Agency Network of Korea (VANK).