North Korean

From North Korea +‎ -an.

North Korean (plural North Koreans)

1. A citizen or resident of North Korea.

North Korean (not comparable)

1. Of, from, or pertaining to North Korea, the North Korean people or the North Korean language.
   • 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:

     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.

North Korean

1. (rare) The version of Korean spoken in North Korea.
   • 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:

     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."

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

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

   • 2021, Laura Scott, Target for Revenge, →ISBN:

     “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.

   • 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:

     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.

•   North Korean standard language on Wikipedia.Wikipedia