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Comment by chimeracoder | Hacker News Reader

Is it possible that people in the DPRK refer to themselves as the 'Republic of Korea' in an attempt to deny/disqualify the existence of any other 'Republic of Korea'? (ie, 'The one true Republic of Korea' or something like that).

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I have been to the DPRK on holiday and whilst I was there it was explicitly made clear that the people of the DPRK (or at least, the ones I met who are presumably on-message) do refer to "Korea" as one Korea.

That's not denial of the existence of other Korea, and not "we're the true Korea"; it's more that there is only one Korea, it's the entire peninsula, and this unfortunate state of affairs where there are currently two separate governments isn't an indication that there are two Koreas. There's one Korea. The whole thing.

I asked the guides specifically so I think I've got it more or less right.

However, the two countries do use a completely different word for "Korea" in the Korean language.

In South Korea, they call South Korea "Hanguk" which means "Land of the Han" (Han people being the Korean ethnic group). They call North Korea "Bukhan" which is just "Northern Han."

In North Korea, they call themselves "Joseon" which means "morning calm" and was the name of the last Korean kingdom.(cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseon) Meanwhile they call South Korea "South Joseon."

So, they each call themselves and the other "Korea" in a sense, but they disagree on what the word for "Korea" is in Korean.

"Korea" is itself a romanization of "Koryo," which was the name of a much earlier Korean kingdom.

I was kind of blown away when I realised that the Han (Chinese) refer to the Koreans as "Han", also. Their own autonym is pronounced closer to "Hen".

Han (Chinese) and Han (Korean) are homophones in English and in Korean, but they have a different character and different tone in Chinese, and different meaning. It's completely coincidence that they are both "Han."

For more, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han

Wow, I did not know it. Thanks!

Why do communist countries insist on calling themselves "democratic"? If you're such a firm believer in that philosophy, why not have some pride?

the claim is that the majority support communism.

Communism and democracy are orthogonal. Your question is why dictators represent themselves as democracies, but I don't think that's a very complex question; it's propaganda 101.

For a while it was even visible on both sides of the Korean peninsula: a left-wing military dictatorship in the North referred to themselves as the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea", while a right-wing military dictatorship in the South referred to themselves as the "Republic of Korea". Neither country actually operated as a republic, but both seemed to like the term (and did have some superficial trappings of a republic, like legislatures). The South is now an actual Republic, though, since around 1987.

Similar situation for some years in the Taiwan Strait, where the not-a-republic People's Republic of China faced down the also-not-a-republic Republic of China (Taiwan).

Right. It's kind of seen as a "given" now that South Korea and Taiwan are the democratic, American-friendly, "good guys" and the DPRK and PRC are the authoritarian, oppressive "bad guys," but back in the '60s through the '80s before the ROK and ROC democratized, the situation was much murkier. Because of the Cold War, those regimes were considered allies solely by virtue of not being Communists, but they were also very unfree. Perhaps the winding down of the Cold War had something to do with their falling out of power and being replaced by democracies.

There's a joke about how many "democratic"'s or "repulic"'s are in the countries name that the more un-democratic and un-republican they are. :P

Surely the "Holy Roman Empire" was the thought leader in this regard, being neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.

Still, if it's a case of wishful thinking, why "democratic" and not "The Awesome, Glorious Empire of North Korea Death to America"?

Communist countries aren't the only ones that use nicer sounding terms than what they really are.

I read a joke somewhere that as countries become more and more totalitarian, they add more and more freedom-implying qualifiers.

So (for a not-quite-correct example) things would progress Congo -> Republic of Congo -> Democratic Republic of Congo -> People's Democratic Republic of Congo.

It's the same when countries insist on being "free". You do not need to tell everyone obvious things.

You are interpreting 'democratic' in a western sense, and then take it further by claiming they have no pride in communism. It's really not a mystery/contradictory.. you just need to pick up a few books by Lenin, Marx, Mao, et al.

A "people's democracy" is a country in transition from bourgeois democracy to socialism. In this stage there is more than one class, the largest being the proletariat, led by the Communist Party, which is therefore the dominant power.

The other common country name includes "people's republic." In both cases, it's important to understand the definition of "people". People are communists. Look up "People's dictatorship" for more information on this. Essentially, a "People's republic" is a country that is ruled by a communist party.

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