It was found that 9 out of 10 people regard overly honorific expressions such as ‘Your coffee has arrived’ and ‘There will be remarks’ as incorrect and in need of change.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the National Institute of the Korean Language announced on the 12th the results of a ‘Public Survey on Public Language Needing Improvement’ that included these points. Through an advisory meeting involving the press, academia, and civic groups, they selected 30 expressions to be corrected, then from December 24∼30 last year surveyed 3,000 men and women ages 14∼79 on whether improvements are needed.

The category showing the greatest need for improvement in this survey was honorific expressions such as ‘Your coffee has arrived’, ‘There will be remarks’, and ‘This product is out of stock’. 93.3% of respondents answered that they ‘think these expressions should be changed’. In this regard, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism stated that the prefinal ending ‘si’, which elevates the subject of a sentence, need not be used when the subject is an inanimate object. It said that ‘There will be remarks’ should be changed to ‘There will be remarks’, and ‘Your coffee has arrived’ to ‘The coffee has come out’;

90.2% of respondents also pointed to the need to correct the incorrect use of ‘doe’ and ‘dwae’. The ministry explained that ‘doe’ is the stem of ‘to become’ and should be written as ‘doe-yeo’, ‘doe-eot’, and ‘doe-eoseo’, or, in contracted forms, as ‘dwae’, ‘dwaet’, and ‘dwaeseo’.

Additionally, there was strong support for improving hate and discriminatory expressions such as ‘mom-chung·geupsik-chung’ (87.1%) and ‘to suffer a disability’ (78.7%), as well as for correcting erroneous expressions such as ‘yeomdu-hada’ (74.8%) and ‘alamatchuda’ (71.2%). Use of ‘mom-chung·geupsik-chung’ should be avoided, and the others should be replaced with ‘to have a disability’, ‘to keep in mind’, and ‘to guess correctly’.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the National Institute of the Korean Language plan to carry out a public awareness campaign based on these results. They will promote ‘Continuing the Pledge for Easy Korean’ with the participation of well-known cultural and arts figures, and will produce and distribute ‘shorts’ videos that highlight the importance of correct Korean usage. They also decided to open a ‘Public Reports on Improving Public and Broadcast Language’ board on the National Institute of the Korean Language website to collect reports of incorrect expressions.