Lets Learn (North) Korean

On my second visit to North Korea in 2005, I purchased a copy of Let’s Learn Korean (Chosonmal Baeunun Chaek, 1989) by the Pyongyang Foreign Languages Books Publishing House. 

In its pages you will find many phrases which will facilitate your visit to the DPRK:

“This camera is for my personal use” 

“Please get me a porter”

“Give me a first-class, one-way ticket to Pyongyang”

” I want to see the Tower of the Juche Idea”

“Let us drive the US imperialists out of south Korea”

“Abolish nuclear weapons”

“The new era of socialism and communism”

“The children are the reliable successors of our revolution who will brighten the future of our fatherland”

“Man must become a revolutionary before becoming a doctor”

and..

“In a nutshell, the idea of Juche means that the masters of the revolution and construction are the masses of the people and that they are also the motive force of the revolution and construction”

I have divided the book into four parts to make it easier to download (although each part is rather large):

Download: Part 1
Download: Part 2
Download: Part 3
Download: Part 4

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This entry was posted on Saturday, December 20th, 2008 at 8:25 pm and is filed under Domestic publication, Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

6 Responses to “Lets Learn (North) Korean”

  1. Neil says:
    December 20, 2008 at 10:48 pm

    Does it have to be sideways? 🙁 How can I rotate this in the reader?

    And isn’t this infringing North Korean copyright, they might not be happy about that 🙂

  2. Mat says:
    December 21, 2008 at 2:46 pm

    For Neil – http://malektips.com/adobe_reader_7_0023.html

    Anyway, thanks for sharing it with us, I’ve been looking for some books on Korean, and this might be quite handy for me and others, though a bit dated (language possibly haven’t changed much).

  3. Jack says:
    July 25, 2009 at 4:51 am

    Thia is totally awesome! I notice there is quite a but of difference in the alphabet.

  4. danb says:
    July 31, 2009 at 9:40 pm

    Hey Curtis, this is awesome, thanks for posting the whole thing. I know several Korean teachers who will find this interesting.

    Jack, the alphabet looks the same, maybe it’s a font you haven’t seen before.

    But skimming just a page or two, I found a couple things that really stick out. From p41:

    기차여행 (SK – “train travel”) => 기차려행 (NK)
    내일 (SK – “tomorrow”) => (래일) (NK)

    I had to look twice to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. They can’t be typos because they’re written the same way in the English transliteration.