Topic summary
North Korean standard language

North Korean standard language or Munhwaŏ (Korean: 문화어; Hancha: 文化語; lit.'"cultural language"') is the North Koreanstandard version of the Korean language. Munhwaŏ was adopted as the standard in 1966. The adopting proclamation stated that the Pyongan dialect spoken in the North Korean capital Pyongyang and its surroundings should be the basis for Munhwaŏ. Though this view is supported by some linguists, others posit that Munhwaŏ remains "firmly rooted" in the Seoul dialect, which had been the national standard for centuries. Thus, while the first group indicate that, besides the large divergence at the level of vocabulary, differences between the North and South Korean standards also include phonetic and phonological features, as well as stress and intonation, the others consider these differences attributable to replacement of Sino-Korean vocabulary and other loanwords with pure Korean words, or the Northern ideological preference for "the speech of the working class" which includes some words considered non-standard in the South.