Can 'bad' words be driven out?

Lee Hyun-sang

The author is a columnist at the JoongAng Ilbo. 

A recent controversy erupted over the use of the phrase “museopno” — roughly meaning “that’s scary” in a southeastern Korean dialect — by a member of a girl group. The dispute began after a producer at Gyeongnam MBC argued that the “-no” resembled an expression popularized by the Ilgan Best, also known as the Ilbe, an extremist far-right online community. Cho Kuk, the former leader of the Rebuilding Korea Party, said that since “-no” is ordinarily used in the Gyeongsang dialect only alongside interrogatives, its use in this case was suspicious.

Everyday language, however, often departs from grammatical rules. Many people reacted negatively to what they saw as an awkward attempt to police ordinary speech while ignoring how language is actually used.

At some point, Korean society became acutely sensitive to individual words and expressions. It is no longer unusual for an offhand remark at a dinner gathering, in the workplace or on social media to trigger unexpected backlash. Of course, language users should consider social context and listeners’ feelings, but the constant self-censorship demanded in daily life has become exhausting. The uproar over “museopno” reflects that fatigue.

Korea is hardly alone in experiencing resistance to linguistic purism promoted by a political camp or cultural elite. One prominent example is “Latinx,” the gender-neutral term coined by the U.S. “woke” movement. The expression was created as an alternative to “Latino” and “Latina,” which critics regarded as reinforcing a gender binary.

But a survey by the Pew Research Center found that only 3 percent of Hispanic Americans actually use the term. Many rejected it as an elitist attempt to reshape their language and grammar without their consent, as René Pfister notes in his book “Ein falsches Wort” (2022), which translates to “A Wrong Word.” Language policing among progressive elites in the United States often evolved into a culture of branding opponents as bigots and excluding them from public debate. That kind of behavior fueled popular resentment and, paradoxically, helped pave the way for U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to power.

Excessive sensitivity toward “bad” words can also encourage imitation within online subcultures. In 2003, pop singer Barbra Streisand sued to block the publication of a photo documenting coastal erosion because her mansion appeared in the background. Before the lawsuit, the image had been downloaded only six times, including twice by her attorneys. Afterward, hundreds of thousands of people visited the website hosting the photo.

This tendency to amplify the very thing that one seeks to suppress became known as the Streisand effect, and it has been reproduced in Korea’s own linguistic disputes. Politicians’ attempts to connect Starbucks Korea’s “Tank Day” marketing campaign to the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement inspired teenagers to turn the controversy into a joke and contributed to the recent incident involving Paichai High School’s baseball team.

In the process, extremists gain the perverse satisfaction of believing that their words have shaken society while ordinary people become familiar with symbols and expressions that they had never encountered. Hate speech spreads further, and its opponents grow even more sensitive, creating a vicious cycle. Before Cho publicly criticized the phrase “5 minutes and 23 seconds” in a webtoon, for example, how many people had associated the number with the date of late President Roh Moo-hyun’s death?

The revised information and communications network act, which took effect on Tuesday, reflects an attempt to curb such bad words through legislation. It seeks to regulate manipulated information and hateful expression using standards such as an “intent to cause harm” or damage to the “public interest.” But these concepts are vague, which raises concerns about arbitrary enforcement and abuse. Coupled with punitive damages, the law could intensify self-censorship and further chill freedom of expression.

No amount of good intentions can eradicate offensive language. At times, strategic indifference and flexibility may prove more effective than outrage in denying hatred the grand stage it seeks.

In “1984” (1949), George Orwell imagined the Party’s Newspeak project, which sought to control thought by shrinking the vocabulary available to citizens. As calls to regulate bad words increasingly intersect with legal restrictions on language, Orwell’s warning inevitably comes to mind.

Is that, too, an overreaction?