# North Koreans Have No Dongs
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/north-koreans-have-no-dongs/205513
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [October 4, 2003, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/north-koreans-have-no-dongs/205513 "2003-10-04T05:44:49Z")
**Posts on this page:** 14
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Satisfying\_Andy\_Licious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Satisfying_Andy_Licious)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2003, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/north-koreans-have-no-dongs/205513/1 "2003-10-04T05:44:49Z")
It says so [right here.](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/10/03/national1908EDT0775.DTL)
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### Author:  [@green\_bladder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/green_bladder)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2003, 10:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/north-koreans-have-no-dongs/205513/2 "2003-10-04T10:39:19Z")
But the [Vietnamese do](http://vietnam.sawadee.com/currency.htm).
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### Author:  [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2003, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/north-koreans-have-no-dongs/205513/3 "2003-10-04T14:51:02Z")
Well, North Koreans do have dongs. In Korean, a _dong_ is an urban sub-district or neighborhood. In South Korea, my last address building 144-1 in the Banpo-4 neighborhood of the Seocho district in Seoul, so my address in Korean was
Seoul
Seocho-_gu_
144-1 Banpo-4 _dong_.
North Korean addresses are similar.
And of course, when you get to more rural addresses, you come across suffixes like -_ri_ and -_bong_.
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### Author:  [@Krisfer\_the\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Krisfer_the_Cat)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2003, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/north-koreans-have-no-dongs/205513/4 "2003-10-04T15:08:35Z")
Can I say “So do you live in a big dong?”?
And if there’s an earthquake is it a ding dong?
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### Author:  [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2003, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/north-koreans-have-no-dongs/205513/5 "2003-10-04T15:55:15Z")
When my wife was a little girl on Korea, she’d say “Mom, I gotta go dong.” When our daughter was slow to toilet-train, she’d berate her for wearing a full diaper as being a “dong-sicie,” or “shit-dog”
Either its pronounced differently enough to be significant to Korean ears, or Gobear’s cite means that neighborhoods are based on their placement along the sewer system insead of the street grid.
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### Author:  [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2003, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/north-koreans-have-no-dongs/205513/6 "2003-10-04T16:13:30Z")
Somehow I can’t find it in my heart to sympathize with either side in the blown missle deal. One out-crooked the other.
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### Author:  [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2003, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/north-koreans-have-no-dongs/205513/7 "2003-10-04T17:40:34Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Slithy Tove \*
> \*\*When my wife was a little girl on Korea, she’d say “Mom, I gotta go dong.” When our daughter was slow to toilet-train, she’d berate her for wearing a full diaper as being a “dong-sicie,” or “shit-dog”
>
> Either its pronounced differently enough to be significant to Korean ears, or Gobear’s cite means that neighborhoods are based on their placement along the sewer system insead of the street grid. \*\*
Well, I’ve heard that, too, and I always figured it was just onomatopeiac babytalk, like _ssi_ for urination, which is analogous to " go wee-wee."
Just as a hijack, the Korean language borrowed an estimated 60 percent of its vocabulary from Chinese, but unlike chinese, Korean has no tones, so now Korean has an enormous number of homophonic words. Looking at my handy Minjungseorim Han-Yong dictionary, I see for _dong_ (long-o):
a bundle
the same
east
a dam
a neighborhood
armor
copper
And there are even longer words that sound the same but have different meanings, like _donggam_, which can mean “the same feeling” or “the same age.”
Generally, Koreans can tell the meaning from context or from the _hanja_ (Chinese character) in a magazine or newspaper, which is why that even though Korean has an alphabet (_hangul_, an artificial alphabet created by Korean scholars in 1446 under the direction of King Sejong the Great) and does not require _hanja_, the Ministry of Education mandates that Korean students know 1800 characters by the end of high school.
In addition, unlike English, Korean uses two separate letters to distinguish the long-o and short-o sounds. Korean pronounciation makes itr very difficult for neophyte learners of Korean to tell the two sounds apart, for example _dohng_ and _duhng_, although native Korean speakers have no difficulty doing so. Almost every magazine and newspaper uses _hanja_, except for the left-leaning _Hangyoreh Shinmun_, in sympathy with the xenophobic, nativist North, which has replaced most foreign loan words with vocabulary of purely Korean extraction.
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### Author:  [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2003, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/north-koreans-have-no-dongs/205513/8 "2003-10-04T17:58:41Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Slithy Tove \*
> \*\*When my wife was a little girl on Korea, she’d say “Mom, I gotta go dong.” When our daughter was slow to toilet-train, she’d berate her for wearing a full diaper as being a “dong-sicie,” or “shit-dog”
>
> Either its pronounced differently enough to be significant to Korean ears, or Gobear’s cite means that neighborhoods are based on their placement along the sewer system insead of the street grid. \*\*
Well, I’ve heard that, too, and I always figured it was just onomatopeiac babytalk, like _ssi_ for urination, which is analogous to " go wee-wee."
Just as a hijack, the Korean language borrowed an estimated 60 percent of its vocabulary from Chinese, but unlike chinese, Korean has no tones, so now Korean has an enormous number of homophonic words. Looking at my handy Minjungseorim Han-Yong dictionary, I see for _dong_ (long-o):
a bundle
the same
east
a dam
a neighborhood
armor
copper
And there are even longer words that sound the same but have different meanings, like _donggam_, which can mean “the same feeling” or “the same age.”
Generally, Koreans can tell the meaning from context or from the _hanja_ (Chinese character) in a magazine or newspaper, which is why that even though Korean has an alphabet (_hangul_, an artificial alphabet created by Korean scholars in 1446 under the direction of King Sejong the Great) and does not require _hanja_, the Ministry of Education mandates that Korean students know 1800 characters by the end of high school.
In addition, unlike English, Korean uses two separate letters to distinguish the long-o and short-o sounds. Korean pronounciation makes itr very difficult for neophyte learners of Korean to tell the two sounds apart, for example _dohng_ and _duhng_, although native Korean speakers have no difficulty doing so.
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### Author:  [@Zenster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zenster)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2003, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/north-koreans-have-no-dongs/205513/9 "2003-10-04T18:30:54Z")
> [@](#):
>
> “North Korea apparently bilked Saddam’s Iraq out of millions of dollars in a missile deal gone sour, according to chief CIA weapons hunter David Kay.”
Bwahahahahaha! Heavy on the irony sauce. Who says there’s honor amongst thieves?
We can only hope that this bit of chicanery will discourage other nations from missile buys involving North Korea.
[points at Saddam]
Whadda a maroon!!!
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### Author:  [@Astroboy14](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astroboy14)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2003, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/north-koreans-have-no-dongs/205513/10 "2003-10-04T21:32:20Z")
Actually, the Korean word for neighborhood is “dong” (spelled with a single ‘tigut’ [the letter with the d sound]). The word for shit is “ddong”; it is spelled with a _saeng-tigut_ (a double ‘tigut’ letter, similar to the double “s” letters you see in the name Ssangyong). The ‘O’ sound in the two words is identical; same letter with the same sound.
To a Korean, the difference in pronunciation is readily apparent. To an English speaker, they sound pretty much the same…
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### Author:  [@SpectBrain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpectBrain)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2003, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/north-koreans-have-no-dongs/205513/11 "2003-10-04T23:09:35Z")
Gobear
[slight hijack]
What is the meaning of “imnidah”? I’ve heard it pronounced as em knee dah. It’s used in just about every sentence of spoken Korean.
[kcajih thgils]
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### Author:  [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2003, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/north-koreans-have-no-dongs/205513/12 "2003-10-05T00:10:10Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Astroboy14 \*
> **Actually, the Korean word for neighborhood is “dong” (spelled with a single ‘tigut’ [the letter with the d sound]). The word for shit is “ddong”; it is spelled with a saeng-tigut (a double ‘tigut’ letter, similar to the double “s” letters you see in the name Ssangyong). The ‘O’ sound in the two words is identical; same letter with the same sound.**
Thanks for the assist. I couldn’t find it in my dictionary with the single _tigut_–I should have thought of the double letter–_chonun wang pabo imnida_.
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by SpectBrain \*
> \*\*Gobear
>
> [slight hijack]
> What is the meaning of “imnidah”? I’ve heard it pronounced as em knee dah. It’s used in just about every sentence of spoken Korean.\*\*
It just means “is” by itself (though there are two forms of “is” which have different meanings), but the -_mnida_ verb ending is standard to indicate a polite level of discourse, as in _kamsa hamnida_ (thank you) or _kamnida_ (go). It’s a formal level of politeness used between equals. There are other levels, but they should be used with extreme caution by the non-native speaker.
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### Author:  [@Michael\_Ellis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Michael_Ellis)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2003, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/north-koreans-have-no-dongs/205513/13 "2003-10-05T01:07:25Z")
What’s brown, and sounds like a bell?
Dong.
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### Author:  [@Satisfying\_Andy\_Licious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Satisfying_Andy_Licious)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2003, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/north-koreans-have-no-dongs/205513/14 "2003-10-05T05:01:22Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by green\_bladder \*
> \*\*But the [Vietnamese do](http://vietnam.sawadee.com/currency.htm). \*\*
Hey waiter, how many dongs do we have to whip out before we get served?