KOREAN LANGUAGE IN UKRAINE: HISTORY, LANGUAGE STANDARDS, MILITARY DAYS

Abstract

Compared to others, the Korean national minority of Ukraine has a short history of coexistence with the titular nation, Ukrainians. The problem of the Korean Diaspora not knowing their native language is the result of ruthless deportations and assimilation policies first by the Russian Empire, then by the leadership of the USSR. Only in the last thirty years, already during the time of independent Ukraine, Ukrainian Koreans in practice have successfully implemented the legally established linguistic and cultural rights. In Ukrainian historiography, there is no comprehensive study dedicated to this problem, that is, the study of the history of the opening of schools with the Korean language of instruction, the operation of offline and online language courses, the analysis of the variety of educational activities aimed at mastering and popularizing Korean youth not only among the Diaspora, but also among all those who is interested in Korean culture and history, etc. The relevance of this scientific article follows from this. The purpose of the article is to reveal the prerequisites, causes and consequences of the development of the Korean language in Ukraine as an identifier of the nation in a non-ethnic environment. The task is to follow up and analyze the reasons why generations of Koreans born in the USSR do not know the language of their historical homeland, conducting a microanalysis of individual fragments of narrative interviews obtained by Ukrainian media from respondents of the Korean minority; to illustrate the traumatic memory of generations of Koreans deprived of the opportunity to learn their native language; to show the Korean initiative on the ground, aimed at solving the language issue, as well as the support of its Diaspora by the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Ukraine; outline the role of such a phenomenon as language volunteering among citizens of Ukraine and South Korea; to convey to the public the challenges faced by the education industry during the war. The novelty of the research lies in the very formulation of the topic. Further scientific searches for a narrative related to the study of the history and culture of the Korean national minority in Ukraine, particularly the language problem, seem promising. The article covers only three centers where proper bases and conditions for learning the language were created - Kharkiv, Cherkasy and Melitopol. For more than a year, the proactive Korean community has been struggling with the challenges of the war, the consequences of the total Russification of generations of Koreans by the communist regime; demonstrates character and resilience, crystallizing the values of the multinational population of Ukraine.