Linguistic purism in Korean

Notably, loanwords from Japanese that were introduced to Korea during the Japanese forced occupation are considered to have a political subtext of colonization and are often subject to refinement. Some words that were transliterations of Japanese words were refined in 1948:[2]

• 시로또 (sirotto) (素人, amateur/novice) → 맹문이 (maengmuni), 날무지 (nalmuji)
• 분빠이 (bunppai) (分配, distribution) → 누누매기 (nunumaegi)

Some critics of the movement argue that, instead of forcefully finding an equivalent translation for every loanword, the movement must promote the usage of widespread loanwords.[4][5]

A recent example is the Korean spicy chicken dish dak-dori-tang (닭도리탕), where the etymology of the middle word dori (도리) is not definitively known, although suggested as a Japanese-Korean hybrid. In South Korea, the National Institute of the Korean Language claims that the word came from Japanese tori (鳥; "bird"), and suggests that the word should be refined into dak-bokkeum-tang (닭볶음탕).[6] However, the status of dori as a loanword has been subject to debate. This is because the institute has not presented the grounds for the argument besides the phonetic similarity of dori to the Japanese word tori.[7] The word dori-tang appears in Haedong jukji, a 1925 collection of poems by the Joseon literatus Choe Yeongnyeon. In the book, Chinese characters do (桃) ri (李) tang (湯) were used to transliterate the Korean dish name.[8] A food columnist argued that, had the word been Japanese, the character jo (鳥; pronounced tori in Japanese) would have been used instead of the hanja transliteration of the Korean pronunciation.[9] Alternative theories on the origin of dori include the assertions that it came from dyori (됴리), the archaic form of Sino-Korean word jori (조리; 調理; "to cook"), and that it came from the native Korean verb dorida (도리다; "to cut out").[10] None of the theories mentioned before has been widely accepted as the established etymology.