Emeritus Professor Kwak Chung Gu of Dept. of Korean Language and Literature

Awarded Park Seung-bin Korean Linguistics Award in Writing

Emeritus Professor Kwak Chung Gu of the Department of Korean Language and Literature was awarded the First Park Seung-bin Korean Linguistics Award in the category of writing. The award ceremony was held at Korea University's Seoul Campus and streamed live on YouTube.

This award was organized by The Association For Korean Linguistics in honor of Mr. Park Seung-bin (1880-1943) (known under the penname Hakbeom), who led the research and development of the Korean language with remarkable contributions as a lawyer, educator, and Korean linguist during the Japanese occupation. His achievements include organizing the Joseoneohakyeonguhoe (Joseon Language Research Institute) and authoring the Korean grammar book Joseoneohak (Korean Linguistics). By awarding linguists with contributions to research on and advancement of the Korean language, the award aims to promote studies in Korean linguistics.

Of the two categories for which the award is granted - writing and contributions - Professor Kwak's award was given for his editorial contribution of The Dictionary of Korean Dialects along Duman River (2019, Thaehaksa). For over 20 years, Professor Kwak conducted field surveys through in-person visits to North Hamgyeong Province along the Duman River and edited data on the oral language he encountered, which, due to rapid social changes, is expected to disappear within 10 years. The dictionary represents the first serious dictionary pertaining to Korean dialects.

The dictionary received special recognition for its unique features: the usages offered are not confined to sentence units but extend to the context of speech containing revelations on linguistic data, various methods are attempted to provide variances occurring in phonological realizations, and extra data are included on the user's living conditions and the observer's judgment of his/her language-performing competences. As such, the dictionary was appraised as a monumental work with profound significance in both Korean linguistics research and Korean dictionary editing.

Professor Kwak served at Sogang University from 1997 through 2016, sitting as the third and fourth chairman of The Society of Korean Dialectology and publishing over 100 theses and more than 10 books while making remarkable contributions to Korean phonology and dialectology. In 2018, he was awarded the Ilseok Korean Linguistics Award for his personal collection and systematic research on rare dialectics data of Korean, completing field work both in Korea and overseas throughout his life.