world

There are many countries and nations in the world with lots of languages for them.

The linguistic diversity shows the diversity of histories, cultures, customs and others of many countries and nations.

It is very significant to protect mother tongues, means of communication and symbols of culture and identity of the countries and nations.

There was a demonstration of residents in east Pakistan (today’s Bangladesh) on February 21 1952 calling for including Bengali as an official language of the state and government organs. The demonstrators clashed with police and in the course of it five of them were shot dead.

In 1999 UNESCO designated February 21 as International Motherlanguage Day in memory of those local residents who were killed in the fight to restore the right to use their mother tongue.

The designation of the day was aimed at preserving languages of the world, encouraging the sustainable development of diverse cultures and promoting mutual understanding between peoples of different countries.

However, a large number of languages perish in the international community, posing a threat to human civilization and an obstacle to the development of languages and cultures.

For this reason, many countries pay attention to preserving languages of ethnic minorities. In particular, they conduct a variety of activities to practise and develop national languages to observe International Motherlanguage Day.

The DPRK government works to promote excellence and national identity of its national language.

The mother tongue of the DPRK is Korean.

The Korean language has been developed and enriched through 5 000-year history of the Korean nation.

Today it has become a state affair in the country to maintain and further develop the homogeneity, eternity and purity of the Korean language.

A habit of noble and cultured linguistic life has strictly been established throughout society. Regulations, references, dictionaries and others related to the use of written Korean language have been compiled and published, revised and supplemented. Books are also printed, which are conducive to further enriching linguistic theories and improving the quality of Korean language education and linguistic life. 

The education sector directs attention to making new generations deeply understand the excellence of the Korean language with the power of rich figurative expression.

The Korean language is further developed in conformity with the requirements of the socialist way of life with the cultured language of Pyongyang as the standard.