Made in ...
While teaching passive voice in one of my classes this week we did an activity from the student book that has students ask and respond to questions about where their belongings are from/ were made. Students are typically quick to check their pencils, highlighters, pencil cases, and notebooks; with a little prompting they also start looking at the tags for their clothing and shoes. In past classes the majority of the students' school supplies have been from China and Japan, with Korea not far behind. Due to the complicated geo-political history of the region this can result in claims by the students that, "Oh, China/ Japan is bad." or "Teacher, we should have more things from Korea."
Of interest, my Tuesday class reported that most of their belongings were from Korea, with Japan in second and Thailand coming in third for the production of school supplies. This doesn't necessarily mean anything special, as all it takes is one school friend going to Thailand and bringing back pencils as souvenirs to bump up the statistics. However, there was one student who had a somewhat surprising addition to her list.
While the other students were busy checking their belongings one girl called me over for help. She wanted to include her coat but couldn't identify which country it was from. Looking at the tag on the inner lining we could see the line: "원산지: DPRK". The word 원산지 has a meaning similar to "country of origin", but the abbreviation following that term confused my student. When I saw it I couldn't help but double over from laughter. I printed out DPRK on the blackboard and then wrote out what it stands for: Democratic People's Republic of Korea. No surprise the students all recognized the 'Korea' part of that, but they were still puzzled over the rest. (Understandably, as it's not English vocabulary they've covered at their level, and might not be anything they've covered in social studies either.)
When I explained that DPRK is the same as 북한 (North Korea) the coat's owner was up in arms. "No, that can't be true! Teacher, don't lie to me!" Even after seeing the result from the English-Korean dictionary function on my cellphone she still seemed to be in denial. The odds are that it was manufactured at the Kaesŏng Industrial Region -- a cooperative endeavor between the governments of North and South Korea where South Korean companies set up manufacturing facilities on the other side of the border with North Korean employees. Hearing that seemed to appease her considerably.
Due to the stigma people associate with North Korea it's probably not a surprise that they'd use an English abbreviation of the communist state's name rather than the Korean equivalent. Still, before teaching that class I didn't know how products made in Kaesŏng are marketed. (Assuming it really was made in Kaesŏng.) I do have to admit that it was a very amusing way to find out.