Sorting the DPRK all Out

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2008/09/19 03:01 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2008/09/19/8958026.aspx

This blog post is not about trying to "sort out" the political issues in the DPRK -- just the sort, ma'am!

In true SiaO fashion, this blog is more information about something Microsoft (and most companies) are not really able to support!

Probably the first time I blogged about North Korean was back in March of 2006, in Traditional versus modern sorts. I contrasted the way that Hangul is collated when you compare the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea, aka North Korea) and ROK (Republic of Korea, aka South Korea).

I principally talked about how the biggest differednce as that the "SSANG'ed" (doubled) Jamo were placed at the end rather than after the single Jamo that they were the double of.

And yes, the preposition at the end of the previous sentence is intentional, and something I have decided to be proud of! :-)

I did always intend to come back to the topic, but I have been busy.

I was only recently reminded about it again after Richard Ishida's tutorial at the recent IUC when I had the practically once in a life time opportunity to know something that about language/script that he did not -- the North Korean/South Korean collation difference! :-)

Many sources talk about the issue, though perhaps the clearest is in Chapter 9 (Information Processing Techniques) of Ken Lunde's CJKV Information Processing (the red emphasis added by me):

An example that illustrates different sorting requirements for the same writing system s Korean hangul. North and South Korea (DPRK and ROK, respectively), although they use the same set of jamo for constructing hangul, sort them differently. Table 9-17 illustrates the sequence in which jamo are sorted in the two Korean locales, subcategorized by the position in which they appear in hangul: initial (consonants), medial (vowels), and final (consonants).

Table 9-17 Korean Jamo Sorting Sequences

Initial	DPRK	ᄀᄂᄃᄅᄆᄇᄉᄌᄎᄏᄐᄑᄒᄁᄄᄈᄊᄍᄋ
	ROK	ᄀᄁᄂᄃᄄᄅᄆᄇᄈᄉᄊᄋᄌᄍᄎᄏᄐᄑᄒ
Medial	DPRK	ᅡᅣᅥᅧᅩᅭᅮᅲᅳᅵᅢᅤᅦᅨᅬᅱᅴᅪᅯᅫᅰ
	ROK	ᅡᅢᅣᅤᅥᅦᅧᅨᅩᅪᅫᅬᅭᅮᅯᅰᅱᅲᅳᅴᅵ
Final	DPRK	ᆨᆪᆫᆬᆭᆯᆰᆱᆲᆳᆴᆵᆶᆷᆸᆹᆺᆼᆽᆾᆿᇀᇁᇂᆩᆻ
	ROK	ᆨᆩᆪᆫᆬᆭᆯᆰᆱᆲᆳᆴᆵᆶᆷᆸᆹᆺᆻᆼᆽᆾᆿᇀᇁᇂ

In general, North Korean sorts double consonants after all other consonants. The vowels, in medial positions, are also sorted differently.

Let's ignore the vowels for a moment, I'll talk about those another time (I have different linguistic theories to draw in for them!).

Should we call them Chosŏn'gŭl instead of Hangul snce we'e talking about North Korean? We can't change the character names to use the more neutral term urigeul, though that would have probably been a good idea, in retrospect. :-)

One could wonder whether the repositioning of small number of Jamo could really make such a difference.

But remember, this relatively small number of Jamo are the component pieces of 11172 Jamo.

if you take the first 28 Jamo the block (you'll see why I chose 28 in a second):

Hangul	USV	Choseong	USV	Jungseong	USV	Jongseong	USV	Name
가	0xac00	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161			Hangul syllable Kiyeok A
각	0xac01	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᆨ	11a8	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Kiyeok
갂	0xac02	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᆩ	11a9	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Ssangkiyeok
갃	0xac03	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᆪ	11aa	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Kiyeoksios
간	0xac04	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᆫ	11ab	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Nieun
갅	0xac05	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᆬ	11ac	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Nieuncieuc
갆	0xac06	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᆭ	11ad	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Nieunhieuh
갇	0xac07	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᆮ	11ae	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Tikeut
갈	0xac08	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᆯ	11af	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Rieul
갉	0xac09	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᆰ	11b0	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Rieulkiyeok
갊	0xac0a	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᆱ	11b1	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Rieulmieum
갋	0xac0b	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᆲ	11b2	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Rieulpieup
갌	0xac0c	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᆳ	11b3	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Rieulsios
갍	0xac0d	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᆴ	11b4	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Rieulthieuth
갎	0xac0e	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᆵ	11b5	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Rieulphieuph
갏	0xac0f	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᆶ	11b6	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Rieulhieuh
감	0xac10	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᆷ	11b7	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Mieum
갑	0xac11	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᆸ	11b8	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Pieup
값	0xac12	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᆹ	11b9	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Pieupsios
갓	0xac13	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᆺ	11ba	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Sios
갔	0xac14	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᆻ	11bb	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Ssangsios
강	0xac15	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᆼ	11bc	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Ieung
갖	0xac16	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᆽ	11bd	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Cieuc
갗	0xac17	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᆾ	11be	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Chieuch
갘	0xac18	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᆿ	11bf	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Khieukh
같	0xac19	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᇀ	11c0	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Thieuth
갚	0xac1a	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᇁ	11c1	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Phieuph
갛	0xac1b	ᄀ	1100	ᅡ	1161	ᇂ	11c2	Hangul syllable Kiyeok A Hieuh

Aha. So in every block of 28, two of them will be in a different order (corresponding to the two Jongseong). Add to which for each of the five Choseong (six if you count the initial IEUNG at U+110b) there are entire additional blocks of 28 that have to be reordered, and before you know it a huge chunk of the 11172 will end up somewhere differerent. Then when you add the vowels you will again have large blocks that would be repositioned (like I said I'll get more into the vowels another time). In the end, large chunks will be moved, and clearly the ROK sort will look quite wrong to someone expecting the DPRK sort....

As I said way back in Traditional versus modern sorts, both orderings have a kind of a linguistic basis.

Though in my opinion the fact that the 11 non-SSANG doubled Jongseong (and the Jongseong IEUNG unlike the Choseong one) are not ordered differently might hurt the argument a little bit -- there is a clear interest in keeping one type of doubled Jamo interspersed and not the other.

Another regular reader told me that the CLDR did not include either a locale or a UCA tailoring for North Korean, which might be due to the same reasons that Microsoft doesn't have one (DPRK is not a Wassenaar Arrangement member).

I do wonder what happens in North Korea (which presumably has pirated copies of lots of software) of for expatriate North Koreans -- is their preferred collation being shaken out of them due to all of these other matters?

I guess we're in politics again. :-)

This blog brought to you by 까 (U+ae4c, aka HANGUL SYLLABLE SSANGKIYEOK A)

Gwyn on 19 Sep 2008 4:59 AM:

Dean Harding on 19 Sep 2008 9:55 AM:

Jeffrey L. Whitledge on 19 Sep 2008 12:01 PM:

Mihai on 19 Sep 2008 12:12 PM:

John Cowan on 19 Sep 2008 12:58 PM:

Michael S. Kaplan on 19 Sep 2008 12:58 PM:

Michael S. Kaplan on 19 Sep 2008 1:02 PM:

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