Early recording of Korean from the Sorbonne
This is contended to be the oldest known gramaphone recording of Korean audio from 1928. It was recorded by Lee Kolu, 이극로 a Korean language scholar, at the Sorbonne in Paris as part of a project to preserve the Korean language from extinction during the Japanese colonial period. Lee was the inspiration for the Korean drama Mal Mo E, literally word gathering, which describes how his group in Korea tried to preserve the Korean language by collecting dialects from all over occupied Korea while the study of the language was being eliminated in schools. The drama is described as a fictionalized account. Lee was a part of the Korean independence movement. He traveled widely raising funds and encouraging support for preservation of language as a part of the independence movement.
This youtube which appears to be authenticated with actual records of Lee's attendance at the the Sorbonne says that these records were found in the French archives in 2011. Lee's voice can be heard starting at 2:05 in the video. At first he starts explaining how the language's recorded characters were created by King Sejong in the 15th Century. Then he describes the 28 character alphabet, (Hangul) including the vowels and consonants (which replaced traditional Chinese characters.) All this is familiar to a basic Korean language student. After going through some basics he begins a statement if in ethics questioning why religious people have love and respect for God but don't attribute the same to people. He goes on to say why he thinks is a serious problem, resulting in mistreatment of people and religious wars. This is the sound of Korean in the twenties he left to posterity.
The historic video:
What i noticed about the difference in the recorded audio was how this is pure Korean. No newly concocted words nor foreign adulteration. The pronunciation is readily understood. Lee thought the language would disappear. Fortunately it didn't.
I have a post on MALMOE: The Secret Mission (2019) 말모이 Movie Trailer over at the Asian Group
https://democraticunderground.com/12507340
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