ZCZC
BFF-25
SKOREA-MALAYSIA-POLITICS-LANGUAGE
Good afternoon, good night, goodness me: fury over S. Korean presidential
greeting
SEOUL, March 22, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – What’s the difference between good
afternoon and good night? In South Korea’s cutthroat politics, it can be a
furious political row and the foreign minister apologising to parliament.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in visited Malaysia earlier this month and
greeted his audience at an afternoon press conference with Prime Minister
Mahathir Mohamad using the phrase “selamat sore”.
The line is more commonly used in Indonesia — although the neighbours’
languages are so similar they are generally mutually intelligible.
At the time, Mahathir smiled and appeared amused, while senior Malaysian
senior ministers laughed, but Moon’s South Korean critics slammed him for not
using the correct Malaysian greeting “selamat petang”.
And his use of that phrase, meaning “good afternoon”, at a dinner
beginning at 8pm — rather than “selamat malam”, or good night — triggered
another round of fury in Seoul.
Opposition lawmakers and newspapers lined up to excoriate Moon, with
headlines calling it a “diplomatic disaster”.
The Korea Times assailed the “incompetence” of the presidential protocol
team on Friday.
“The absence of a protest from the host country does not excuse the
unbelievable carelessness,” it added, saying it was one of a series of
incidents demonstrating a “serious lack of professionalism and ethics” in the
Blue House.
South Korea’s foreign minister Kang Kyung-wha has apologised to
parliament, admitting that her ministry had made a “painful mistake”.
“I apologise for causing concerns,” she told the national assembly on
Wednesday.
But an aide for the Malaysian prime minister’s office told AFP that
“selamat sore” was usable in Malaysian too.
“We were happy and amused when the President said it,” he told AFP.
“Personally, it is a non-issue.”
BSS/AFP/MR/ 1155 hrs