Euphemisms as the Means of Manipulation: Case Study of Recent South Korean Press

The research aims to reveal the use of euphemism in the texts of recent South Korean press and analyze its possible impact in the frame of the current political situation. Although there are a lot of attention has been put to the notion of euphemism in Russian and Western studies, there is still little research on its manipulative functions especially in the frame of the Korean language. Thus, the question then becomes whether or not euphemisms are used in order to somehow influence public opinion. The inductive and introspective methods as well as methods of structural-semantic description and continuous sampling will be used in order to investigate how Korean mass media sources employ euphemisation. Specifically, the paper will examine two news agencies that are loyal to opposite political parties. We expect that the main amount of analyzed euphemisms will affect the recipient’s perception and can be divided into lexico-semantic and syntactic categories. Thereby the detailed analysis of the linguistic elements that is used by the Korean press representing recent political events may be helpful for the deeper understanding Korean culture and language in general.