Jjokbari is an ethnic slur in the Korean language

Korean language

Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...

 used to refer to Japanese people

Japanese people

The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...

. According to one survey, it was Korea's second-most common slur against Japanese people (ahead of waenom and behind ilbonnom, both meaning roughly "Japanese bastard(s)").

Origin

The National Institute of the Korean Language notes that it is grammatically a noun

Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

, and defines it as:

1. Walking with only one foot
2. Foot split into two, two-hooved
   Hoof
   A hoof , plural hooves or hoofs , is the tip of a toe of an ungulate mammal, strengthened by a thick horny covering. The hoof consists of a hard or rubbery sole, and a hard wall formed by a thick nail rolled around the tip of the toe. The weight of the animal is normally borne by both the sole...
   
    foot
3. A word which conveys a disparaging view of Japanese people

Jjokbari is generally accepted as literally meaning "pig's foot". This is suggested to evoke a comparison between the appearance of a pig's cloven hooves

Cloven hoof

A cloven hoof is a hoof split into two toes. This is found on members of the mammalian order Artiodactyla. Examples of mammals that possess this type of hoof are deer and sheep. In folklore and popular culture, a cloven hoof has long been associated with the Devil.The two digits of cloven hoofed...

 and the feet of a person wearing tabi

Tabi

are traditional Japanese socks. Ankle-high and with a separation between the big toe and other toes, they are worn by both men and women with zori, geta, and other traditional thonged footwear. Tabi are also essential with traditional clothing—kimono and other wafuku as well as being worn by...

(traditional Japanese-style socks which have a separation between the big toe and its neighbor, to allow the wearing of thonged footwear). Alternatively, it may refer to the resemblance between the sound made by a pigs' hooves and that made by a person wearing geta

Geta (footwear)

Geta are a form of traditional Japanese footwear that resemble both clogs and flip-flops. They are a kind of sandal with an elevated wooden base held onto the foot with a fabric thong to keep the foot well above the ground. They are worn with traditional Japanese clothing such as kimono or yukata,...

(traditional Japanese wooden sandals) when they are walking. However, a third theory states that jjok instead means "piece", with the intended implication being that Japanese shoes are incomplete compared to Korean shoes. Unlike Korean-style straw shoes which completely cover the foot, Japanese-style straw shoes consisted only of a sole and straps to bind it to the foot, leaving the top part of the foot exposed.

In Japan

The term has also been borrowed into Japanese language

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

 spoken by ethnic Koreans in Japan, where it is rendered Choppari. Its usage by Koreans in Japan is roughly comparable in social context to that of honky

Honky

Honky is a racial slur for white people, predominantly heard in the United States...

 in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. The form ban-jjokbari (literally, "half pig-foot") originated as a derogatory reference to Japanised Koreans during the Japanese colonial period in Korea

Korea under Japanese rule

Korea was under Japanese rule as part of Japan's 35-year imperialist expansion . Japanese rule ended in 1945 shortly after the Japanese defeat in World War II....

; later, it came to be used by people in Korea to refer to ethnic Koreans in Japan. The Japanised pronunciation of this form, ban-choppari, is also widely used by Koreans in Japan, either to refer to Japanised Koreans or to people of mixed Japanese and Korean descent.