alt Hacker NewsIt doesn't make a convincing case to me. The differences cited seem no more, perhaps less than the differences between Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish which are, at least officially, distinct languages not dialects but are nonetheless largely mutually intelligible for many native speakers.
And I'll bet that "Modern slang expressions — enthusiastically adopted by younger generations" is also difficult for elderly South Koreans; just as teenage British slang is foreign to this seventy year old Briton.
I suspect that a kind of class distinction and lack of shared recent history is behind most of the difficulty in socialisation rather then the language itself.
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As a Korean learner I think the article makes one believe it's the different meanings of words that cause problems, when it's more the fundamental difference in how the language is spoken in every day situations.
E.g. see the other comment by the Korean speaker here:
> Vocabulary changes depending on context, relationship, social distance, age, and whether the situation is public or private. North Korean speech is often more direct [...].
Also Korean slang changes incredibly fast.
Yeah, but I will point out that Sweden, Norway, and Denmark are also countries with incredibly similar political cultures, economic systems, societal norms, cultural values, and so on. I wouldn’t be surprised if the culture shock between DPRK and SK is much bigger after 70 years of tyranny and oppression.
As a wise man once said, the difference between a dialect and a language is that a language has an army and an navy
Exposure is also a path to more mutual intelligibility, even if the differences persist. You're more likely to understand a dialect that isn't yours if you've heard it before, or even better, heard it often. So while I don't know much about Korea, I suspect more contact between north and south would also bridge the gaps.