SEOUL — If a South Korean asks a North Korean how he is doing, the response will likely be "ilupsopneda," which literally means "not much." It is the North Korean equivalent of "I'm fine, thanks." Many South Koreans attempting a casual chat have been taken aback by this response, and perhaps have hardened their stereotypical view of North Koreans as rather blunt neighbors.

In the South, the Korean expression means: "Mind your own business!"

After six decades of living separated across a tightly sealed border, South and North Koreans find themselves divided by what used to be a common language, so much so that a person from one side often gets bewildered, amused and even mistakenly angered by what a person from the other side says.

When a North Korean says squid, it means octopus in the South; when a South Korean says octopus, it means squid in the North. A word common on both sides, "mije," means "American imperialist" in the North and "Made in the U.S.A." in the South.

It is enough of a problem that the authorities of both Koreas are bypassing their political differences and are compiling a joint dictionary of the Korean language, their first attempt to prevent their languages from drifting further apart.