Word.ws English Dictionary

minjung

minjung noun: in South Korea, peasants or working-class people.

Noun

minjung pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) In South Korea, peasants or working-class people.
    • The minjung have learned to dream of a world from which oppression, conflict and suffering have been removed; a world where they are no longer the ruled, but the rulers of their own lives and destinies, and the subjects of their own history.1996, Sang Taek Lee, Religion and Social Formation in Korea, page 171
    • Therefore the theologians' main concern was not dealing with individual poor people but rather to do with social process and the system which prevents the minjung from coming out of their misery.2008, Sebastian CH Kim, Christian Theology in Asia, page 140

Origin of minjung

From Korean 민중(民衆) (minjung), from Middle Chinese 民眾 (MC mjin tsyuwngH, “common people, the masses”). Compare Mandarin 民眾 /民众 (mínzhòng).

Questions about minjung

What does minjung mean?
Minjung means in South Korea, peasants or working-class people.
What part of speech is minjung?
Minjung is a noun.

Words near minjung in the dictionary

  1. Minjarezes
  2. Minjary
  3. Minjay
  4. minjiangite
  5. minjok
  6. minjung
  7. mink
  8. mink coat
  9. mink coats
  10. mink frog
  11. mink frogs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: minjung (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “minjung.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/minjung. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.