Linguistic Gap Analysis
Linguistic Gap Analysis: Matthew 1–28 (English → Korean)
Purpose and Method
This analysis identifies, for each of the nine Matthew curriculum doctrines, (a) what Korean vocabulary is already available and where it came from (KRV tradition, the baseline Romans package, or newly proposed Matthew-specific terms), (b) the specific weaknesses/collision risks in that vocabulary given Korea’s live religious landscape (기복신앙 shamanism, 무속신앙 folk-spirit practice, Confucian filial-piety/ancestor-rite tradition, Buddhist rebirth/liberation cosmology, and Korea’s achievement-and-exam-oriented secular culture), and (c) a recommended handling strategy for Phase 2 translation and Phase 3 teaching material. It then separates missing vocabulary (concepts for which Korean has no compact lexical item and must use periphrasis) from crowded semantic neighborhoods (concepts for which Korean has a ready word, but that word is already heavily occupied by a competing non-Christian or secular sense and therefore needs explicit doctrinal “fencing”). It records transliteration-vs-paraphrase decisions, and closes with a ranked list of the curriculum’s highest-risk ambiguities.
This document does not re-derive terms already settled by the baseline Romans package (translation_memory.json, bible_term_registry.json, doctrine_risk_registry.json) or by 08_core_glossary.md / assets/bible_term_registry.json (Matthew-specific registry). It exists to explain the linguistic reasoning behind those choices and to surface residual gaps for Phase 2 attention.
1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
1.1 The Kingdom of Heaven
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available Korean terms | 천국 (cheonguk, “heaven-country,” Matthew’s characteristic phrase); 하나님의 나라 (Hananim-ui nara, baseline Romans term, used by Matthew himself at 6:33; 12:28; 19:24; 21:31,43) |
| Weakness | 천국 in ordinary contemporary usage has drifted toward “the place good people go after death,” structurally paralleling the Buddhist Pure Land concept 극락 (geungnak). This risks reducing Matthew’s inaugurated-but-not-yet-consummated kingdom to a purely postmortem destination, losing the “already breaking in” force of 12:28 and the ethical-present-tense force of the Beatitudes (5:3,10) and Lord’s Prayer (6:10). A second weakness is structural: two Korean phrases (천국, 하나님의 나라) for one theological referent risk being heard as two different places/programs if not explicitly harmonized. |
| Recommended strategy | Retain 천국 as the primary rendering (established KRV convention; changing it now would break continuity with the entire existing Korean Bible-reading culture). Require a standing teaching note wherever 천국 first occurs in a lesson: state explicitly that 천국 = 하나님의 나라, a present-and-coming reign inaugurated in Christ’s ministry, not merely an afterlife location. Do NOT introduce a new coinage; fence the existing term rather than replace it. |
1.2 Jesus as the Promised Messiah and Son of David
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available Korean terms | 그리스도 (baseline, Messiah/Christ); 다윗의 자손 (NEW, “Son of David,” a repeated public acclamation title); 다윗의 혈통 (baseline, “seed of David,” a fleshly-descent statement) |
| Weakness | Korean has no lexical gap here — the risk is not missing vocabulary but potential collapse of two structurally distinct phrases (자손 “descendant/acclamation-title” vs. 혈통 “bloodline/genealogical fact”) into a single undifferentiated idea. If a translator or teacher uses them interchangeably, Matthew’s rhetorical pattern (a crowd/petitioner acclaiming Jesus by a messianic title, e.g. 9:27; 15:22; 21:9) gets flattened into a mere genealogical footnote, and the reverse — genealogy (ch. 1) — gets inflated into an acclamation it is not. |
| Recommended strategy | Maintain the two-term distinction established in the core glossary and Matthew term registry without exception. Add a cross-reference note at first occurrence of each explaining the other exists and why they differ (acclamation-title vs. descent-statement). |
1.3 Fulfillment of Old Testament Prophecy
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available Korean terms | 이루려 하심이라/이루어지려 함이라 (NEW, fulfillment formula); 선지자/예언 (baseline, prophet/prophecy) |
| Weakness | No missing vocabulary, but a crowded neighborhood risk: Korean folk culture retains live, widely practiced prediction-verification patterns (점 divination; 사주팔자 saju-paljja birth-chart astrology) in which a “prediction later confirmed by events” is the culturally dominant script for “a foretold thing came true.” Matthew’s fulfillment formula, repeated nine times, is structurally vulnerable to being heard through this script — a forecast that happened to land — rather than as God’s sovereign, purposive, textually anchored fulfillment of specific covenant promises. |
| Recommended strategy | Never render the formula in a way that could be back-translated as “as predicted” in the divination sense. Each occurrence should retain explicit reference to “the Lord/기록된 말씀” (what was written/spoken by the Lord) as the fulfilled subject, reinforcing this is Scripture’s own claim about itself, not folk-predictive confirmation. |
1.4 The Authority of Jesus’ Teaching
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available Korean terms | 권세 (NEW, exousia, rightful authority); 능력 (baseline, dynamis, capability/power) |
| Weakness | Korean, helpfully, already has two distinct words mapping cleanly onto Greek’s two distinct concepts (ἐξουσία vs. δύναμις) — this is a genuine strength, not a gap. The risk is translator drift: because 능력 already carries heavy baseline weight (Romans 1:16, Critical risk, contrasted with shamanistic 영력) and appears far more frequently across the whole Bible in Korean church usage, translators may reach for the familiar 능력 in authority contexts (7:29; 9:6; 28:18) out of habit, erasing the authority/capability distinction Matthew’s Greek text actually makes. |
| Recommended strategy | Enforce 권세 specifically at every exousia occurrence via translation-memory hard rule, with a validation check flagging any segment where 능력 has been substituted for a source-text exousia term. |
1.5 Righteousness Exceeding the Pharisees
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available Korean terms | 의 (baseline, dikaiosynē); 외식하는 자 (NEW, hypocrites); 온전하다 (NEW, teleios) |
| Weakness | 의 sits inside a crowded neighborhood: 의리 (uiri, loyalty-ethics/honor-code faithfulness, prominent in Korean social ethics and popular media) is phonologically and conceptually adjacent. Matthew intensifies this risk beyond the baseline Romans concern because 5:20 makes comparative righteousness (“exceeding the Pharisees”) the curriculum’s programmatic thesis — readers could hear this as “keep the social/loyalty code even more rigorously than religious professionals do,” precisely the externalized-performance reading Jesus is refuting (6:1-18; ch. 23). |
| Recommended strategy | Elevate 의 to Critical risk within this curriculum (already reflected in the Matthew term registry) and require the 의/의리 distinguishing note at every occurrence in a righteousness-exceeding-Pharisees context, not only in justification contexts as the baseline requires for Romans. |
1.6 The Church and Church Discipline
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available Korean terms | 교회 (baseline); 교회에 말하라 (NEW, the 18:15-17 procedure); 매다/풀다 (NEW, binding/loosing); 용서 (NEW, interpersonal forgiveness) |
| Weakness | 매다/풀다 is a crowded neighborhood: Korean shamanism (무속신앙) has a well-known ritual vocabulary in which a mudang “binds” curses/malevolent spirits and “looses/releases” misfortune during a gut ceremony. Absent explicit fencing, delegated ecclesial governing authority (16:19; 18:18) risks being heard as ritual-magical efficacy performed by a religious specialist rather than Spirit-guided communal discernment. A second, distinct risk: the discipline procedure itself (18:15-17) risks being assimilated to Korea’s strong 체면 (face) culture, producing public shaming rather than the restorative, repentance-aimed process Jesus describes. |
| Recommended strategy | Pair every 매다/풀다 occurrence with explicit disclaiming language (delegated ecclesial authority, not ritual binding of spirits). Teach the discipline procedure (18:15-17) alongside 용서 (18:21-35) as a single unit so restoration, not face-preservation or exclusion, is the visible aim. |
1.7 The Great Commission
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available Korean terms | 모든 민족을 제자로 삼으라 (NEW); 이방인 (baseline, gentiles); 선교 (baseline, mission) |
| Weakness | 민족 (minjok) is the identical root underlying Korea’s powerful ethnic-nationalist self-concept 단일민족 (“single homogeneous ethnic nation”). Here the collision runs in the opposite direction from most flagged risks in this pipeline: rather than a term being too narrow, there is a risk that 28:19’s universal, boundary-erasing command gets quietly re-narrowed by the reader’s own inherited ethnic-nation frame — heard as “disciple people everywhere” in the abstract while still implicitly picturing Korean-centered or homogeneous mission fields, rather than grasping the command’s deliberate erasure of any ethnic boundary to God’s people. |
| Recommended strategy | Teaching material must state the inclusive scope affirmatively and repeatedly (“every ethnic group without exception, including those culturally most unlike us”) rather than relying on 모든 (“all/every”) to do this work silently. Pair with the baseline’s universal_scope_of_gospel teaching. |
1.8 Judgment and the End of the Age
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available Korean terms | 지옥 (NEW, Gehenna); 영벌/영생 (NEW, eternal punishment/life); 재림 (NEW, parousia); 세상 끝 (NEW, end of the age); 심판 (implied throughout, not yet in registry as standalone entry) |
| Weakness | This doctrine cluster contains the curriculum’s single sharpest linguistic-doctrinal collision: 지옥 (地獄) is itself a Buddhist-origin loanword denoting one of the six samsaric rebirth realms — a temporary punishment station within an ongoing karmic cycle, from which a being is eventually reborn out. Matthew’s Gehenna is a final, personal, eternal judgment with no rebirth-exit. There is no unclaimed Korean word free of this collision; 지옥 is nonetheless the only viable established term (any alternative coinage would be unintelligible to readers and break with the entire existing Bible-translation tradition). 재림 additionally sits near a live contemporary risk: multiple Korean new-religious movements (some historically prominent) have claimed a present, living human figure fulfills Christ’s second coming — a pattern Matt 24:23-26 itself explicitly anticipates and warns against. |
| Recommended strategy | 지옥 requires a mandatory explicit-disambiguation teaching note at every occurrence (already reflected as Critical in the Matthew registry) — no exceptions, regardless of how routine the passage seems. 재림 requires linking Matt 24:23-26’s own warning directly to the contemporary Korean religious landscape rather than treating it as a purely first-century concern. |
1.9 Discipleship and the Cost of Following Jesus
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available Korean terms | 제자 (NEW); 자기 십자가를 지다 / 자기를 부인하다 (NEW); 멍에 (NEW, yoke); 상 (NEW, reward) |
| Weakness | 멍에 carries a strong negative idiomatic charge in contemporary Korean (e.g., 일제의 멍에, “the yoke of Japanese colonial rule”) — an association of oppressive, unjust, externally imposed burden. Used without fencing, Matt 11:28-30’s offer of Jesus’ “light” yoke risks landing as “a slightly less oppressive version of the same kind of burden” rather than a categorically different, gracious relationship. Separately, 상 (reward) sits close to two live cultural pulls simultaneously: Korea’s intensely achievement/merit-oriented exam-and-career culture, and the Critical 기복신앙 transactional-blessing pattern already flagged for grace in the baseline — both push toward reading heavenly reward as earned wages or a fortune granted in exchange for religious effort. |
| Recommended strategy | Explicitly contrast Jesus’ yoke with the oppressive-yoke idiom at first occurrence (11:28-30), naming the cultural association directly rather than hoping context alone will override it. Teach 상 exclusively as the Father’s gracious response to faithful endurance (paired with baseline grace guidance), never as a merit-wage or ritual-blessing exchange. |
2. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
Korean’s linguistic gap profile for Matthew is markedly different from other languages in this pipeline: true lexical gaps (concepts with literally no candidate word) are rare, because 130+ years of Korean Bible translation has already generated a mature theological vocabulary. The dominant risk category for Korean is not absence but overcrowding — established words that are doctrinally serviceable but must share semantic space with a strong non-Christian or secularized competing sense.
2.1 True Missing Vocabulary (requires periphrasis / compound construction)
| Concept | Why no single word exists | Resolution used |
|---|---|---|
| Emmanuel’s name-meaning | Korean has no native compact term equivalent to a Hebrew sign-name encoding a theological claim | Transliterate 임마누엘 + mandatory gloss 하나님이 우리와 함께 계시다 |
| Mysteries of the Kingdom | 비밀 alone does not carry “graciously disclosed truth” vs. “esoteric secret” distinction | Compound 천국의 비밀 + explicit teaching against gnosis/initiate-knowledge framing |
| Keys of the Kingdom | No existing idiom for delegated declarative-governing authority | Compound 천국 열쇠, taught jointly with 매다/풀다 |
| Abomination of Desolation | Danielic technical term with no Korean folk-religious or secular equivalent at all | Periphrasis 멸망의 가증한 것, requires supplied OT background |
| Sign of Jonah | Typological, not lexical, gap | Compound 요나의 표적 + supplied typological explanation |
| End of the Age (age vs. world distinction) | Standard Korean 세상 conflates Greek αἰών (epoch) and κόσμος (created order); no separate native word isolates “age” alone | 세상 끝, with mandatory clarifying note that this is not creation’s annihilation |
| Many called, few chosen (invitation vs. election) | Korean’s existing effectual-call term (부르심, from Romans) cannot also carry Matthew’s broader invitational sense without creating doctrinal confusion | Periphrasis using 청하다 (“invite”) rather than 부르심, explicitly distinguished in teaching |
These are lower collision-risk than the crowded-neighborhood terms below precisely because periphrasis, while requiring more instructional scaffolding, does not import a ready-made wrong meaning — it simply requires patient explanation.
2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Doctrinal Fencing
These are the higher-risk category: existing, natural-sounding Korean words that already mean something specific and different in the dominant competing framework (Buddhist cosmology, Korean shamanism, Confucian filial-piety/ancestor-rite tradition, or modern secular achievement/romance culture), such that a reader can complete the sentence correctly at a surface level while importing the wrong underlying doctrine.
| Korean Term | Christian sense needed | Competing occupant of the same word | Fencing required |
|---|---|---|---|
| 지옥 | Final, eternal, personal judgment (Gehenna) | Buddhist temporary rebirth-realm punishment within samsara | Explicit “no exit/no rebirth” clarification, every occurrence |
| 천국 | Present-and-coming reign of God, inaugurated now | ”Where good people go when they die,” paralleling Buddhist 극락 | Explicit equivalence with 하나님의 나라 + “already breaking in” teaching |
| 인자 (Son of Man) | Danielic authority-and-suffering Christological title | Homophonic collision with 仁者 (“benevolent/humane person”), a Confucian virtue-term, invisible without hanja | State explicitly as a specific title with OT background, not a character trait |
| 매다/풀다 | Delegated ecclesial governing/disciplinary authority | Shamanistic ritual binding/loosing of curses and spirits by a mudang | Explicit disclaimer against ritual-magical reading, every occurrence |
| 멍에 | Christ’s gracious, relationally different call | Idiom for oppressive, unjust imposed burden (colonial-era usage) | Direct named contrast at first occurrence |
| 사랑하다 (greatest commandment) | Committed, willed, self-giving love toward God/neighbor | Romantic-relationship connotation, heavily reinforced by K-drama/K-pop popular usage | Explicit “not primarily emotion/romance” clarification |
| 상 (reward) | Father’s gracious response to faithful endurance | Merit-wage / achievement-culture reward; adjacency to 기복신앙 transactional blessing | Pair explicitly with baseline grace non-transactional teaching |
| 유전 (tradition of the elders) | Human religious tradition Jesus contrasts with God’s actual command | Confucian transmitted teaching/ritual obligation, directly touching jesa and filial piety | Draw Jesus’ own contrast explicitly, including its bearing on filial expectations |
| 재림 | Christ’s singular, future, visible, personal return | Living-human-messiah claims of Korean new-religious movements | Link directly to Matt 24:23-26’s own warning against exactly this claim |
| 달란트 | Entrusted stewardship-and-accountability responsibility | Popular church usage (“달란트 시장”) as roughly = innate personal skill | Explicitly recover the stewardship/accountability sense alongside, not replacing, popular usage |
| 박사 (Magi) | Ancient Gentile astrologer-sages whose observation God sovereignly used | Modern Korean word for an academic doctoral degree; also a practitioner of astrological arts (cf. 사주팔자) | Clarify ancient role; avoid implying astrology’s legitimacy while not over-correcting the established KRV term |
| 시험 (temptation) | Satan’s moral/spiritual testing of Jesus | Modern Korean primary sense: academic “exam,” in Korea’s intensely exam-driven culture | Clarify as testing by a personal adversarial being, not an academic evaluation |
| 의 (righteousness, Matt 5:20 esp.) | Forensic/relational right standing before God and its lived fruit | 의리 — Korean loyalty-ethics/honor-code faithfulness | Elevate to Critical and fence at every “exceeding the Pharisees” occurrence |
Pattern observed: Korean’s crowded-neighborhood risks cluster around three sources in roughly this order of frequency across Matthew: (1) Korean shamanism/무속 (지옥*, 매다/풀다, sub-risks already flagged in baseline for 능력/성령/은혜), (2) Confucian filial-piety/ancestor-rite tradition (유전, 아버지 baseline risk, 상 partially), and (3) modern secular/achievement or entertainment culture (사랑하다, 시험, 멍에, 달란트, 박사, 상). This differs from some other languages in this pipeline where the dominant collision source is a single state ideology; Korea’s risk is distributed across three live but distinct cultural systems simultaneously, requiring teaching material to name the specific competing frame at each fenced term rather than a single generic warning.
*지옥’s competing occupant is technically Buddhist rather than shamanistic, but functions culturally alongside shamanistic afterlife/spirit concepts in popular Korean religious syncretism.
3. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
| Term | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Emmanuel | Transliterate (임마누엘) + mandatory gloss | Established KRV convention; the name itself is the point, but the meaning must always accompany it since 1:23 explicitly interprets the name |
| Hosanna | Transliterate (호산나) | Established KRV convention for a liturgical acclamation; paraphrasing (“save now!”) would lose its function as a direct public messianic confession alongside 다윗의 자손 |
| Messiah/Christ | Transliterate (그리스도, baseline) | Already fully naturalized in Korean Christian usage; no viable native paraphrase exists that would not require its own explanation |
| Abba | Transliterate (아빠, baseline) | Retained per baseline; unusually good near-cognate fit with Korean’s own intimate address term |
| Talents (parable) | Transliterate (달란트) with corrective gloss | Paraphrasing to a generic Korean word for “money/currency unit” would lose the term’s now-fixed place in Korean church culture; instead correct the popular meaning-drift rather than abandon the loanword |
| Mammon | Paraphrase (재물, “wealth/riches”), not transliterated | A transliteration (맘몬) would be unfamiliar and require its own gloss with no compensating gain; 재물 is immediately intelligible and Korea’s wealth-oriented culture makes the concept, not the exotic term, the teaching priority |
| Gehenna | Paraphrase using the established loanword 지옥, not a fresh transliteration | A literal transliteration (게헨나) would be unintelligible to ordinary readers and would abandon 130+ years of KRV convention; the far greater risk-mitigation value comes from fencing the existing familiar term rather than introducing an unfamiliar one |
| Parousia | Paraphrase (재림, “second coming”), not transliterated | 재림 is fully established, doctrinally precise Korean Protestant vocabulary; a transliteration would add no clarity and forfeit an already-precise native term |
| Sabbath | Paraphrase using established loanword-calque (안식일), not fresh transliteration | Long-established term; connects naturally to 11:29’s rest (안식) theme, an asset worth preserving |
| Magi | Retain established KRV term 박사, not a fresh transliteration (마고이) | Changing the established term would break continuity with existing Korean Bible tradition for a marginal disambiguation gain; the risk is better handled by a teaching note than a lexical change |
General principle applied: transliteration is reserved for (a) proper names/titles functioning as names (Emmanuel, Hosanna, Messiah/Christ), and (b) terms whose exotic/foreign quality is itself doctrinally load-bearing (Abba’s intimacy). Paraphrase using an already-established Korean word is preferred wherever that word, despite crowding, remains more intelligible and more continuous with existing Bible-reading tradition than a fresh transliteration would be — with the collision risk managed through mandatory teaching notes rather than lexical avoidance.
4. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities
Ranked by combined severity of doctrinal consequence and likelihood of silent (unflagged) misreading by an ordinary Korean reader with high existing Christian literacy but active folk-religious/Confucian/secular-cultural assumptions.
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지옥 (Gehenna) — Critical. The word itself denotes a temporary Buddhist rebirth-realm punishment; used for Matthew’s eternal, final judgment without correction, this is not a minor nuance loss but a direct contradiction of the doctrine at the lexical level. Highest-frequency judgment term in the curriculum (5:22,29-30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15,33).
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은혜 / 상 / grace-reward transactional collapse — Critical. Where Matthew’s reward language (5:12; 6:1-6; 20:1-16’s vineyard parable; 25:14-30’s talents) intersects with the baseline’s already-Critical 기복신앙 grace risk, an uncorrected reading could turn the entire discipleship-reward theme into a fortune-seeking exchange, undermining both the Matthew-specific reward doctrine and the baseline’s foundational grace doctrine simultaneously.
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양과 염소 / 지극히 작은 자 (Sheep and Goats, Matt 25:31-46) — Critical. Structurally reads as works-based final judgment; without explicit linkage to fruit-evidences-faith teaching (cf. 7:16-20) and the baseline’s Critical justification/grace guidance, this passage alone could functionally overturn the curriculum’s entire soteriology for a reader who takes it as the operative judgment criterion.
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인자 (Son of Man) — High, elevated by homophone risk. The single most structurally dangerous silent ambiguity in the glossary: 인자 (人子, the title) and 인자 (仁者, a Confucian virtue-term) are perfectly homophonic in Hangul with no hanja shown in ordinary Bible text. A reader can process every one of the ~30 occurrences as “Jesus, the compassionate/humane man” without ever encountering the Danielic authority-and-suffering title Matthew intends, and nothing in ordinary reading would signal the substitution occurred.
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매다/풀다 (Binding and Loosing) — High. Direct terminological overlap with an active, still-practiced shamanistic ritual vocabulary (mudang binding curses/loosing misfortune); risk is not merely conceptual softening but potential re-enchantment of church discipline/doctrine-declaring authority into ritual-magical efficacy.
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재림 (Parousia) vs. living Korean new-religious-movement messiah claims — High. Unlike most collision risks in this pipeline (which pit Christian doctrine against ancient/folk frameworks), this is a live, contemporary competing claim structure that some readers’ own extended families or communities may have direct exposure to; Matt 24:23-26 anticipates exactly this and must be taught as directly, not merely historically, applicable.
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의 vs. 의리 in Matt 5:20’s programmatic thesis — High. Because 5:20 sets up the entire Sermon’s ethical argument, an uncorrected loyalty-ethics reading doesn’t just weaken one verse — it can reframe the reader’s entire experience of chapters 5-7 as an honor-code intensification contest with the Pharisees, which is precisely the reading Jesus rejects.
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천국 vs. 하나님의 나라 (perceived “two kingdoms”) — High. Stylistic variation in the source could, without explicit harmonization, be read by a Korean audience as two different theological programs (an afterlife destination vs. a present sovereign reign), especially given 천국’s Buddhist Pure Land drift.
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멍에 (yoke) — High. The idiom’s colonial-oppression connotation actively works against the comfort Matt 11:28-30 intends to offer, functioning as a case where the natural-sounding word imports an emotionally opposite valence rather than merely an imprecise one.
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모든 민족을 제자로 삼으라 (Great Commission) vs. 단일민족 self-concept — High. Risk runs in the direction of unconsciously re-narrowing an intentionally boundary-erasing command, precisely because the shared root word (민족) makes the ethnic-nationalist frame available as a silent default rather than an explicit alternative a reader would consciously reject.
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유전 (tradition of the elders) vs. Confucian filial-piety/jesa expectations — High. Directly touches the most historically sensitive Korean church-formation wound (the jesa/ancestor-rite martyrdom history flagged for 아버지 in the baseline); Jesus’ 15:1-9 critique of tradition risks being read as a critique of filial piety itself rather than of a specific abuse, unless carefully scoped.
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청함을 받은 자는 많되 택함을 입은 자는 적으니라 vs. Romans’ 부르심 — High. A cross-document consistency risk: a reader encountering Matthew’s invitational language after internalizing Romans’ effectual-calling doctrine could conclude the effectual call is, after all, resistible/revocable, unless the two senses are actively distinguished at the point of teaching.
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달란트 (talents) vs. popular “달란트 시장” church-culture usage — Medium-High. Widespread existing misuse inside Korean church culture itself (not merely secular culture) makes this an unusually entrenched drift to correct.
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사랑하다 (greatest commandment) vs. romantic-drama connotation — Medium-High. Affects one of the curriculum’s most quoted verses (22:37-40); risk is diffuse rather than acute but touches nearly universal reader familiarity.
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시험 (temptation) vs. academic-exam primary sense — Medium. Lower doctrinal stakes than items above, but Korea’s exam culture is intense enough that the collision is highly likely to occur to most readers by default association.
5. Summary Recommendation for Phase 2
Korean’s Matthew-specific gap profile requires proportionally more explicit teaching-note scaffolding than new-term coinage, because the language’s long Bible-translation history has already filled most lexical gaps — the residual risk is concentrated in crowded-neighborhood fencing, not missing-word invention. Phase 2 segment translation should treat every term in Section 2.2 and every item in the Section 4 ranked list as requiring a mandatory [TRANSLATOR NOTE] per the 12_ai_translation_requirements.md escalation rules, even where the underlying Korean word choice itself is not in doubt, because in Korean the danger is rarely “which word to pick” and almost always “which of that word’s several live meanings the reader will silently supply.”