I agree, I graduated from the Korean Basic Course at DLI, and from what I remember, the main differences between North and South are not that insurmountable fro

I agree, I graduated from the Korean Basic Course at DLI, and from what I remember, the main differences between North and South are not that insurmountable from a language perspective. Not having foreign loan words and using more pure Korean (as opposed to Sino Korean) words are the biggest differences. Certainly doesn't make them unintelligible to each other.