Explain a sentence for me

Its from:

(I hope these links work for everyone)

The sentence fragment is: 싸움을 해야 되지 않을까, …

I’m really sure how all the grammar in this hangs together. I’m understanding it now as something like: I am thinking we shouldn’t end up having this fight

But I have a feeling I’m somewhat off the mark.

The conversation goes like this.

"김종배: … 이건 어떻게 받아들이세요?

이재동: 어떻게 받아들인다기보다도 이제 상당히 좀 힘들고 지루한 싸움을 해야 되지 않을까, 이렇게 받아들여집니다."

Which may be translated as:

김: … what’s your take on this?

이: It’s not really about how I take it, but I can’t help thinking we now have to engage in a rather difficult and tedious fight at this point.

싸움을 해야 하지 않을까? (Shouldn’t we have a fight?) means 싸움을 해야 될 것 같다 (It appears we should have a fight).

It’s an example of the common pattern of asking the negative rhetorically to say the positive.

For example:

  • 이렇게 하면 좋지 않을까 생각합니다 = I am thinking, wouldn’t this be the way to go. = I think this is the way to go.
  • 내가 아까 말했잖아? (말했잖아? = 말했지 않아?) = Didn’t I tell you earlier? = I told you earlier.
1 Like

Thank you for your explanation. I’m still having trouble with it - so perhaps it just needs time to sink in.