By Lee Hyo-sik
The United States and the United Kingdom have agreed to follow the Korean romanization system.
Books, maps and other materials published in the U.S. and Britain currently use names of Korea’s geographical locations under the McCune-Reischauer (MR) system, which spells Korean characters differently from the nation’s official romanization system.
But it will likely change soon as the two English-speaking countries are moving to adopt Korea’s own Roman-alphabet spelling system, a local expert on geographical naming said Monday.
Chang Dong-hee, ambassador at large for geographical naming at the Northeast Asian History Foundation, said representatives from the U.S. and Britain told him that they agreed to romanize names of locations in Korea under the Asian nation’s spelling method during a meeting of the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) held in Austria from May 2 to 6. He attended the meeting as one of Korea’s representatives.
“They told us that they’ve decided to mark Korea’s geographical names in accordance with our romanization system. We have been pushing the U.S., Britain and other countries to adopt our method since 2000,” Chang said. “It is quite significant that the world’s two largest publishing giants are recognizing our way of romanizing Korean characters.”
The current system, adopted under former President Kim Dae-jung in 2000, replaced the MR system, which had been the romanization standard in Korea since its invention in 1937 by Americans George McCune and Edwin Reischauer.
The MR system is still widely used by many non-English-speaking countries in romanizing their own characters, including North Korea.
For instance, the city of Busan is spelt “Pusan” under the MR system; Daejeon is “Taejon,” Dongdaemun is “Tongdaemun,” and Gimpo is “Kimpo.”
“So far, there has been no global standard for spelling Korea’s geographical names in the English alphabet. But following the decisions by the U.S. and Britain, we expect our system to become an international standard guideline in the near future,” Chang said.