'Katchi Kapshida'

By Park Moo-jong

To congratulate Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on their election as the next president and vice president of the United States, President Moon Jae-in tweeted before an official statement: "I have great expectations of advancing and opening up the future of development of our bilateral relations. Katchi Kapshida."

"Katchi Kapshida" or "같이 갑시다" (in Korean) means "We go together" as a symbolic slogan of the Korea-U.S. alliance, though it is "Let's go together," if translated literally.

President Moon promptly joined other global leaders to congratulate Biden and Harris as new U.S. leaders in writing through his "private" social media.

Biden also used the term Katchi Kapshida in a special article contributed exclusively to Yonhap News Agency just days ahead of the election, pledging to strengthen the alliance with South Korea, rather than "extorting Seoul with reckless threats to remove our troops."

But this is not the point of this column. What I intend to discuss is the Romanization of the Korean phrase both leaders wrote: Katchi Kapshida.

The phrase flatly disregards the current legal Romanization formula of Hangeul, or the Korean alphabet, which came into practice in 2000 after it was revised from the then much-favored McCune-Reischauer system.

According to the revised formula, the phrase should have been "Gachi Gapsida." Of course, Katchi Kapsida based on the McCune-Reischauer system is definitely better.

The Korean language based on the creative Hangeul alphabet is not that easy for foreigners to learn. Yet, an undisputed global trend today is that the fever for learning Korean is spreading across the world, engineered by hallyu, or the Korean wave.

In particular, the desire of young people to learn the lyrics of K-pop hits by popular bands such as BTS and Blackpink is boosting the Korean language's popularity to explode in countries including the U.S., Canada, Australia, Thailand, Malaysia and elsewhere around the world.

The McCune-Reischauer system was scrapped all of a sudden in 2000, initiated by the then Ministry of Culture and Tourism led by Minister Park Jie-won, now chief of the National Intelligence Service, against strong public and foreign opposition, particularly from English newspapers that use Romanized Korean words the most.

The Korea Times was resolute in refusing to use the new system in defiance of the ministry's pleading. A top official of the ministry came to its office to ask for the change of the policy, to no avail.

However, The Korea Times had no choice but to use the formula three years later ahead of the Daegu Summer Universiade in 2003 to prevent confusion with the title "Taegu Summer Universiade."

The abrupt change cost an astronomical budget amounting at least to 500 billion won to 600 billion won ($440 million to $530 million). All road signs, names of railway and subway stations, maps and signs had to be changed, not to speak of foreign-related papers and textbooks.

What a waste of the people's money! At that time, many people doubted that the huge amount of money was used properly to comply with the introduction of the new Romanization.

The current system is more difficult for foreigners to pronounce. For instance, the "turtle ship," the famous battleship made by Adm. Yi Sun-sin during the 1592-1598 Japanese invasion of the Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910), is Romanized as "geobukseon" under the current system, compared to the previous "kobukson." Which is easy for foreigners to pronounce? Which is more accurate?"

The previous world-famed Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF) was forced to be renamed Busan International Film Festival (BIFF). Some quipped, "beef market?" How about "Kimpo International Airport" instead of the present "Gimpo" (that can be pronounced as jimpo)?

Former Finance Minister Kang Man-soo used to complain jokingly, "I have to change my surname to "Gang" according to the new formula. I am not a gangster."

Of course, the then government allowed the Romanization of surnames, existing companies' names such as Samsung (instead of Samseong) and Hyundai (Hyeondae) and some nouns like kimchi were left untouched for the convenience of people around the world who had already been exposed to these words.

For example, the following joke which was popular around 2003 tells of the seriousness about the Romanization of Korean names.

Former U.S. President George W. Bush asked his secretary of state after the presidential election in South Korea, "Who is the new leader of South Korea?"

"No, sir," the secretary replied without pause.

"No, I asked who is going to lead South Korea now?"

"Yes, No, sir," the secretary said.

Roh Moo-hyun had earlier used No and changed it to Roh later.

We need to take a lesson from Taiwan and North Korea which both have adopted a unified Romanization formula for family names.

Twenty years have passed since the implementation of the new system. Every system has its own merits and demerits. What's important is to figure out what is more convenient and more effective.

In this time of a global boom for learning the Korean language, the government needs to help foreigners learn our words more easily by modifying the Romanization formula.

Any possible change to the system will again cost a lot. But the budget will be smaller, compared to the government's spending spree for its populism. Better late than never.

Park Moo-jong (emjei29@gmail.com) is a standing adviser of The Korea Times. He served as the president-publisher of the nation's first English daily newspaper from 2004 to 2014 after working as a reporter since 1974.