<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><HTML><BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffff"><FONT BACK="#ffffff" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=3 PTSIZE=12 FAMILY="SERIF" FACE="Times New Roman" LANG="0">Dear all,<BR>
<BR>
For those who need a regular fix of romanization wars, this is fun.<BR>
And the table is useful.<BR>
<BR>
Can't say I much care for Prof Kim's system.<BR>
As we says in Yorkshire: Yee Baegahm!<BR>
<BR>
best wishes<BR>
Aidan<BR>
<BR>
AIDAN FOSTER-CARTER<BR>
Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Sociology & Modern Korea, Leeds University <BR>
Home address: 17 Birklands Road, Shipley, West Yorkshire, BD18 3BY, UK <BR>
tel: +44(0) 1274 588586 (alt) +44(0) 1264 737634 mobile: +44(0) 7970 741307 <BR>
fax: +44(0) 1274 773663 ISDN: +44(0) 1274 589280<BR>
Email: afostercarter@aol.com (alt) afostercarter@yahoo.com website: www.aidanfc.net<BR>
[Please use @aol; but if any problems, please try @yahoo too - and let me know, so I can chide AOL]<BR>
<BR>
___________________<BR>
<BR>
</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" BACK="#ffffff" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=6 PTSIZE=20 FAMILY="SERIF" FACE="Times New Roman" LANG="0">'Money Leaks Out Between Cheju and Jeju'<BR>
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http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200611/kt2006110216433611990.htm<BR>
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By Ryu Jin<BR>
Staff Reporter <BR>
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Cheju and Jeju _ are these two the same place? <BR>
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On what is officially called Jeju Island, travelers can find ``Cheju'' written on many signboards such as that of Cheju National University. And there is an elderly economic scholar, who has staged an uphill battle to end the confusion between the two. <BR>
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Kim Bok-moon, 75, an honorary professor of Chungbuk National University and chairman of the Research Institute for Korean Romanization (KOROMA), devoted most of his adult life to devising a ``rational'' romanization system. <BR>
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``An astronomical amount of money is leaking out even at this moment due to the confusion caused by the wrong Romanization system,'' Kim said in an interview with The Korea Times. ``We should end this confusion as soon as possible.'' <BR>
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</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" BACK="#ffffff" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=4 PTSIZE=14 FAMILY="SERIF" FACE="Times New Roman" LANG="0">Total Confusion </FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" BACK="#ffffff" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=3 PTSIZE=12 FAMILY="SERIF" FACE="Times New Roman" LANG="0"><BR>
Romanization is a method to represent the words of a language that has a different writing system using the Roman alphabet, also known as the Latin alphabet. China, Japan and South Korea have different romanization systems because their languages have different pronunciation structures. <BR>
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Hangul, the Korean alphabet, was first romanized using the McCune-Reischauer (M-R) system in the early 20th century, when a number of foreign missionaries came to Choson. But the country's romanization policies fluctuated in the following decades. <BR>
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``Confusions we experience today have been caused largely by the arbitrary attitudes of some armchair linguists and misguided government officials,'' Kim said, explaining how the latest system was enacted in July 2000. <BR>
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Scrapping the M-R system, the government, then led by Kim Dae-jung, adopted a new system, shifting ``Pusan,'' ``kobukson,'' or turtle ship, and ``Koryo'' into ``Busan,'' ``geobukseon'' and ``Goryeo.'' <BR>
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Kim considered the new formula a total failure because it seemed like a return to the old Ministry of Education system, which was discarded in 1984. <BR>
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Under the new guidelines, writers are to transcribe four consonants (?, ?, ?, ?) into g, d, b and j instead of k, t, p and ch, respectively, regardless of whether they are used as voiceless or voiced sounds. <BR>
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In the M-R system, the Korean g (?) is transcribed as k when it begins a word or when it ends a syllable, as can be seen in Kimpo and Koryo. But under the revised system, they are written out as Gimpo and Goryeo. Likewise, with Pusan and Cheju, which were changed to be Busan and Jeju. <BR>
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``As for the vowels, the new format employed eo for ?, and eu for ?, under which Kobukson and Choson are changed into geobukseon (?????) and Joseon (???),'' Kim said, illustrating some of the cases that he saw as creating funny sounds. <BR>
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To block the new method, he even tried legal action against some linguists at the National Academy of Korean Language (NAKL) and officials at the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. He submitted a petition to then-President Kim Dae-jung. <BR>
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``I told the linguists who led the change that the romanization system should be basically for foreign people rather than the locals,'' Kim told The Korea Times. ``What I heard from them was `When you're in Rome, do as the Romans do.''' <BR>
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He conducted an experiment along with KBS TV at the Kimpo International Airport, where foreigners used to arrive, and in Itaewon in downtown Seoul to prove the ``absurdity'' of the new system. <BR>
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He asked a number of English speakers who had little knowledge of Korean or its romanization system to pronounce several written words, including ``abeoji (father)'' and ``Bucheon.'' Most of them read them as ???? (a-be-o-ji) and ??? (bu-che-on),'' far distant from the original sounds of ??? and ??. <BR>
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According to Kim, 16 out of the newly romanized 21 vowels were out of sync with the actual sounds when they are read by foreigners who don't know that eo should be pronounced as ?. <BR>
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But the government showed its rigidity by allowing no exception to the new guideline except for kimchi and taekwondo, which have already become internationally recognized words. <BR>
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According to Kim, the Cheju provincial government has also asked the central government to allow using Cheju as an exception, saying that Cheju Island is already a famous international tourist destination. <BR>
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However, the government rejected its demand, citing the need to keep in line with other cities and provinces. Accordingly, the resort island had to change its tourist guide and public relations materials as well as its road signs. <BR>
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``The emblem symbolizing the island with its name Cheju, which was made in 1999 at a cost of 250 million won (about $265,000), became useless because the name was changed into Jeju,'' Kim said. <BR>
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</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" BACK="#ffffff" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=4 PTSIZE=14 FAMILY="SERIF" FACE="Times New Roman" LANG="0">Loss of National Interests </FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" BACK="#ffffff" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=3 PTSIZE=12 FAMILY="SERIF" FACE="Times New Roman" LANG="0"><BR>
The English-language media, including the state-sponsored Yonhap news agency and the Korea Herald, resisted the change for a period of time. But, as time went by, all the news media gave in to the new system except The Korea Times. <BR>
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What Kim called a ``loss of national interests'' got more serious when ``Koguryo'' and ``Dokdo'' became objects of historical and even territorial rows with China and Japan in the past couple of years. <BR>
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At a time when all Chinese media wrote the ancient Korean kingdom as ``Koguryo,'' South Korean papers, except The Times, spelled it ``Goguryeo.'' It was later unified as Koguryo since even the UNESCO's World Heritage called it Koguryo. <BR>
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Dokdo, a set of islets held by South Korea, had also been divided into ``Tokto'' and ``Dokdo.'' The Korea Times, which still abides by the M-R system, decided last year to accept a government request to unify them into Dokdo, as Tokyo stepped up its efforts to lay claim on the islets known as ``Takeshima'' in Japanese. <BR>
But the foreign news media and Web sites are still left confused between the different words. Web users could find 208,000 results on Google (www.google.com) with the keyword Koguryo, but they can get 113,000 others with Goguryeo. <BR>
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Results for Dokdo tops about 548,000, but still there are 113,000 other sites for Tokto and 127,000 for Tokdo on Google. Takeshima? 656,000! There are hundreds of thousands of other examples showing such divides and confusions. On Yahoo (www.yahoo.com), one can find 707,000 Web pages for Jeju and 363,000 others for Cheju, though they refer to the same place. <BR>
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</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" BACK="#ffffff" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=4 PTSIZE=14 FAMILY="SERIF" FACE="Times New Roman" LANG="0">`Not Too Late' </FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" BACK="#ffffff" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=3 PTSIZE=12 FAMILY="SERIF" FACE="Times New Roman" LANG="0"><BR>
Calls for a revision of the current romanization system have been gaining ground in the past several years as the confusion continues on the roads, on signboards and in government documents. <BR>
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Some 75 South Koreans said the current system does not reflect the original pronunciation of hangul properly, according to a survey last month by the Yoido Institute, a think tank for the opposition Grand National Party (GNP). <BR>
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Of the 2,150 adults polled, 66.1 percent wanted the current guidelines to be revised in spite of the expected financial cost, according to the survey conducted on the occasion of the 560th anniversary of the Hangul Day on Oct. 9. <BR>
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``Disasters have already started to happen. We can easily find serious confusion here and there,'' said Kim, who devised his own romanization method. ``We must correct the mistake without delay before it is too late and adopt a proper system.'' <BR>
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Other critics also point out that the romanization system should be revised in a way that best reflects the characteristics of the Korean language and say that the future reunification of the two Koreas should also be taken into consideration. <BR>
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North Korea has a rule similar to the M-R system, which writes its cities and places in English as ``Pyongyang,'' ``Kaesong'' and ``Mt. Kumgang'' _ not ``Pyeongyang,'' ``Gaeseong'' and ``Mt. Gumgang.'' <BR>
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North Korean linguists proposed the unification of the different romanization systems used by South and North Korea in a meeting in Berlin in 2002 between linguists from the two Koreas. <BR>
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But the South Korean government even changed the name of the North's capital; no foreign country in the world spells Pyongyang as ``Pyeongyang.'' <BR>
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Those who want to contact professor Kim are welcome to send e-mails to him at bmkim2439@hanmail.net. <BR>
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jinryu@koreatimes.co.kr <BR>
11-02-2006 16:43 <BR>
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Government-enacted guidelines even changed the name of another country's capital. North Korea's capital is spelled as Pyeongyang instead of Pyongyang on a milepost at Torasan Station on the inter-Korean railway in the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Koreas in this file photo. /Korea Times <BR>
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Kim Bok-moon, a professor emeritus of Chungbuk National University, speaks during an interview with The Korea Times. Korea Times <BR>
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