[KS] dropping McCune-Reischauer for 20th/21st c. personal names

[michael Robinson]

Frank:

I always thought that we used writers, artists, and other's ideosyncratic
transcriptions if they are already published as so, or at least if we can
find such a reference.  Others not already public with a personalized
transcription would be rendered in McR.

Mike R.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Frank Hoffmann" <hoffmann at fas.harvard.edu>
To: <Koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2001 12:53 AM
Subject: [KS] dropping McCune-Reischauer for 20th/21st c. personal names



Some get easily aroused, others just look shamefully away when the
topic comes up: The McCune-Reischauer System (hereafter McR System).
Please relax, I am not trying to force a revival of this theme ...
we¹ve all had it, and enough of it. No macho talk and no
revolutionary outbursts either -- rather a specific proposal, or
maybe more of a declaration.

The South Korean governments have more than once missed the chance to
come up with any binding regulation (for her citizens) to follow any
transcription system for personal names -- as is the case in Japan
and China (both Taiwan and the PRC). Do we care? Well, it makes life
just a bit more complicated for everyone. I believe that until
recently most East Asian Studies scholars have applied the McR System
to all personal names, allowing just a few exceptions (Syngman Rhee,
Daewoo, etc.). Recently, I read a short German text about 20th
century art ... now forgot where ... but the author did painstakingly
follow the McR System with all the personal names. All was so right,
so very correct, it felt really wrong. Why? Because the text
summarized post-liberation Korean art. Nam June Paik or Lee Ufan or
Kim Tschang-yeul were not exactly well-known by the general art
interested public in 1970? But they are in 2001, at least much more
so than in 1970. Things have changed. You will probably agree that it
would be wrong to speak of ³Paek Nam-jun² as he is a U.S. citizen,
but it becomes more complicated with Lee Ufan as he was active in
Japan, and it becomes a real issue with someone like Kim Tschang-yeul
[Kim Ch¹ang-nyôl] who was active in Europe as well as in Korea. Who
knows -- even IN Korea -- what Nikki S. Lee¹s Korean name is? I saw
that for the first time two weeks ago in a New York Times article
about her (12/02/01, Sect. 9, p. 1); the South Korean press just
speaks about ³Nikki Lee² (that is, the KOREAN language press). Last
time I saw her she was here on a tourist visa, although the NYT
introduces her as ³a New York artist born in South Korea.² In short,
in our age of globalization so many Korean personalities are known by
a self-chosen rendering of their names that it will not be helpful to
refer to them using the McCune-Reischauer transcription (nor the new
SK government system).

I suggest therefore to draw a line in August 1945 (liberation of
Korea) and to make all transcriptions of personal names from that
point on a judgment call -- using McCune-Reischauer if you feel the
person you are mentioning is not very well known by his/her name in
the West, and using that person¹s own choice of naming/transcription
if that version seems to be known in the West. To be sure, there are
quite a number of Korean personalities who use/d their own romanized
version of their name but are not known by these romanizations in the
West. In such cases it makes more sense to use McCune-Reischauer.

Frank