Wikipedia:WikiProject Korea/Romanization of Korean on Wikipedia

This essay serves as a companion to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Korea-related articles and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Korean). It provides detailed explanations of the choices related to romanization made in those guidelines (namely for when the explanations would be too lengthy), and also serves as an FAQ page.

The arguments in this page should not be interpreted as authoritative; this page just explains the current community consensus. When the MOS:KO or WP:NCKO change, this page should be updated to reflect the new consensus. This article should also ideally contain references for claims made, be discussed, and be challenged in order to improve robustness and usefulness.

Purpose

Our main goal is to make editing and reading Wikipedia easier for the average person.

Our guidelines and explanations are complicated and boring to most. You don't need to know all of it to be a good editor. These resources exist just to solve repetitive debates in advance and to standardize things.

Background

Main article: Romanization of Korean

The romanization of Korean is unfortunately really complicated.

• Korean does not have a widespread standard romanization system.
  • Currently, North Korea, South Korea, international academia, linguists, and the international media all promote different standards. Most of these standards have also changed over time.
    • Some have intense opinions on the merits of each romanization system.
    • Academics and book authors sometimes pick and choose which romanization system to use based on personal preference (and some romanize incorrectly, either by mistake or in order to reflect a perceived common practice).
  • Many Koreans still regularly use ad hoc romanizations.
  • Many dated or ad hoc spellings have become widespread and persistent.
    • Some Korean words with unusual romanizations have been adopted into the English language, like "chaebol".
  • By contrast, pinyin for Chinese and revised Hepburn for Japanese have become nearly universally accepted.
• The phonology of Korean, particularly because of its additional vowels and consonants, is not easily expressible using Latin characters.
  • Many systems have used diacritics to represent these other sounds. Notably, the breve (◌̆) is used for McCune–Reischauer and is difficult to access on computers and phones. It is thus regularly omitted, which leads to confusion (the diacritics indicate different sounds).
  • Other systems have used digraphs. Like this RR example: the eo in Incheon represents the single Korean vowel ㅓ ([ʌ]). Some argue these are unintuitive or unsightly.

Romanization of Korean on Wikipedia

Since the first version of the MOS in 2004, there has been regular confusion and debate over how to handle all of these issues on Wikipedia. These discussions have often been repetitive and wasteful.

In 2024, WikiProject Korea wrote a complete rewrite of the MOS. This effort and its relevant research and argumentation is documented in this essay.

Basic principles

Our guidelines should abide by Wikipedia's standards, including the Wikipedia:Manual of Style and Wikipedia:Article titles. We prioritize the reflection of current (not past or predicted future) romanization practices used in the majority of recent Wikipedia:Reliable sources, particularly sources that deal specifically with Korea and have significant impact (WP:COMMONNAME, WP:DIVIDEDUSE, WP:CRYSTALBALL).

As such, we try to avoid promoting romanization choices that we think are "better". That is not the job of Wikipedia: we do not lead, we follow. At the same time, we try to minimize how complicated our rules are. Unfortunately, the situation is fundamentally complicated.

Romanization systems in use on Wikipedia

We use the following romanization systems on Wikipedia:

• Revised Romanization of Korean ("RR")
  • For articles whose significance is primarily post-1945, in southern/South Korea
• McCune–Reischauer ("MR"; the 1961 version)
  • For articles whose significance is primarily pre-1945, or in post-1945 northern/North Korea
• Yale romanization
  • Allowed for linguistics examples

Why not use one romanization system for everything?

While tempting and this would be easier, this would go too far against our § Basic principles.

Why not use other systems?

We try to balance reflecting common practice and reducing complication. The systems we currently recommend are more than sufficient for most cases; asking users to learn more systems adds significant complication without adding much understanding.

Why use MR for pre-1945 topics?

International academic journals almost universally use MR when writing about Korean history. Practice in books seems to be more divided but still leaning MR, per § Romanizations used in books.

Why use 1945 as a dividing line for using RR?

Mid/late August 1945 was when the division of Korea occurred.

Other possible lines:

• 1948 (the establishment of North/South Korea)
  • Arguably less significant than the 1945 division. Little changed between 1947 and 1949, but 1944 to 1946 was a seismic change.
  • Similarly, dividing spellings for terms relating to the United States Army Military Government in Korea (1945–1948) and South Korea (1948–) seems relatively arbitrary. There was relatively clear continuity between both these entities.
• 2000 (the enactment of RR)
  • Without a doubt, less significant than the division of Korea. Notability is unlikely to change from 1999 to 2001.
  • Some recent writings use MR when talking about post-division South Korea (example).

Why use RR for South Korea?

RR is now widely used by the international and domestic English-language press for coverage of South Korea. South Korea's popular culture and soft power have boosted the use of the system. Books on contemporary South Korea also often employ the system.

Why use Yale romanization?

The international linguistics community still seems to widely use Yale. Restricting its use would mean asking our editors to convert Yale text in sources to either MR or RR; this is difficult to enforce, leaves room for errors, would be misrepresenting current practice, and adds complication.

How extensively or firmly Yale should be recommended is currently uncertain.

Why not use North Korea's romanization for North Korean articles?

NK's romanization is used by the North Korean government and state media. It is also recommended by the AP Stylebook for people names and by NK News for general cases (see § Other style guidelines).

Arguments against using North Korean romanization:

• The international academic community widely uses MR when writing on North Korea.
• AP and NK News aren't consistent in their usage of NK's romanization.
• It is based on MR, which it is also reasonably similar to.
• Minimizing the number of systems in use on Wikipedia.
  • This is currently weighted highly.
• Using MR has been the status quo since the first version of the MOS in 2004, and seemingly nobody has disputed it until 2024.

McCune–Reischauer

Why use the 1961 version of MR?

This version appears to be the most widely used. The 1961 paper is effectively a summary of the 1939 version, with minor updates to reflect more recent Korean phonology and spelling. It is missing some details that the original had (as it is a summary). We assume those details still apply; they have not been affected by the development of the Korean language.

How strictly the specifications of MR are followed seems to vary; some authors claim to use the system but romanize in ways that are either incorrect or recommended against in the original 1939 and 1961 papers.

Why not use the Library of Congress version?

This version is for librarians, not for average people. It is just too complicated for average people to use.

Common MR mistakes

• 시 should be romanized "si" (not "shi"), per the original MR. "Sh" only appears when romanizing 쉬 ("shwi").
• Syllable-final ㄹ + syllable-initial ㅎ is "rh" (not "lh").
• When "n" and "g" are pronounced separately, an apostrophe is added between them (i.e. "n'g"); "ng" is not followed by an apostrophe.

Hangul	Correct	Incorrect
신라	Silla	Shilla
쉽다	shwipta	swipta
발해	Parhae	Palhae
연구	yŏn'gu	yŏngu
영어	yŏngŏ	yŏng'ŏ

Revised Romanization of Korean

Hyphenation

For hyphens in personal names, see § RR names.

In RR, hyphens can be either optional or mandatory.

• Optional hyphens are used in two scenarios:
  1. Disambiguating pronunciation (e.g. 해운대 Hae-undae)
  2. Between syllables of a given name (e.g. 홍길동 Hong Gil-dong)
• Mandatory hyphens are for separating an administrative unit (e.g. 평창군 Pyeongchang-gun)

In general, we recommend against the use of hyphens for disambiguating pronunciation. This seems to align with the opinions of members of the National Institute of Korean Language. One of its members wrote the following:

There are good reasons for why hyphens are not mandated even though there are scenarios where a romanization can be pronounced in two different ways. Firstly, hyphens are visually intrusive symbols. For 강원, "Gangwon" is visually more comfortable [to read] than "Gang-won". [The fact of the matter] is that spellings and pronunciations do not exactly match. This is true for all languages. Even for Korean, 말 (horse) uses a short vowel, and 말 (speech; words) uses a long vowel, but we render them both in Hangul in the same way. In English, "lead" (as in "to lead") is pronounced /liːd/, but "lead" (as in the element lead) is pronounced /lɛd/, but they're spelled identically. Romanization is no exception. We must abandon the idea that romanization must exactly show pronunciation. If someone pronounces "Gangwon" as "Gan-gwon" (간권), then they should just be corrected as needed. Spelling does not perfectly show pronunciation and parts of pronunciation will need to be learned separately anyway. This is why even though we permit you to write 아에 as "a-e", we recommend you write "ae" instead.

Also, mixed use of hyphens can be confusing. For example, in Hae-undae-gu, the first hyphen is for disambiguation in pronunciation, but the second one is for separating an administrative unit. Consistently excluding optional hyphens (i.e. Haeundae-gu) makes names more immediately recognizable.

For hyphenation in people names, see § RR names.

Letter-by-letter transliteration

When reversibility is desired (namely in academic articles), RR officially allows for a letter-by-letter transcription. For example, 독립 would be rendered as doglib in the letter-by-letter transcription, whereas by its normal pronunciation spelling it'd be dongnip.

In general, we discourage the use of such transcriptions. Arguments against using it:

• They are an alternate form of RR and less commonly used (thus making them less useful and recognizable to the majority of people).
• In any situation where they may be needed, the original Hangul could be added instead. Hangul is more recognizable than letter-by-letter RR.
• While it is tempting to try and advocate for our consistent use of this system because of its reversibility with Hangul and ease of use for people who know Hangul, remember our § Basic principles.

Romanization of people names

If no WP:COMMONNAME or personal preference are known for people, we romanize their names depending on the following criteria:

MR names

The 1939 MR paper says this about people names:

In both two character surnames and two character given names the general rules of euphonic changes should be observed, and the two syllables should be written together... [For assimilating between surnames and given names,] disregard euphonic changes between surnames and given names or titles... [For the surname 李], it is pronounced in the standard dialect and should be Romanized I, but some may prefer to retain the older Romanization, Yi, because that is already the familiar form.

We recommend following the above guidance; it also appears to be commonly followed in academia. Also, "Yi" is more likely to be the WP:COMMONNAME spelling, and is also arguably more readable than "I".

For hyphenation in names, note that some authors insert hyphens into MR names anyway. Hyphenation in given names was the common practice before the introduction of MR, and the practice appears to have stuck afterwards.

RR names

Assimilated sound changes are not reflected in given names.

For given names, hyphens are officially discouraged by the National Institute of Korean Language. However, English-language press in both South Korea and abroad appear to widely use them. Per our § Basic principles, we choose to hyphenate.

Common English spellings for South Korean surnames

For South Korean surnames in English-language text, if there's evidence of a widespread common spelling we recommend the use of that spelling.

We choose to do this instead of the alternative: defaulting to standard RR spellings if common name or personal preference are not known. Defaulting to RR may have some benefit in recognizability and consistency. However:

• For the surnames where almost all people use a non-RR spelling (e.g. Park for 박; Bak), we'd be wrong almost all of the time.
  • Per naturalness, people expect to see these spellings for those names, even if they're ad hoc.
• Few people seem to actually know how RR works in detail, meaning recognizability may be weak.

How widespread a surname spelling should be before we recommend it is not certain. We also only included the top N most common surnames in order to not make the table overly lengthy. Initial commonality threshold is 80%; no prejudice against lowering it or increasing N.

Surname spelling statistics

Note: if bolded, passes the 80% threshold and thus we recommend it.

2011 passport statistics, ordered by most common in 2015

Surname (Hangul)	Spelling 1	Spelling 2	Spelling 3
김	Kim
이	Lee
박	Park
정	Jung (41.13%)	Jeong (32.17%)	Chung (15.38%)
최	Choi (88.51%)	Choe (10.20%)	Choy (0.24%)
조	Cho (69.85%)	Jo (27.95%)	Joe (0.89%)
강	Kang (95.93%)	Gang (3.39%)	Khang (0.17%)
장	Jang (74.76%)	Chang (24.46%)	Jhang (0.15%)
윤	Yoon (48.66%)	Yun (36.83%)	Youn (13.75%)
임	Lim (61.84%)	Im (26.44%)	Yim (6.21%)
신	Shin (86.71%)	Sin (12.43%)	Sheen (0.18%)
유	Yoo (38.15%)	Yu (28.12%)	You (18.44%)
한	Han (98.53%)	Hahn (1.34%)	Hann (0.05%)
오	Oh (97.08%)	O (2.14%)	Ou (0.18%)
서	Seo (77.16%)	Suh (16.97%)	Su (1.19%)
전	Jeon (54.48%)	Jun (25.01%)	Chun (10.42%)
권	Kwon (74.82%)	Gwon (9.30%)	Kweon (7.45%)
황	Hwang (95.34%)	Whang (2.80%)	Hoang (0.69%)
안	An (57.77%)	Ahn (39.89%)	Ann (1.90%)
우	Woo (97.58%)	Wu (0.97%)	U (0.31%)

2007 examination of 63,000 passports

Surname (Hangul)	Spelling 1	Spelling 2	Spelling 3
김	Kim (99.3%)	Gim (0.6%)	Ghim (0.01%)
이	Lee (98.5%)	Yi (1%)	Rhee (0.2%)
박	Park (95.9%)	Bak (1.8%)	Pak (1.7%)
최	Choi (93.1%)	Choe (6.5%)	Choy (0.09%)
정	Jung (48.6%)	Jeong (37%)	Chung (9.2%)

This 2015 news article says that, for 정, a passport examination had 62.22% of people using "Jung" and 28.25% using "Jeong".

North Korean romanization

At present, we do not use North Korean romanization on Wikipedia except for cases of WP:COMMONNAME. We considered applying the rules of North Korean romanization for names to MR, but it was argued that doing so was too arbitrary and inconsistent.

Regardless, below is what North Korean romanization recommends for people names. We document this here for ease of access.

Spaces are given between the first and second names of a person and the first sounds of the names are written in capital letters and in the names of Chinese character origin, spaces are given between each letter. When the first sound of the second syllable becomes vocal, it is transcribed in a relevant voiceless letter.

e.g.

• 김꽃분이 Kim KKotpuni
• 박동구 Pak Tong Gu
• 안복철 An Pok Chŏl

Romanization of titles of works

Per MOS:NONENGTITLE, how titles are capitalized depends on the language. For works with Korean titles, it is widely recommended to use sentence case when romanizing. This is the common practice from The Chicago Manual of Style, which itself is widely used by Korean studies journals (see § List of style guidelines for Korean studies journals). For which romanization to use, we break with the practice of journals (which widely use MR) and recommend the use of whichever romanization system is otherwise used in the article.

References

Sources

• The University of Chicago Press Editorial Staff (2024). The Chicago Manual of Style (18th ed.). University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226817972.
• The Rules of Latin Alphabetic Transcription of Korean Language (PDF). Tenth United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names. North Korea. 19 July 2012. pp. 1–8 – via United Nations.
• McCune, George M.; Reischauer, Edwin O. (1939). "The Romanization of the Korean Language Based on Its Phonetic Structure". Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society Korea Branch. 29. Royal Asiatic Society Korea Branch: 1–55.
• Lee, Ki-Moon; Ramsey, S. Robert (2011). A History of the Korean Language. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-66189-8.

Appendix

List of style guidelines for Korean studies journals

• The Journal of Korean Studies: [1]
• Korean Studies: [2]
• Korea Journal: [3]
• Acta Koreana: [4]
• North Korean Review: [5]
• Review of Korean Studies: [6]
• European Journal of Korean Studies: [7]
• International Journal of Korean History: [8]
• Seoul Journal of Korean Studies: [9]

Other style guidelines

• The Chicago Manual of Style (paywall)
  • 11.95

    McCune–Reischauer, however, in addition to being found in older sources, is also used as the basis of the Korean romanization table from the US Library of Congress and is the most widely used system in North America. A version of McCune–Reischauer is used as the official system in North Korea.

  • 11.96

    Hyphens are often inserted between two combined syllables to clarify pronunciation, as in the word jung-ang (중앙, “center/central”); however, this type of hyphen is rarely used in place-names, as can be seen in the name of the Jungang railway line. Hyphens are commonly used between syllables in Korean given names, as in Chang Wang-rok (장왕록), the name of the South Korean writer, whose given name would be strictly romanized as Wangrok (see also 8.18).

  • 11.97

    Although capital letters do not exist in Chinese, Japanese, or Korean, they are introduced in romanized versions of these languages where they would normally be used in English. In hyphenated names, only the first element is capitalized in romanized Chinese, though both elements may be capitalized in Japanese (and are sometimes capitalized in Korean).

  • 11.98

    As in English, titles of books and periodicals are italicized, and titles of articles are set in roman and enclosed in quotation marks. The first word of a romanized title is always capitalized, as are many proper nouns (especially in Japanese and Korean)...
    [e.g.] Cho Nam-joo, 82 nyeonsaeng Gim Jiyeong [Kim Ji-young, born 1982]

• AP Stylebook (paywall)

  • The style and spelling of names in North Korea and South Korea follow each government’s standard policy for transliterations unless the subject has a personal preference. North Korean names are written as three separate words, each starting with a capital letter: Kim Jong Un. Use Kim on second reference. South Korean names are written as two names, with the given name hyphenated and a lowercase letter after the hyphen: Moon Jae-in. Use Moon on second reference. For South Korean place names, use the revised Romanization spellings introduced by the South Korean government in 2000: Incheon (formerly Inchon), Busan (formerly Pusan). In both Koreas, the family name comes first.

    — AP Stylebook, 55th edition (2020–2022)

  • Note: Its guidance for North Korean names is partly incorrect. North Korean names do not always use spaces (namely when the names are native Korean names).
  • Note: verified that, for names, hyphenation for SK and spacing for NK has existed since at latest 1996. The SK practice carried over, even past the promulgation of RR (in which hyphenation is discouraged).
• NK News
  • User:Seefooddiet emailed NK News and confirmed that their style guidelines ask for the use of North Korean romanization.

    We use North Korea's official romanization system for North Korean words and names (ex. Kim Jong Un), and South Korea's official romanization (revised romanization) for South Korean words (ex. Busan, not Pusan). However, we make exceptions to account for individuals' preferred way of romanizing their names, as well as for cases where a non-standard spelling is well established (ex. Syngman Rhee).

Romanizations used in books

MR

• From Stalin to Kim Il Sung, The Formation of North Korea, 1945-1960 (2002) by Andrei Lankov
• Crisis in North Korea (2005) by Andrei Lankov
• The War for Korea, 1945-1950 (2005)
  • No diacritics
• Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea (2009) by Mark Caprio
• A History of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present (2010) by Michael Seth
  • Uses the Library of Congress system
• History of the Korean Language (2011) by Ki-Moon Lee and S. Robert Ramsey
• The Real North Korea (2013) by Andrei Lankov
• Fighting for the Enemy: Koreans in Japan's War, 1937-1945 (2013) by Brandon Palmer
  • names with hyphens and assimilation
• Yi Sang: Selected Works (2020) by various
  • names with hyphens and no assimilation, inconsistent and mistakes

RR

• Brief Encounters: Early Reports of Korea by Westerners (2016) by Brother Anthony and Robert Neff
  • Names with hyphens
• Reading North Korea (2020) by Sonia Ryang
  • Names with hyphens
• Samsung Rising (2020) by Geoffrey Cain
• Passcode to the Third Floor (2024) by Thae Yong-ho, translated by Robert Lauler
  • Even for NK topics.