I haven’t had a chance to blog much about it but I made a trip of almost a week to Cheju-do. The original purpose was for a Fulbright researcher conference where all the junior researchers presented on the progress of their research but I went early with one of my fellow researchers because the conference was only a few days after April 3rd. This year is the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the April 3rd, 1948 uprising on Cheju island. We went early to participate in various memorial events, visit the Cheju 4.3 peace park, and the huge museum just opened in the park, and I was also able to attend an international conference on the uprising. I may blog more about Cheju 4.3 over at Frog in a Well - Korea but in the meantime, here is a quick google map mashup of places visited, something I was able to create quickly since I saved various locations on my GPS reader.
April 20th, 2008 at 23:06
When I first looked at the map, I thought the icon of the Peace Park was for a camping area because it looked like a wooden or plastic table with chairs attached, which one can find often in camping spots… well, in some parks too, I now realise.
I think you might have thought of how to write ‘제주’ in English and, according to the current Romanisation of the Korean alphabet (revised in 2000), as you know well, it is written ‘Jeju’-well, of course I know that, if I am truly strict with it, I should also write my name ‘Seongyeong’.
Anyway, not only for geographical names but also academic terms in Korean studies, do you have a standard you follow? I have often seen that you wrote in old-type system, both in Muninn and Frog in a Well.
April 21st, 2008 at 0:38
Good question: I am a bit inconsistent. However, scholars in the West usually follow the McCune-Reischauer system instead of the new system except for the names of famous places and people, which have all kinds of strange spellings. Your name for example, follows neither the old or new system. In the old system, your name would be Sŏngyŏng. On computers where it isn’t easy to type ŏ they sometimes use ô.
My biggest complaint about the new system is the use of the same consonant at the beginning and the middle of words when the letter is the same. I know they did this for consistency but the consequence of this is that foreigners have a huge problem pronouncing Korean. When foreigners try to pronounce Busan, they start with a b. However, anyone who isn’t Korean will tell you that Busan does not sound like it starts with a b. Nor Does Jeju start with a “j” sound. Even if it isn’t as aspirated as the ‘p’ or ‘ch” in English, Busan sounds a lot more like Pusan and Jeju sounds a lot closer to Cheju than the new spelling allows for.
You could argue that no foreigner can guess how to pronounce ŏ or ŭ, but at least they will guess it is one sound instead of two. If people who don’t know any Korean try to pronounce Seongyeong, they are very likely to guess that your name sounds like Se-ong-kye-ong instead of Seon-gyeong. The use of letters ŏ and ŭ maybe a bit strange for foreigners but so are ø, å, and æ in Norwegian, or ö in Swedish or in German, and all the other various letters found in other languages. Why can’t Korean have them too?