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?

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.