There’s alread a standardized romanization system the Korean government itself uses, China Guy. Guess how they spell the K sound in that one. You can check the link I provided above to help you on that guess.
Monty, am I getting whooshed? Website uses Korea. I’m not a Korean speaker, so I’ve got no idea what the standard Korean romanization is for that sound/word. I’m guessing it’s a K instead of C but I could be wrong.
I could really care less whether it is a C or a K, however I will do my personal best to follow the lead of the Korean government. Should they decide in the future to change it to Corea, then I’ll change as well. I certainly won’t insist it should be Korea, damnit.
China Guy: I’m insisting on it because that’s the way it is in English. I already know you’ve got a bone to pick with the US government but that has nothing to do with the way the English language works. I’m stunned that you can’t understand that nor that you can’t divorce the two issues.
Pleonast: I’m also curious to exactly how large a movement the “Change the spelling to a C” is out of a population of millions.
Well, this is getting pretty far away from the original question. I’m not sure why Monty thinks that the people in Korea that want to change the English spelling of the word are “bitching” at the US (if anything, from the information provided in this thread, this movement seems to be anti-Japanese) or what China Guy’s supposed “bone to pick” with the US government has to do with anything, but frankly this is all irrelevant. If you think that the “veracity of [the] theory is null” then there’s really nothing left for you to discuss here, is there? There are other forums for debates, or for presenting hypothesises.
Assuming that Pleonast is correct, and that “Corea” is the older spelling, then why and how did the name of the country change to “Korea”? The idea that the Japanese somehow pushed through the change is pretty dubious; it sounds like a Korean urban legend. But persumably the switch happened for some reason, does anyone have any information on that?
Maybe I’m overstepping my bounds, no moderator has come in to say anything, but I’m just a bit sorry that an interesting GQ has been hijacked by an irrelevant debate that doesn’t seem to belong in this forum. To some extent Pleonast may be to blame by bolding the question in the OP that he did, but he did clarify in the post that he was seeking information on why the name change occured back in the 19th century, and has repeated that several times. The only GQ answer to the bolded question has already been provided by Monty and bibliophage. Further discussion of that, or the general practice of using names that natives of a place want used, doesn’t seem to be a GQ.
Monty where did that bone come from? I mean a pit rant a year ago about proforma visas for dual citizens does not affect they way I feel about how Korean words are romanized in America. Let’s see, or should we be spelling that Amerika since the normal indication of the word is “K”? I’ll go tell my kat. 
IMHO it’s a form of cultural imperialism or bigotry to insist that Americans dictate what people’s and countries are called. Sure, things evolve by convention, but then those conventions can change and the language changes as well. IMHO, for an extreme example to illustrate this point, it’s just ignorance if someone were to insist that Korea’s captial be spelled “Soul” or “Sole” because that’s the way it should be in English. YMMV
[another hijack]
Personally, I don’t care how this country’s name is spelled; if it changes to C, I’ll change too. But in the case of the capital city, Seoul is actually a two-syllable word in Korean. “Seo” sounds like “suh,” and “ol” sounds like “ol,” as in the first two letters of “old.” Most English speakers pronounce it the same as “soul,” with one syllable, but that isn’t the exact Korean pronunciation.
[/another hijack]
Would tae kwon-do change to tae cwon-do then as well?
Actually, under the new Romanization guidelines (as I understand them), it would probably be Tae Gwon Do…
Just as Kimpo Airport changed to Gimpo airport-- a name I find laughably funny!
My theory is that you’re seeing the C spelling right now because you just kicked Italys butt, and in Italian Korea is Corea.
Who does Korea play next? I’ll bet the signs will be in that countries language.
[yet another hijack]
Damn! I realize no one really cares, but since this is an ignorance-fighting board, I think I should correct the misinformation I posted in my last hijack. The “ol” part of Seoul is not the long o sound, as in “old”; it’s the long u sound, as in “boot.” Sounds like “suh-ool.” No way I would have got that from the English spelling, but that’s the way it is pronounced in Korean. I mean Corean.
Never mind. Carry on.
[/yet another hijack]
Here’s more paranoia of the same sort.
I found a lively similar discussion about the “true” reason for the change with Google here but unfortunately the site is gone so you can only get individual pages out of the cache. A particularly enlightening post is here.
I hope that helps answer the question.
Oh- I should’ve indicated that the most informative post is the one quoted in my third link, the one in italics. I didn’t have the patience to dig it up separately with Google, sorry.
Sorry for my long absence from my own thread; I was traveling for a few days.
Monty, I’m not sure how many Koreans support the name change.
Amok, yep, the thread’s gone wild. My intention was to determine the accuracy of the popular story about the name change. And assuming it’s untrue, what the real story is. I bolded the question to spark some interest. Maybe I can refocus this thread with the question
Why do we spell “Korea” instead of “Corea”?
Astroboy, thanks for the indepedent confirmation of the Korean story. That’s basically what I’m getting from the people I know. Including the backpedaling when asked for cites.
Melandry, thanks for the interesting Google find. That’s the kind of stuff I’m looking for.
You might try this link.
While this seems to explain how we ended up with Korea, I’m perfectly happy with spelling their name anyway they wish, especially if they find it offensive.
And Monty, perhaps you’re forgetting that even the “c” in America has the hard “k” sound. As does Canada, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cayman Islands, Colombia, Congo, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Ivory Coast, New Caledonia, and the Caicos Islands.
It seems like the name Corea would feel right at home in the English language.
In other words: it’s apparently just those seen protesting and a few others. Got it. Not a majority and not the government stance. I’ll stick with what the Korean government’s been going with and which also happens to be the incredibly obvious, yet amaaingly hard to fathom for some people, use of the K to indicate the K sound in the name of that particular country in English. You’ll also note that when I need to write the name of Korea in Korean, I either use Han Mun or I use Han Gul and spell it correctly.
Thanks for the link DMC,
Monty:
Maybe, maybe not. I’d like to hear from someone currently in Korea. (Calling Astroboy …)