Revised Romanization of Korean (RR; ) is the official Korean language romanization system in South Korea. It was developed by the National Academy of the Korean Language from 1995 and was released to the public on 7 July 2000 by South Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism in Proclamation No. 2000-8.

The main purpose of RR is to romanize proper nouns such as place names, personal names, and business names.

Conversion process

The following steps are applied in order to construct an RR romanization from a Hangul string:

{| class="wikitable" width="700" style="text-align:center;"

|+Vowels

!Hangul

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||ㅣ

|-

!Romanization

|a||ae||ya||yae||eo||e||yeo||ye||o||wa||wae||oe||yo||u||wo||we||wi||yu||eu||ui||i

|}

Examples

  • annyeonghaseyo
  • (swap with pronunciation Hangul) jongnogu Jongno-gu (capitalize proper noun, insert hyphen before administrative unit particle)
  • (person's name; do not swap with pronunciation Hangul ) hongbitna Hong Bitna (insert space between family and given names and capitalize them)
  • (swap with pronunciation Hangul; final consonants are resyllabized to initial when followed by an initial ) ibeo

Hyphenation

In RR, hyphens can be either optional or mandatory.

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

Hyphens should not be inserted into the names of geographic features or artificial structures. For example, → Seoraksan and not Seorak-san.

The National Institute of Korean Language has stated that the use of optional hyphens should be discouraged.

Linguistic characteristics

The unaspirated consonants , , , and are represented as ⟨g⟩, ⟨d⟩, ⟨b⟩, and ⟨j⟩ respectively. The aspirated consonants , , , and are represented as ⟨k⟩, ⟨t⟩, ⟨p⟩, ⟨ch⟩. These letter pairs have a similar aspiration distinction in English at the beginning of a syllable (but unlike English do not have a voicing distinction); this approach is also used by Hanyu Pinyin.

When placed in the final position, , , and are romanized as ⟨k⟩, ⟨t⟩, and ⟨p⟩ respectively, as they are neutralized to unreleased stops: → byeok, → bak, → bueok; → byeoge, → bakke, → bueoke, → ip, → ibe.

Vowels and are written as ⟨eo⟩ and ⟨eu⟩ respectively. However, is written as ⟨wo⟩, not ⟨weo⟩; and is written as ⟨ui⟩, not ⟨eui⟩.

ㅅ in the syllable-initial position is always written as ⟨s⟩. When followed by another consonant or when in the final position, it is written as ⟨t⟩: → ot (but → ose).

is ⟨r⟩ before a vowel or a semivowel and ⟨l⟩ everywhere else: → rieul, → Cheorwon, → Ulleungdo, → Balhae. is written ⟨l⟩ whenever pronounced as a lateral rather than as a nasal consonant: → Jeollabuk-do

Phonological changes are reflected where , , and are adjacent to : → joko, → nota, → japyeo, 낳지 → nachi. However, aspirated sounds are not reflected in case of nouns where follows , and : → Mukho, → Jiphyeonjeon. For example, → eobs-eoss-seubnida.

Background

The new system attempts to address perceived problems in the implementation of the McCune–Reischauer system, such as the phenomena where different consonants and vowels became indistinguishable in the absence of special symbols. To be specific, under the McCune–Reischauer system, the consonants (k), (t), (p) and (ch) and (k), (t), (p) and (ch) became indistinguishable when the apostrophe was removed. In addition, the vowels (ŏ) and (o), as well as (ŭ) and (u), became indistinguishable when the breve was removed. Especially in early internet use, where omission of apostrophes and breves is common, this caused confusion. To this end, the system has an explicit goal of using only the 26 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet.

The system was developed in anticipation of the 2002 FIFA World Cup, which was to be partly hosted in South Korea. All Korean textbooks, maps and signs to do with cultural heritage were required to comply with the new system by 28 February 2002.

Romanizations on South Korean passports

thumb|A specimen of the identity information page of a [[South Korean passport, displaying the romanization of the bearer's name (Lee Suyeon) for international legibility.]]

A modified version of RR is recommended (but not strictly required) by the South Korean government for romanizations of people names on passports. One example of a modification is discouraging romanizations that resemble words with negative meanings in other languages. For example, is recommended to be romanized as SHIN and not the strict RR form SIN (spelled the same as sin, despite being pronounced differently). The recommendations are not strictly required; ad-hoc romanizations are allowed, and have been increasingly permitted over time due to a number of court cases.

Notes

References

  • Romanization of Korean from the National Institute of Korean Language