McCuneâÂÂReischauer (MR; ) is a romanization system for the Korean language. It was first published in 1939 by George M. McCune and Edwin O. Reischauer. Significant work on the system was done by Korean linguists Choe Hyeon-bae, , and .
According to Reischauer, McCune "persuaded the American Army Map Service to adopt [the McCuneâÂÂReischauer system], and through the Korean War it became the foundation for most current Romanizations of Korean place names."
A variant of McCuneâÂÂReischauer is currently used as the official system in North Korea. Another variant is currently used for standard romanization library catalogs in North America. On the other hand, South Korea formerly used yet another variant as its official system from 1984 to 2000, but replaced it with the Revised Romanization of Korean in 2000.
The following are some characteristics of the McCuneâÂÂReischauer system:
McCuneâÂÂReischauer employs dual use of apostrophes, with the more common being for syllabic boundaries. Therefore, it may take some time for learners to familiarise themselves with the placement of apostrophes to determine how a romanized Korean word is pronounced. For example, â , which consists of the syllables , , , and .
In the early days of the Internet, the apostrophe and breve were even omitted altogether for both technical and practical reasons, which made it impossible to differentiate the strongly aspirated consonants , , and from the unaspirated consonants , , and , and the vowels and from and .
For example, if the diacritics in the MR rendering of the name of South Korean city Ch'à Ângju () are omitted (Chongju), it overlaps with the name of North Korean city Chongju (). There is a claim of uncertain veracity that, during the 1950âÂÂ1953 Korean War, the US Army accidentally (or almost) bombed the wrong city due to this.
As a result, the South Korean government introduced a revised system of romanization in 2000. However, Korean critics claimed that the Revised System fails to represent and in a way that is easily recognizable and misrepresents the way that the unaspirated consonants are actually pronounced.
This is a simplified guide for the McCuneâÂÂReischauer system.
The heterogeneous consonant digraphs (, , , , , , , , , , and ) exist only as syllabic finals and are transcribed by their actual pronunciation.
The following table is sufficient for the transcription of most proper names.
The following subsections are for cases not covered by the table above, or for cases where the result should be different from the table.
In this combination, the syllabic final (except , which is always ) is
If the syllabic initial is pronounced
Examples:
Any combination with the syllabic initial is transcribed based on the actual pronunciation, except when the result is [], [], or []; these are treated as (), (), and () respectively.
Any combination with the syllabic final (including and ) is transcribed based on the actual pronunciation.
The rules stated above are also applied in personal names, except between a surname and a given name. A surname and a given name are separated by a space, but multiple syllables within a surname or within a given name are joined without hyphens or spaces.
The original 1939 paper states the following:
The original paper also gives McCuneâÂÂReischauer romanizations for a number of other personal names:
George M. McCune, son of Pyongyang-based missionary George Shannon McCune, was born in Korea in 1905. After attending university in the United States, he returned to Korea (which was then under Japanese rule) in the summer of 1937 to work on his PhD dissertation for the University of California, Berkeley. In Korea, he studied at Chà Âsen Christian College (predecessor to Yonsei University) in Seoul (then called "Keijà Â") under the Korean linguists Choe Hyeon-bae, , and . Around September of that year, Japanologist Edwin O. Reischauer became stranded in Keijà  while he was en route to Beijing due to the Second Sino-Japanese War. During Reischauer's two-month stay there, he and McCune worked with Choe, Jeong, and Kim to develop what would become the McCuneâÂÂReischauer romanization system. Work continued on the system even after Reischauer departed Korea to China. Eventually, the system was published in 1939 in the journal Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society Korea Branch.
In 1980, Reischauer wrote in a letter that the system was devised at his suggestion because he "found absolutely no uniform system of any sort, and [he] needed something for the Korean names that appeared in [his] studies on the travels of the [Japanese] monk Ennin". He also wrote that they designed the system "with only scholars in mind", and that he felt it was too complicated for regular use. He expressed hope that a new romanization that "everyone would use for both scholarly and popular use [would] be worked out and adopted".
The new South Korean government adopted the system in 1948. English-language newspaper The Korea Times adopted the system in the 1950s. The system received pushback from Koreans. It came to be seen as more intuitive for foreigners and less intuitive for Koreans, as it reflected pronunciation changes that most Koreans were not consciously aware of. Fouser argued that another point of contention was related to nationalism; some disliked that the system had been developed by foreigners during the Japanese colonial period, and wanted a natively developed alternative. In 1959, the published a romanization system, which has since been dubbed the Ministry of Education system (MOE). The system was immediately controversial, especially among foreigners. Fouser evaluated the system as prioritizing use for Koreans; it had a one-to-one correspondence from Hangul to Latin script and did not reflect pronunciation changes that Hangul did not. In June 1981, a number of scholars met at the University of Hawaii's Center for Korean Studies and developed a number of proposed changes to MR. The changes were largely based on a draft proposal from the US Library of Congress and were meant to aid use by librarians. For example, it was designed to promote reversibility, which was to the interest of librarians. In the 1980s, the South Korean government began considering whether to use a more foreigner-friendly system in anticipation of the 1986 Asian Games and the 1988 Summer Olympics, which were to be held in Seoul. In 1984, a slightly modified version of McCuneâÂÂReischauer was adopted. Some South Koreans reportedly had negative reactions to the system, which they viewed as confusing and overly beholden to pronunciation.
With the spread of computers and the Internet in the 1990s, complaints and debate about MR grew. This was primarily related to the system's use of diacritics, which are difficult to access on standard keyboards. In 1997, the South Korean government began moving to revise or switch romanization systems.
In contemporary South Korea, which has since adopted Revised Romanization, MR has left a lasting legacy in a number of cases:
A variant of McCuneâÂÂReischauer is currently in official use in North Korea. The following are the differences between the original McCuneâÂÂReischauer and the North Korean variant:
The following table illustrates the differences above.
A variant of McCuneâÂÂReischauer was in official use in South Korea from 1984 to 2000. The following are the differences between the original McCuneâÂÂReischauer and the South Korean variant:
The following table illustrates the differences above.
Among the various ALA-LC romanization systems is one for Korean. It is currently used for standard romanization library catalogs in North America. It is based on but deviates from McCuneâÂÂReischauer. The following are some differences between the original McCuneâÂÂReischauer and the ALA-LC variant:
The following table illustrates the differences above.
The older (1997) version of the ALA-LC rule used for strongly aspirated consonants and for (e.g. machangaji), even though the original McCuneâÂÂReischauer paper uses the shape for both. This distinction in the older ALA-LC rule was removed in the new ALA-LC rule above.