22 February 2005

South Korean Romanization Nazis

Diversity-challenged South Korean opposition Grand National Party legislator Kim Choong-whan wants to legislate standard romanization for Korean names in English (and presumably other languages that use the latin alphabet). If he were serious, he would have first changed the spelling of his own name to Gim Chung-hwan (which google translates as Kim Insect Exchange).

What would Bak Jeong-hui think? This is an especially sensitive issue in Korea, whose citizens were forced to change their names under Japanese colonial rule.

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