Pusan? Busan? Taegu? Daegu?

Last year on May, I went on a military mission as a translater in Gwangyang, Korea for months. One of my US Army friends asked me, "Why did Korea change its names of places?" "What do you mean?", I said. "I know Busan used to be Pusan, and Daegu, Taegu..." Then I got the point.

"Oh, It didn't change names. Names are still same but the expression... I mean......."

There is a specialized way called 'Romanization System'() for Korean expressions of foreign languages based on alphabets in Korean, due to Koreans using just one mother tongue. I know the system has had various issues related with all around Korea, among scholars and citizens. So I will talk about a little 'chaos' around certain pronunciations and expressions.

It has been a history of confusions between the 2 different systems in the past and of now. The Romanization System in the past was based on phonology, the linguistic study of speech sounds in a particular language. In plain words, it is academically right at least.

For example, when Koreans pronounce '', they think it is Busan. However, when Americans listen to the sound of Koreans reading '', they think it is rather similar to Pusan than Busan.

In Korean, '' and '' are bilabial (two-lip) consonants. Koreans tell one from the other owing to if it is aspirated.

But in English, [b], [p], [v], [f] are them. If somebody asked an English user why [b] is different from [p], he or she would answer that [b] is voiced, but [p] is unvoiced.

According to phonology, it is hard for English speakers to understand voiced sounds spoken unvoiced by Koreans, who are not used to tell voiced sound from the unvoiced. Instead, they are used to aspiration which isn't that 'decicive' in normal English conversations.

Let's come back to the system. Koreans are supposed to express English pronunciation with it. That is, they should speak [b], [p], [v], [f] with '' and '' when they speak in Korean. Doing 4 with 2 seems uneasy.

Since the Romanization System has been set in 1984--the first national scheme was set in 1959--many Koreans have felt uncomfortable for those Pusan and Taegu. Because they thought [pusan] is just [pusan], not [usan] as well as [taegu] is not [aegu].

That is, Korean people imagine the pronunciation as [] (aspirated p) exactly, not [p] (non-aspirated p), when they see the alphabet 'p'. The same rule goes with the alphabet 'd', too.

So, New Romanization() was released in July 2000. it substituted Busan and Daegu for Pusan and Taegu. Koreans got to feel comfortable. However, English speakers could not only find any 'voiced [b]' from that 'Busan', but also voiced [d] from Daegu.

It comes down to this. Koreans think aspiration important but, English speakers consider voicing more. The New Romanization is rather for Koreans to recognize English in Korean more conveniently.


*For those who are interested in the international phonetic alphabet (click here)
*Busan is the second biggest city in Korea.
*Daegu is one of 6 metropolitan cities in Korea.