Talk:Names of Korea

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Korea did not "become independent" from China: Korea had been a tributary state of China, but this is different from the western conception of a colony: Japan was a tributary state of China until the 17th century, but we don't talk about Japan becoming independent. --Sewing 16:41, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Korea did gain the full independence as a result of the Sino-Japanese War.

Quote from the Treaty of Shimonoseki:

Article 1

China recognises definitively the full and complete independence and autonomy of Korea, and, in consequence, the payment of tribute and the performance of ceremonies and formalities by Korea to China, in derogation of such independence and autonomy, shall wholly cease for the future.

Since the traditional order of East Asia was different from international law of European origin, Korea was not a dependency of China in the sense of international law. But once China accepted the Western order, she attempted to interpret traditional "tributary" as dependency. Then the Qing Dynasty dispatched Yuan Shikai to Seoul and interfered in the internal affairs of Korea. The Sino-Japanese War finally ended such a relationship. --Nanshu

Clarification

First of all, the term is not "tributary," but "suzerain" (종주국). It is different from a tributary state, which only offers monetary contributions. In a suzerainity the kingdom is still obliged to the empire it serves: the king is still, ad jura, the vassal of the Emperor. He must, under request, provide not only monetary tributes (which seems to be the reason why so many Westerners seem to think of it as a tributary state) but also troops and sometimes labor if asked. There is mention of Korean troops helping the Chinese empire repell Russian incursions in Harbin, etc. even before the Sino-Japanese War.

De facto, however, the king is semi-independent-- which was true of the relationship between Imperial China and Korea. Excepting the period of the Mongol Invasions, Koreans were generally allowed to keep their own language and culture, as well as have their own monarchy and appoint their own governors. The citizens of Korea paid no direct taxes to the Chinese Empire, since the people of Korea were not in theory direct subjects of the Chinese Emperor. However, since the Wang (or King) of Korea was a vassal of the Emperor, the state had to pay a tribute each year, in addition to the other amenities mentioned above.

If you find this confusing, just consider the Holy Roman Empire: the various principalities of the Holy Roman Empire not only elected their own princes, but often times had their own currencies, imposed taxes on goods from other principalities, and more often then not fought against each other. Sometimes the princes would even fight against the Holy Roman Emperor himself, usually through regional alliances sometimes even involving the very Count Palatines (i.e. those nobles who elected the next Holy Roman Emperor) in the frey.

It should also be noted that there was none of this so-called "Chinese intervention." If any, the meddling happened from the Japanese side, which forced Korea at gunpoint to accept its obscene treaties. The Chinese envoy was actually asked on behalf of the Joseon King, who asked for military intervention from the Chinese Emperor, in order to curb the Japanese military ambitions on the Korean Peninsula.

Since the Chinese Emperor was an overlord of the Wang 왕, it was his duty to provide help. Imperial Japan would later use this as "proof" of Chinese meddling in politics and made it another excuse to consolidate their ambitions in Korea.

The Chinese Empire initally did help, but China itself was decaying to the point of no return so there was nothing it could really do.

The reason Japan forced China to declare Korea as 'indepent' was because they wanted to end China's jurisdictional claims over the Peninsula. This is why they forced Korea to declare itself an "Empire." See: Korean Empire. By doing so the Japanese were setting the legal grounds to which Imperial Japan could formally annex Korea themselves.

i suggest you to consider before making such inflammatory statements, especially regarding the Imperial Japanese era, which seems to be a very touchy and easily abused subject.--Mikhail

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External website content

Nanshu: I found an article on the Web whose wording is almost identical to this article: http://www.geocities.com/neue_strassenbahn/chosunhan.html. Did you write that article, or did that Web site use this article? I am concerned because that Web site (main page: http://www.geocities.com/neue_strassenbahn/index.html) is definitely POV. --Sewing 17:57, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I wonder where to respond to you.
That's one of my websites. I think the stuffs moved here is NPOV. --Nanshu 03:06, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Well, you are welcome to your own opinions, and I agree that some of the stuff you mention on that Web site is "tondemo," to use the Japanese word. Nevertheless, some of your comments on that site bothered me; but that's your personal business. Anyhow, I see that you did not copy over the POV material, so I guess we'll just have to leave it at that. --Sewing 16:33, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

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Considering that various contributors (including myself) have added the Chinese and Japanese names for Korea, I think this article should be moved to the title "Names of Korea" or "Names for Korea" (the latter would be slightly easier to edit links to). --Sewing 23:30, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

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Moved from Village Pump

Plagiarism or POV?

Just by chance, I found a Web page ( http://www.geocities.com/neue_strassenbahn/chosunhan.html ) that is remarkably similar in wording to the Wikipedia page Korean names for Korea, which was created and has been mostly edited by Nanshu. I am concerned because the non-Wiki Web site (main page: http://www.geocities.com/neue_strassenbahn/index.html ) is definitely POV (pro-Japan, anti-Korea), and either the creator of that Web site plagiarized Wikipedia, or Nanshu is the creator of that Web site.

Nanshu is intelligent and knowledgeable about northeast Asian history, but he consistently makes subtly anti-Korean edits to Korea-related pages, which he claims are in the name of NPOVing. Some of the edits he makes are accurate, but not everything he has changed falls into that category. Not every edit he makes is an attempt at NPOVing--sometimes he simply changes the POV. In other words, changing "X" to "Y" is not the solution; "some people say X and some people say Y" would be much better.

Can someone look at the Wiki and non-Wiki page, and let me know what they think? --Sewing 22:41, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)

That nonWiki site is obviously anti-Korean. Just look at its title: "Korea, the Preposterous World". But that's none of our business. Outside of Wikipedia, it's a wild world!

• Did he plagiarize Korean names for Korea? The author did paraphrase a lot, so not entirely.
• Is Nanshu the alter ego of that webmaster? I cannot tell, and we probably will never know. In any case, but so long as a person doesn't bring his POV into the door of Wikipedia and writes good stuff, we treat them as good contributors. (Note that it's probably very hard for most inherently POV people to lose their POV just to enter WP, but that's not the point.)

I haven't been following Nanshu's work that closely, could you point out some examples of his anti-Korean words?

If you encounter a POV passage (his or anobody else's), NPOV it and point it out the Talk page of the article. If discussion does not go well and it becomes an edit war, add it to Wikipedia:Current disputes over articles.

--Menchi 02:45, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

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Note regarding the Village Pump material: The discussion is related to the main discussion further up this page. --Sewing 22:38, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Corea/Korea

Just a note on the Corea/Korea thing: It should probably be noted that the c spelling is simply Romance-based (French/Spanish/Italian) and the k is more Germanic. Corea and Korea are not two different names, just two different spellings of the same name. Based on OED citations for the adjective Korean, the spelling was with a c until the mid-1800s and with a k thereafter. —Tkinias 02:40, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Which of the many Oxford dictionaries did you use for that? Kokiri 2 July 2005 11:19 (UTC)

I found this in the OED 1989 (second edition). Kokiri 23:04, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

For the record:

1614 Corean Noble-man
1727 The Coreans
ibid. the Corean sea
1813 Languages... Corean
1822 A Corean Fisherman
1885 in Korean territory
1899 of the Korean syllables
1921 the vocabularies of Corean
1966 The Korean people
ibid. Korea proves
ibid. The Koreans
1967 Agglutinative structure, like Korean
1972 tests in English, Korean

Also, a book I read recently: Hamilton, A. (1904) Korea, London, Heinemann. It uses the spelling with a K... Kokiri 09:45, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

There are many instances wherein Imperial Japan made alterations in the Korean name of things, perhaps the most famous of them being the change in name of Elementary Schools from "Normal Schools" 보통학교 to the more patronizing "국민학교," a shortening of the term derived from 황국신민학교(皇國臣民學校) meaning "School for the Subjects of his majesty the Japanese Emperor."

The issue has emerged as part of a larger debate regarding the Forced Name-Change Controversy 창씨계명(創氏係名), where usage of the Korean language was banned during the occupation and Imperial Japan forced Koreans to speak only Japanese and then change their names so they were more "Japanese-sounding."

Some older Western maps still bear Korean geographical regions using the Imperial Japanese alterations, such as "Daikyo"--> "Daejon", or "Hanyang"--> instead of "Seoul". The problem is that these terms were used as a means of suppressing the memory of the Korean language. The reason why there is such a dispute over C/Korea is precisely because of that. None of the older documents seem to mention "KOREA" but rather "COREA," including a 1794 British map of China.

In fact, "Corea" was the named used by Joseon during the 1908 London Olympics, where the Corean delegation appeared long before their Imperial counterparts. The argument is that after the annexation of Korea in 1910, Japan requested the League of Nations to call its newly acquired territory "Korea" instead of "Corea."

Since then the name has stuck in international usage, and the current South Korean government has maintained its usage out of fear of causing confusion.

Mikhailkoh 4:25 38 March 2006

67.171.213.134's edits

it seemed to me to be a bit too much, mostly japanese pov, detail for this article. parts may be relevant, accurate & appropriate for the article, but given the article length & scope, already somewhat speculative, we should draw the line somewhere for technically detailed conjectures. Appleby 01:15, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Korea VS Corea

Please see the link [1].

• Corea Post before 1884
• Korea Post after 1891

How could Japan change the spelling, though 1891 was before the treaty of Shimonoseki? In that time, Joseon gorvernment was under control of Qing Dynasty in some way.--Mochi 19:08, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Kareisky, Jainichi, and "Korians."

i have added some current-event stuff about Kareisky, Jainichi and the more recent 코리아 Koria trends.

By the way, my transliteration of 코리아 into "Koria" instead of "Korea" is intentional, in order to avoid the possible ambiguity between the more generic name.

Feel free to challenge me on the romanization of this :D.

코리아어?

mikhail, do you have a source for 코리아어? i can barely find anything from my searches. is it official/established enough to belong in an encyclopedia? thanks. Appleby 16:59, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Re: 코리아어,

Sure.

The argument is based on the book "한국말 공동체의 연구 - 거시 사회언어학 이론", (i guess it could loosely be translated as "Research into the Korean-speaking communities - Examples of Socio-linguistic Theories," authored by 장태진 and written in 2004.

There is brief mention of the relatively new term: "코리아말"

Like i said, it's not an official term and it seems to be used only as an über-neutral in situations that could be potentially ambigious or unintentionally biased (as, for example a 조선인 and a 한국인 talking together).

And, like i said, proponents of Unification sometimes use the term "코리아" when referring to both North and South Korea, since the nations have been unable to decide on an eventual common-name.

Hope that answers your questions.