20 Blast from the Past
The Han in “Hanguk”
Gwangju News, April 2022
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blast from the past
The Naming of South Korea
Our previous article in Blast from the Past (March 2022) discussed Korean han, referring to a sort of deep regret. This month’s article discusses another han, the “han” in the Korean name of South Korea: Hanguk. Is “han” a Chinese loanword? Is it unique to Korean? Why was it selected for the name of South Korea? Why do Koreans put so much meaning into this han? Answers to these questions can be found in the following article originally appearing in the March 2015 issue of the Gwangju News as “What’s in a Name?” and penned by Adam Volle, who also wrote the earlier han article. — Ed.
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here’s an oddity in the names of countries that you may not have thought about before. When Germany was formally split into two separate nations in 1949, their respective governments naturally took on different names for their nations: the Federal Republic of Germany was the name taken by western Germany, while eastern Germany became the German Democratic Republic. Similarly, the division of Vietnam into two countries from 1954 to 1975 resulted in the rise of a northern regime creating the nation called the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and a southern regime naming their newly created nation the Republic of Vietnam. Both nations have “Vietnam” in their names, as was the case for divided Germany. And if you read the official English titles of North and South Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Republic of Korea, respectively), you might think that the two Koreas have followed this same Cold War era naming convention. When the official names of the two Koreas are read in Korean, a curious disparity pops up: Each country has a different name, and neither uses the word “Korea.” It was the Korean Communists in the north who made the natural choice, in 1948, of referring to their nation as “Joseon” (조선) when asked by the Russians, whose democratic republic they would be. “Joseon,” after all, had been the name of the land for most of the previous 543 years (and if you believed the ancient myths, even earlier than that). The official name for North Korea in Korean became “Joseon-minju-juui-inmin-
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gonghwaguk” (조선민주주의인민공화국; literally, Joseon democratic people’s republic). As an aside, the name “Korea” comes from “Koryeo” (고려), the name of the 500-year dynasty that preceded Joseon. The new president in the south at the time, Rhee Syngman, offered a different word from “Joseon” for his newly formed country, when he proclaimed South Korea’s first republic: “Hanguk” (한국; lit., “the country of the Han”). The full name of this republic would become “Daehan Minguk” (대한민국; lit., “the Republic of the Great Han People”). This wasn’t a big surprise either. In choosing “Daehan Minguk,” President Rhee and the National Assembly were only preserving the name under which Korean freedom fighters had fought their Japanese colonizers for 25 years. The freedom fighters, in turn, had derived their moniker from “Daehan Jeguk” (대한제국; “the Empire of the Great Han People”) because that happened to be the name that the very last king of “Joseon” gave to his kingdom when he abruptly declared it to be an empire and promoted himself to emperor. That was a surprise. Mind you, Emperor Gojong’s heart was in the right place. The change reflected his overall effort at rebranding his dirt-poor kingdom as a modern nation-state, in the high hope that Japan would think twice about gobbling it up in their colonialization of East and Southeast Asia. He even bought stylish Western outfits for everybody. Sadly,
2022-03-24 �� 9:37:19
