My friend Leah reminded me of something that I had heard once before but I had forgotten. A few years back at the University of Washington I had a visiting professor from Seoul National University in Korea, the class was on modern Korean history, 1860’s – present. This would cover the decline of the Joseon (Chosun) dynasty in Korea, the Japanese colonization and the post war building up of Korea. The professor’s specialty at the time was on the Japanese colonial period of the Korean peninsula. He was working on a book at the time so much of the course was about the Japanese occupation.
My friend Leah that I met here in Korea would write Korea with a ‘C’ (Corea) in our emails back and forth. I also noticed the ‘C’ a few times in random graffiti. I asked her why and she reminded me that during the Japanese colonial period (1905-1945) that Japan had standardized the spelling from ‘C’ to ‘K’ so that Japan would appear first alphabetically. Both American and British records from the 19th century spell Korea with a ‘C’. It was one of many changes made to Korea to make Japan appear as Korea’s “bigger brother” in a way.
Now in the Olympics, Japan is named before Korea. But I’ve found here that it is not uncommon to see Korea spelled with a ‘C’, you see it in some cases where it’s meant to be a statement.
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:09 pm
This reminds me of a poster I saw on campus about a lecture on how the Sea of Japan used to be named the Sea of Corea, etc… but then it just arbitrarily was changed at some point. I didn’t go to the lecture, though, so I don’t know how that came to be.