| dc.description.abstract | Romanisation is one of the greatest challenges when it comes to coherent writing
and scholarship focused on the Korean peninsula. There are currently at least four
separate romanization strategies for converting Korean Hangeul (한글) or
Chosŏn'gŭl (조선) script into an English language context. Both Koreas, of course,
use entirely different approaches and have changed these approaches over time.
North Korean romanisation style refers to Pyongyang and Kim Il Sung, whereas
South Korea’s current Revised Romanisation strategy (in its 2008 form), refers to
Pyeongyang and Kim Il-song. There is an extraordinary amount of politics and
ideology in the use of these different strategies and it is an issue for all scholars
when quoting from text produced in both current Korean nations to either choose
one over the other, or to Romanise according to the source of the quotation, place
name, person or text. This book, therefore, adopts a strategy as far as possible of
objective multiplicity. This, of course, inevitably breaks all the usual patterns of
uniformity in documents and is contested as a technique, certainly not problematic,
nor free of ideology or presumption. In the case of historical Korean names, places,
concepts and nations, the book uses the McCune Reischauer romanization strategy
created in 1937 by George McCune of the University of California, Berkeley and
Edwin Reischauer of Harvard University. While McCune essentially crystallises
some of political imperialism, academic elitism and Orientalism of the twentieth
century and complicates written Korean with judicious and at times excessive use
of diacritic marks, it is a comprehensive system of romanisation that avoids the
politics and ideology of the present. When using Korean names, places and concepts in North Korea, the book uses the North Korean romanisation strategy. When
using Korean names, places and concepts in South Korea the book uses the Revised
Romanisation strategy from 2008. On occasion when a term or name is important to
both, on the first instance in a chapter the book includes both romanisations.
Following the tradition instigated by Prof. David Mason the book uses the spelling
sanshin, when it comes to traditions of Korean mountain deities and sanshingak
when it comes to their places of veneration. | |
