Friday, September 26, 2003
KOREA OR COREA? I can't believe that this old canard is still around.
Prof. Chung may be right; the Japanese archives (many of which seem to be open regarding all sorts of topics) but he would still have to explain why, if the Japanese were so intent and so successful in pushing for the C-to-K switch in Britain and the U.S. why they were so singularly unsuccessful in France? Moreover, having been so successful, why did they continually insist on calling their colony Chosen?
Chung Yong Wook, a historian at Seoul National University, believes the Japanese -- who controlled the peninsula for four years before officially colonizing it in 1910 -- changed the name by the time of the 1908 Olympics in London so that Japan would come ahead in the ordering of athletes. But the closest thing he has found to a smoking gun is a 1912 memoir by a Japanese colonial official that complained of the Koreans' tendency "to maintain they are an independent country by insisting on using a 'C' to write their country's name."
"I am sure, though, if the Japanese archives were opened you would find much more evidence to support the claim that the name was changed," Chung said.
Prof. Chung may be right; the Japanese archives (many of which seem to be open regarding all sorts of topics) but he would still have to explain why, if the Japanese were so intent and so successful in pushing for the C-to-K switch in Britain and the U.S. why they were so singularly unsuccessful in France? Moreover, having been so successful, why did they continually insist on calling their colony Chosen?
