Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Korea-related articles/Archive 2

RfC: Which romanization system should be used for pre-division Korean topics?
Should the wording "In general, use the Revised Romanization system for articles with topics about South Korea and topics about Korea before the division. Use McCune–Reischauer (not the DPRK's official variant) for topics about North Korea." be replaced with "In general, use the Revised Romanization system for articles with topics about South Korea. Use McCune–Reischauer (not the DPRK's official variant) for topics about North Korea and topics about Korea before the division." ?

Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 03:12, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Threaded discussion
With only 52 edits to the talk page and 76 edits to the main guideline page over ten years, I didn't anticipate this getting much traction as a simple thread without an RFC. With no prior discussion, my rationale for the proposal is necessary. However, naturally, my rationale is an expression of my own opinion and is not neutral, so it is collapsed below.

English-language reliable sources discussing topics such as Korean Buddhism, Korean literature and Korean history prior to the Japanese occupation (or even the Korean War) still tend to use McCune–Reischauer, so I have no idea how the current guideline came about. See, for example, Routledge's 2007/2010 Enclyclopedia of Buddhism, as well as .edu Google hits for various different romanizations of historical terms: 5,490, 4,110 vs. 3,660, etc. etc. See also these N-grams:

Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 03:14, 3 May 2016 (UTC)


 * According to the discussion that began at the Kim Jong Un page in December, the guideline was arrived at in an arbitrary way. See the follow-on discussion about North Korean names above. I think it would be a good idea to broaden this RfC to cover romanisation in general if possible. On this particular topic, I agree MR makes more sense, as that is what the sources use.--Jack Upland (talk) 05:59, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * @Jack Upland: MOS:KOREA doesn't apply to Kim Jong-un (if it did the title would be either Kim Chŏngŭn or Kim Chongun without diacritics). For him, his father and grandfather -- and quite possibly no one else in the entire history of the Korean peninsula, frankly -- WP:COMMONNAME trumps this guideline.
 * I should also specify that I would not be opposed to an MOS:CHINA-style ruling where diacritics are not allowed in article titles but should appear at least once in the article. (Although if I tried to say that since the majority of English-language reliable sources on pre-Republic China still favour Wade-Giles we should do so too, I would probably be eaten alive.)
 * Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 12:15, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * @Hijiri 88: In North Korea Kim Jong-Un is actually Kim Jong Un, Kim Il-sung is Kim Il Sung. I'm not sure how the "common name" is arrived at.--Jack Upland (talk) 02:38, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
 * @Jack Upland: Do you mean you aren't sure how the "English names" used on Wikipedia were established, or how I came to the conclusion that COMMONNAME applies to the three dictators of North Korea and no one else? If the former, I have no earthly idea, but I would guess they were hyphenated so their "first name" would be obvious as a single word. If the latter, then it's simple: they are the only three Korean people, north or south, whom virtually everyone in the English-speaking world has heard of. Everyone else is only known to fans of Korean movies, pop music and TV dramas (a very small sub-culture in English-speaking countries), scholars of Korean history (an even small sub-culture) and taekwondo practitioners (probably the largest of the three groups, but still a tiny minority). When only a tiny minority of English Wikipedia's target audience have heard of someone or some thing, COMMONNAME does not apply, and we revert to our style guidelines like the one presently under discussion. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 05:43, 4 May 2016 (UTC)


 * There are exactly two authoritative instances about romanization of Korean. So what ? Pldx1 (talk) 19:24, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * @Pldx1: Umm ... what? Could you be more clear about what you mean? Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 23:08, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * For some reasons from the past, there are two authoritative instances about romanization of Korean. One of them are the state & academia authorities form North Korea. One of them are the state & academia authorities form South Korea. End of the list. One can regret that both instances aren't speaking from an unique voice and enforce a Korean romanization of Korean, as China has enforced a Chinese romanization of Chinese. But it seems strange to try to construct another authority. That is what I mean. When searching and sorting, a paramount requirement is the uniqueness of the search key. Having a twofold key is already a burden, that reflects the burden of the separation of the families. We don't need another one. Pldx1 (talk) 07:46, 4 May 2016 (UTC).
 * You don't seem to have read my proposal, as your response appears to indicate (I think?) that you believe I am trying to create a singular standar for romanization of Korean on English Wikipedia, and that this somehow has something to do with post-1945 North Korea and South Korea. This simply is not the case: my proposal would only affect topics from before 1945, like what I have recently been writing in Chinese influence on Korean culture. All the sources I have been consulting are in English (because I do not speak Korean, and there's no point citing Japanese sources on a non-Japanese topic) and all of them use McCune-Reischauer exclusively, with at least one explicitly stating that McCune-Reischauer is the near-universal standard employed in western academic literature.
 * My proposal is simply to take the arbitrary requirement that pre-1945 topics should use Revised Romanization, and make it a (less arbitrary) requirement pre-1945 topics should use McCune-Reischauer. This has nothing whatsoever to do with North and South Korea -- my motivation is to make it easier for people like me to write articles using the same romanization system used in the sources we cite.
 * Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 08:08, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Dear User:Hijiri88. We, the readers and writers, are not living before 1945, but after 2015. And therefore, many sources about pre-1945 events have been written largely after 1945. I trust you that, probably, each of the older sources were saying that their romanization was the best in the world for their time, and surely better than the romanization used by other academics. And the result is here, pitiful to the point that Korean authorities had to step in and make some order. Standardization is required, and no one proposes to use the Shakespeare's spelling for writing the old British history. Pldx1 (talk) 16:10, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
 * @Pldx1: Please try to understand this. Wikipedia deals with historical material from before 1945. In fact, Wikipedia deals with material going back as far as the Big Bang, so 1945 is relatively recent. I am not talking about using old, pre-1945 sources. I am talking about using up-to-date, top-quality academic sources to write about the history of Korea before 1945. We need a standard for how to romanize Korean proper names and cultural terms from before 1945, and using modern "South Korean" or "North Korean" romanization systems because these modern political entities have close ties to these romanization systems is anachronistic and silly. We should be using up-to-date, top-quality academic sources to write about the history of Korea before 1945. If you can provide some evidence that such sources use "Revised Romanization", then please do so; I have already cited a reputable, scholarly, recent (2010) text that explicitly calls McCune-Reischauer the "standard convention for transcription into English", so the burden is now on you if you actually oppose my proposal.
 * Of course, I still think it's highly possible this is just a misunderstanding and you actually don't oppose my proposal. Please clarify this.
 * Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 16:26, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
 * This reminders me of how, in the old ancient times, the litterati strongly opposed the usage of 한굴. You are ashamed of all these fans of Korean movies, pop music and TV dramas, taekwondo practitioners and even kids from Korea that refuse to recognize how better the world was when all these diacritics were trying to mimic the complexity of the ideograms. Yes, all these people are writing Jeongjo, Hwaseong and even Jeong Yak-yong. Because they have an US keyboard in front of them. And they want something simple to write 정조,  화성 and 정약용. The very idea to rewrite each an any article here because some old-minded people dislike the Korean regulations is surprising. Pldx1 (talk) 17:16, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
 * So you are opposed to following the standards laid out in high-quality academic sources because you feel it is elitist like the aristocratic literati in pre-modern Japan and Korea who insisted on writing everything in Chinese? That logic doesn't really hold up, as McCune-Resichauer is easier for English-speakers to read than Revised Romanization (the use of es in Revised clearly has nothing whatsoever to do with English phonology). Plus, it is rather Americocentric of you to assume we all have "an US keyboard in front of" us. Also, calling me "old-minded" because I want to write words the way I read them in English-language sources rather than doing a whole load of mental gymnastics to make up spellings of these words to match arbitrary South Korean government regulations really doesn't make any sense. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 00:23, 5 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Support in principle , but it needs better data. The rationale is plausible, but its N-gram backing is faulty, since it includes everything since 1800.  Nom has since done this:  Constrain it to, say, 1990 onward so we can see what modern usage actually is. No one did anything consistently with Asian-language material in English back in the Victorian era to mid-late 20th century.  I support the general gist of this if there's better backing for it, and we need to revisit the same kind of issue with Chinese. It's completely ridiculous that we have articles at Laozi, Gaozi, Mozi, Xunzi, and Wang Fuzhi, instead of the spellings most English-language philosophy works use for these philosophers. At least Tao Te Ching has not been moved to "Daodejing".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:53, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Wait, I already addressed your concern by making the N-grams only cover 1990-2008 and adding a whole bunch more to indicate that the results weren't cherry-picked. Literally every word I checked was more common in MR than RR. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 10:35, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Noted. I revised accordingly.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:44, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, don't get me started on MOS:CHINA. Most sources on Chinese topics at least acknowledge the existence of pinyin and recent ones that prefer WG tend to give some apology for this, rather than simply saying "we use the standard way of writing Chinese words in English". There are also a lot more users of en.wiki capable of making and motivated to make a coherent (if wrong) argument against using WG; I suspect most of the en.wiki users who strongly believe we should be using Revised Romanization on all Korean history articles are South Korean nationalist SPAs, to whom we don't have to pay much attention.
 * Your point on the N-grams is noted. I'll fix it. I actually don't use N-grams often, and didn't know how to generate them. I remember that on an RM for the Emperor Jimmu article two years ago User:Curly Turkey cited N-grams, and I basically just copied what I found there and switched out the search terms.
 * But if you look at the graphs, you'll notice that at no point in history have the lines intersected -- MR has been more common than Revised every single year.
 * And even though I cited N-gram data, I don't actually put much stock in it or in GBooks search results, as most GBooks hits are probably garbage anyway. I think the scholarly literature that directly states that scholarly literature tends to use MR is a much better reason for updating the guideline.
 * Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 09:57, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Has it been two years since that Jinmmnmnnmnmnmu RfC? Maybe it's time to stir that pot again.  NGrams are great, but like all statistics, you have to be careful how they're used.  It's unfortunately not obvious how to use it, but easy to use once you've figured it out.  It's too bad it doesn't do books from after 2008—it's been stuck at that cutoff for years.  I have nothing intelligent to say on the actual subject of this RfC. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 11:04, 5 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Comment Another cause for concern is that, even though English-language sources tend overwhelmingly to favour McCune-Reischauer, apparently no effort has been made on the part of WikiProject Korea and its contributors to create redirects. This is extremely for both our readers and editors. Mandating the moving of all of these articles to their better-attested English names would have the positive side-effect of forcing our editors to solve this problem. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 02:26, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree it's quite extremely. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 10:15, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I was worried I would get blocked for battleground behaviour and personal attacks if I accused WikiProject Korea of making things "extremely inconvenient" for our readers. So I censored myself, and it wound up like the North American televised English version of the Pokemon anime where the censorship introduced plot-holes later on. :P Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 10:35, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't blame WP:KOREA for anything; just like most projects - it is a discussion board for the few (<10) individuals who are more or less active in Korean topics. Its members hadn't addressed it because a) they were too busy doing other stuff b) it slipped their minds. Keep in mind that Wikipedia is less popular in Korea then in many other countries, and this translates to relatively lack of development/activity/interest in Korean topics on en Wikipedia. Bottom line, there are just too few editors active in this area to pay attention to this. Now, hopefully, we will fix it, but please, let's not blame anyone except 99.9999% of world population who is wasting time on Facebook/etc. rather then giving a damn about Wikipedia gnome's work that needs to be done. Anyway. Creating those redirects is very important. Perhaps part of this task could be automated, see an interesting template at Talk:Mudeungsan. Further discussion on that should probably take place at WT:KOREA as it is uncontroversial and not that related to what we discuss here.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 06:04, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Technically, if my proposal passes then the only redirects that will need to be made are from the less common spellings to new articles, as almost all the current articles would need to be moved, and redirects from the current titles would be created automatically. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 13:27, 9 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Weak support. I am not very familiar with the details of spelling Korean, other then I realize there are numerous way to do so. Given no other argument has been presented, I tentatively support Hijiri's one. While statistics are imperfect, he has presented the only ones here, so until someone presents opposite ones, his argument seems to win. If there are new counter arguments, please ping me so I can revise my vote. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 06:10, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
 * snow. Two people at MOS aren't a consensus to modify a huge quantity of articles. The NK and SK romanizations are the de facto standards. And the very idea of romanizing 세종 differently in different articles, according to the time centering of each article seems weird (having NK and SK is already weird, better reunite the families). Pldx1 (talk) 08:20, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
 * We do not use the NK romanisation.--Jack Upland (talk) 10:13, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
 * This is an RFC, to which a lot more than two people have shown up, and so far everyone except Pldx1 is in agreement with the proposed change -- I don't think Pldx1 has read and/or understood WP:SNOW. Furthermore, the "we should use the official South Korean romanization for all Korea-related topics because South Korea is better than North Korea" argument is a non-starter (and something of a strawman), because everyone here is arguing for use of the romanization system used in English-language reliable sources, not the "officially sanctioned" one of one of the two non-Anglophone modern states in which Korean is the primary language. I am sure many member of WP:KOREA have a deep personal connection to the ROK, but if WP:KOREA members (many of whom have fairly poor English skills and have written a large number of very messy articles) prefer one style over another for non-policy reasons, that is a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. The broader consensus on English Wikipedia has always been that we should follow the majority of English-language reliable sources. Pldx's other argument (that we shouldn't romanize the same word differently depending on the time period under discussion) is also nonsense, because this would not be the case under the proposed wording any more than under the present wording: specifically South Korean topics (including, presumably, the majority of place names in the southern half of the peninsula) would remain the same, as would specifically North Korean topics; everything else would be spelled according to English-language reliable sources. 세종 would not be affected as, according to our article on the subject his name is spelled the same way in both MR and RR; these gross inconsistencies and bizarre non-arguments in Pldx1's above post make me wonder whether this person should be editing Wikipedia at all, much less dictating how the rest of us should edit. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 09:35, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

This RfC has been closed
As stated by User:Legobot at 04:01, 2 June 2016, this RfC was closed as "Removing expired RFC template". Pldx1 (talk) 09:53, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
 * The guideline should reflect consensus as expressed in the RMs. I changed it back to the earlier wording based on this recently closed RM: Talk:Baekje. Using Baekje as test case seems dubious anyway. Perhaps the nom can propose an RM at a higher profile article like Joseon. Gulangyu (talk) 08:17, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Just for the record, the consensus in the Baekje RM was not "the current title is fine, and should not be changed". It was "We should be consistent one way or the other, and the RFC didn't have enough participation". Of the users opposed to the move, only two were actively in favour of the current title and the current MOS wording; the others were just being careful about implementing changes that they weren't necessarily opposed to in too radical a fashion. Using RMs as a way to propose changes to the MOS is doing things the wrong way around. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 09:04, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

Hangul and Hanja
In the two bulleted examples, there are two parentheses. Are they supposed to be there? Hangfromthefloor 22:24, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Good catch. I don't think so. Wikipeditor 03:09, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

A quick check of the [|Korean Wikipedia] shows that Hanja is extensively used for identifying proper names. It is also frequently used in newspapers for disambiguation. "South Koreans rarely use it, even for place names or personal names." should be changed to "South Koreans use it extensively in written communication when initially identifying place names and personal names."

"For Hangul, the basic rule of thumb is that there are spaces between words that are each 2 or more syllables in length, while there is no space between 2 one-character words or between a one-character word and a 2-or-more-character word. (The rules are of course actually much more complicated than this and depend upon the grammatical categories of the words in question, but this rule of thumb generally holds for nouns, which constitute most of the words in article titles." This is inaccurate and confusing. Syllables and characters are not the same thing. Is the author addressing Chinese (Hanja) characters or individual letters in Hangul? This paragraph should be deleted.

"While Hangul and mixed script (Hangul and Hanja together) use spaces between words, text written only in Hanja is usually written without spaces. Thus, gosok doro ("freeway" or "motorway") is written as 고속 도로 (with a space) in Hangul, but as 高速道路 (without a space) in Hanja." This is also incorrect. Hanja is only used to clarify the meaning behind the specific syllable being used because the phonetic Hangul alphabet can create confusion; a given spelling may have multiple meanings--think read and read in English, as in, "I will read the book," and "I have read the book." It is always possible to spell anything in Korean using solely Hangul. Only words with a Chinese origin have Hanja equivalents and gosok doro is not 'spelled' with a space in Hangul anymore than it is when the Hanja characters are substituted for the Hangul syllables. It could be "go sok do ro", or "gosokdoro", or "go sokdo ro" for all the difference it makes. However, "gosok doro" provides a non-Korean speaker a guide to the approximate cadence of the term in English. Therefore, the rule of thumb--for article titles--should be to place a space in between four or more romanized syllables or as necessary to facilitate the pronunciation in English. Christopher North (talk) 19:21, 23 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I realize this point was made almost exactly 10 years ago, but I just stumbled on it, and I concur that the "rule of thumb" about Hangul in the Manual of Style is incorrect, and calling syllables "characters" is also incorrect and confusing. Does anyone object to revisions being made to the Manual of Style on this point? Lenoresm (talk) 20:44, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Romanization of North Korean names
We have had a discussion about this at Talk:Kim Jong-un. It was pointed out that the official romanization in North Korea is "Kim Jong Un". It was also pointed out that the convention was arrived at in an arbitrary way without a full discussion. To me, the convention is odd: "Use McCune–Reischauer (not the DPRK's official variant) for topics about North Korea." Why? I could understand using RR for everything for the sake of consistency, but this? The Naming Convention for given names says: "If there is no personal preference, and no established English spelling, hyphenate the syllables, with only the first syllable capitalized." It was argued that official romanization does not equate to personal preference. This seems odd, especially in the case of Kim Il Sung. Can we really believe in all the time that he was leader of North Korea, he preferred a different spelling of his name? The other issue is what is the common English spelling. Surely the English-language publications of North Korea must constitute a significant amount of sources for the spelling of North Korean names. Other sources use a variety of spellings. Checking books that I have to hand, Don Oberdorfer and Bruce Cumings use "Kim Il Sung". Sheila Miyoshi Jager uses "Kim Il Sung" and "Kim Jong Il", but "Kim Chong-un" (in Brothers at War). Helen-Louise Hunter uses "Kim Il-song" (in KIS's North Korea). Barbara Demick uses "Kim Il-sung". Looking online, there is similar variety. But Time, NYT, the Economist, CNN, and Bloomberg all seem to use "Kim Il Sung". Then consider, for example, "Kim Il Sung University". Surely, as an institution it has declared its own preference for romanization.--Jack Upland (talk) 00:02, 17 January 2016 (UTC)


 * ✅ Where there is no clear personal preference, the Manual of Style must reflect “dominant practice in the North (Kim Jong I l) and South (Kim Dae -j ung)”. The time has come for a two-style solution. Where there is no information on personal preference, readers must be entitled to access articles that reflect reality. To shoehorn all Korean Romanization according to the preferences of only SouthKorea, not only mocks Wikipedia’s policy of providing a neutral point of view, but is also obfuscatory and disrespectful. Let’s change this. — LLarson &#160; (said&#8239;&#38;&#8239;done) 15:35, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
 * The current practice is sound and is founded upon two simple principles: use RR for South Korean names and MR for North Korean names (reflecting a consensus that reaches far beyond Wikipedia), and keep the typographic elements (hyphenation, capitalization) consistent among these two.


 * Both South and North Korean names are further subject to two exceptions: personal preference (which, I maintain, is not the same as everyone agreeing with strict observance of their country's official variant, let alone inferring this from the person's high status within the country; we can establish that Kim Il-sung preferred that name over his other guerilla names and his birth name Kim Sŏng-ju, but any particular combination of hyphenation and capitalization is not there), and spellings that go against the rules but are overwhelmingly preferred in reliable sources (eg. "Kim Jong-il", not "Kim Chong-il") are used.


 * The whole point of transliteration is to provide consistent outcomes and I regard that our current policy balances consistency across many divides: North and South names are consistent between each other (in terms of typography) and each are consistent between uses in their respective contexts: North names are more recognizable in MR renditions and South names in RR. This also pertains to the argument about neutrality: transliteration is about using Latin alphabet in lieu of the original. The aim is precisely not to faithfully reproduce the name; it's to produce consistent outcomes for our purposes. As is known, the original Korean doesn't even use hyphens or capitalization ("김정일" and "김대중" for the two statemen Kims). We don't omit them out of respect; we add them to introduce clarity to the fact that these are three-syllable family name given name combinations. (pinging an expert on the topic) – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:42, 30 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I don't think anyone is arguing against consistent transliteration, but who else follows this particular convention ( the "consensus that reaches far beyond Wikipedia")?--Jack Upland (talk) 04:19, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
 * MR is "the Romanization method preferred by academics", and "remains the standard for scholarly work [on North Korea] in English", indeed "American specialists in Korean Studies continue to use a modified version of the McCune-Reischauer". Virtually all academic sources on North Korea written in English begin with a note on romanization, and they tend to pursue an all-out MR, or a MR for NK and RR for SK result. The notable example are sources that originate from South Korea (usually as translations from Korean) that prefer RR exclusively. I never said that others follow our convention on hyphenation and capitalization (they don't, at least consistently). – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 05:14, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
 * And NK itself uses a version of MR. This doesn't explain why Wikipedia uses its own particular version of MR. It would be far simpler if we used the NK version. It's notable that we use NK spelling for Juche and Rodong.--Jack Upland (talk) 06:45, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
 * The only "particularity" of our MR is the practice of hyphenation and capitalization. I've explained above why I think we are using, and should keep using, MR this way. Both Juche and Rodong are spelled that way because of WP:COMMONNAME and how it's implemented here Manual of Style/Korea-related articles: "There are cases in which the romanization differs from the common name used in English sources. As this is the English-speaking Wikipedia, use the name most common in English sources." Exceptions like this are okay, but we don't use them because NK does, we use them because the majority of reliable sources do. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 06:47, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
 * And no answer on Kim Il Sung University???--Jack Upland (talk) 10:47, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Kim Il Sung University is not a person and so doesn't have a personal preference, . Personal preference is only discussed in the context of people's (given) names in WP:NCKO. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 12:24, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
 * So what about Peking University???--Jack Upland (talk) 10:31, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
 * WP:COMMONNAME. Twice as many hits on Google Books for "Peking". – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 10:34, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Naming convention for "Hangul"
Cross-link to a discussion I posted at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Korean) Please discuss there. – Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:30, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

Proposed MoS addition on optional stress marking in Korean, Japanese, Russian, Ukrainian, etc.
Please see: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style, for a proposal relating to optional characters/marks for indicating vocal stress, used in some foreign languages, include "ruby" characters for Japanese and Korean, and znaki udareniya marks in Ukrainian and Russian. The short version is that, based on a rule already long found in MOS:JAPAN and consonant with WP:NOTDICT policy, MoS would instruct (in MOS:FOREIGN) not to use these marks (primarily intended for pedagogical purposes) except in unusual circumstances, like direct quotation, or discussion of the marks themselves. Target date for implementation is April 21. PS: This does not relate to Vietnamese tone marks. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:32, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Proposal: add option to use a footnote rather than a hatnote for surname clarification
I recently introduced a template,, that uses an inline footnote rather than a hatnote to clarify surname ordering. It has now been adopted in the China-related articles MOS and is in use on articles like Mao Zedong. The argument for the change is that hatnotes are supposed to be used for disambiguation, and that moving the clarification to a footnote declutters the top of an article and gives more appropriate weight to what is essentially trivia. I propose that a similar template,, be created, added to this MOS alongside , and implemented at a handful of high-profile Korean biographies. Thoughts? Sdkb (talk) 23:02, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
 * This seems like a pretty sparsely monitored page, so seeing no comments, I'm going to act boldly and implement the change. Sdkb (talk) 00:54, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
 * That's backward reasoning. If this page is sparsely monitored (and it is), that means any lack of feedback is completely meaningless and does not mean you have established consensus. Changes like this should be proposed at a relevant page that heavily watchlisted, such as WT:MOS (and I would suggest doing so, since this is a proposal likely to gain widespread support; I think there's a general sense that we have too many hatnotes).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:37, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
 * , in the year since I dipped my toes into the water this, I broadened the proposal and presented it at more heavily watched pages. See Wikipedia_talk:Hatnote/Archive 7 for the most recent discussion. At some point when I have the mental capacity I'll be bringing it to WP:VPR for full discussion. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 19:47, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
 * . When you do, please post notices widely, including to the top-of-page "mini-noticeboard" at WT:MOS, probably also at WT:LANG, WT:LING, WT:ANTHROPONYMY, and talk pages of the culture/country wikiprojects that pertain to languages that would be affected (I think the list of such templates is pretty short - CJR, Germanic for the von/van names, etc.  I really wish people would take more time (it's just a few minutes) to post RfC/proposal notices more broadly. It helps ensure that the result is strong against "I'm not sure that wasn't a WP:FALSECONSENSUS due to the few participants" sorts of troublemaking that often comes up after thinly attended RfCs.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:21, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

MRR guideline?
Is the provision that McCune–Reischauer be preferred for pre-division articles actually being enforced anywhere? It's one thing for longstanding articles not to change title, but I don't think I've seen MRR being used for new ones either. I commented on an AfD for the new article Princess Gyeongchang just recently, even this guide itself refers to "Goguryeo" as an example, and when I open up Category:17th-century Korean people as a random example I can't see a single one with MRR (quite a few of those are recent creations too).

I don't have a dog in the fight but it would be good to have some clarity on this either way, since it comes off as a dead letter right now that doesn't reflect actual practice—I was about to link this page for info to a new editor before I noticed the wording of the actual guideline. Pinging, Hijiri is on break and the others above seem to be inactive. —Nizolan (talk · c.) 19:38, 6 June 2021 (UTC) — fixed broken ping. —Nizolan (talk · c.) 19:39, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Hmm. If a guideline is pretty much never being followed, then it's not really a guideline and should be removed.  It would probably be better to have a "do what the majority of RS in English are doing, for the subject in question" rule.  That's how we treat most thing, when there's not a WP-intrinsic reason to favor one option over another.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:19, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
 * The rule is a bit more nuanced than that. If a topic is better known in English-language sources under a romanization not prescribed by our rule, then use that. I don't know about Princess Gyeongchang. The only English-language source cited in the article uses McCune–Reischauer, but that source predates the introduction of Revised Romanization by a good three decades. To me, the rule seems okay. Use it as your starting point. If you keep running into differing romaniztions in sources, then take a minute to consider if one of them is more prevalent than the others. Goguryeo is certainly more common than Koguryo, for instance. – Finnusertop (talk⋅ contribs) 21:58, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
 * How do we spell the Diamond Mountain? Theoretically, we have the choice between Geumgang (SK) and Kŭmgang (NK). But Wikipedia says: Kumgang. This is yet another proof of the RR. Ordinary people don't care about all these diacritics, and our romanization falsely says  굼강, when it should say 금강. But, instead of abiding to the new rule, some of the old beards of some Western Asian Studies Departments dissented. They were to old to change... and they were infuriated to see the SK government  acting as if Korea was a sovereign state. They adopted an "WASD little Korea" stance, a pale copy of the old "Joseon little (Ming) China" stance. But the academic rule is "publish or perish", and the result has been perish. After all,  the times of Roze and Sherman are past and gone. Going back to the discussion: don't change anything to the MoS. The rule is surely as absurd as possible, since NK doesn't care either about the WASD, see the Pyongyang article for an example. It only remains the main point: don't edit-war about your preferred romanization and let the time erode what is to be eroded. Pldx1 (talk) 08:20, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I missed to say that the choice was between Goguryeo and Koguryŏ, while Koguryo would have been as wrong as possible. Pldx1 (talk) 08:32, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Koguryo instead of Koguryŏ and Kumgang instead of Kŭmgang is not wrong. Even some of the Koreans who use MR consistently omit diacritics. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:39, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Dear User:Finnusertop. You are right when saying even some of the Koreans who use MR consistently omit diacritics. This was the top rationale for creating the RR. Since McC-Kumgang = RR-Gumgang = 굼강. The point is: where is the comma in your sentence? Should it be read as "(some of the Koreans who use MR) (consistently omit diacritics)" or should it be read as "(some of the Koreans who use MR consistently) (omit diacritics)" ?  Pldx1 (talk) 09:43, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
 * IMO this guideline is really hairy and needs to be rethought and/or better enforced.
 * Examples of how it's complicated:
 * 1. Mostly for people names, majority of Koreans use a "modified" RR that uses some MR (e.g. Kim Gu should really be Gim Gu in RR).
 * 2. Many Koreans now retroactively apply "modified" RR to names that should be MR under Wikipedia's policy (e.g. Lee Bong-chang should be "Yi Pongch'ang" in MR)
 * 3. We're supposed to use whichever spelling is most common, but as more Koreans adopt the "modified" RR, common spellings will change over time, meaning we may need to constantly revise spelling to adhere to the rule.
 * Such a headache. Not sure if there's any good rule changes possible... any ideas? Part of this seems to be caused by RR being awful for names (no way in hell I'll have my kid's last name be recorded as the letter "I", maybe "Yi"; RR for names should have specific rules...)
 * Regardless, I'd argue we really should use automatic scripts to enforce known spellings across articles. toobigtokale (talk) 20:59, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Changing policy on the transliteration of Korean names
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Korean) § Changing of naming conventions. : 3 F4U (they/it) 01:34, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Date format standards?
As far as I can tell, the Korean MoS doesn't specify which date standard we use. I think it then defaults to the general Wiki MoS. I think most relevant section is MOS:DATETIES.

Based on the above, my interpretation of the style is this: Articles should use DMY unless the article has strong ties to MDY countries such as the United States. Does this sound right?

My main concern is that this rule is hard to figure out. You have to go digging and then infer it yourself. Case in point, I've found that many smaller articles have a ~50% chance of being either, while the bigger ones are consistent to the rule I described above.

I think it'd be nice to clarify the formatting standards in our own MoS, to help make it clearer. toobigtokale (talk) 03:25, 25 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Based on my observations and long time working with Korean's entertainment-related (person/group/band, album, single, label/company, etc) articles, MDY is the preferred formatting for majority of well maintained articles in those category. As for the non-well maintained ones, they are a salad of either:
 * MDY (hatnoted as one) + DMY
 * MDY (hatnoted as one) + yyyy-mm-dd
 * MDY (hatnoted as one) + DMY + yyyy-mm-dd
 * just outright yyyy-mm-dd (once in a blue moon)
 * DMY is less common and only when the creator originated from countries that uses that format, and could also be because they're aware. However, there also occurrence where the editors' couldn't be bothered seeing what's the article's hatnotes hence they just used DMY which their originating country uses.  — Paper9oll  (🔔 • 📝)  05:55, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I see, thanks for the reply. I mostly work on Korean history or politics topics, where the majority of them use DMY. E.g. Kim Il Sung and Park Chung Hee.
 * I’m torn on what we should do. If your observation that Kpop articles use MDY is true, then maybe we should stick to that format for just kpop/culture articles and not for history/politics.


 * On the other hand, kpop does have global reach and has arguably way more fans in DMY countries than MDY countries; maybe it wouldn’t be too late to switch to DMY.
 * The overall MoS does seem to suggest DMY is what we should use though, but precedent and what future editors are likely to use does matter… I’m at a loss.


 * I think I lean towards the policy I originally outlined in bold. But on the fence about allowing MDY for culture. toobigtokale (talk) 10:36, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure for the historic/political articles, however both for your examples actually started as MDY when created however for unknown reason which I'm not interested in digging nor particular on such, it was non-MOS:STYLERET to the current DMY, just saying. I would support MOS:STYLERET as long as there's consistency within the article itself and inline with MOS:DATEFORMAT guidelines, however I would !vote oppose the change to DMY. I would also object your bolded interpretation above as South Korea is not a predominantly English-first speaking country. As for strong ties, universities there, they would ask to format as MDY for English writings but YMD for Korean writings, SK official strong ties date formatting is YMD in which the closest, we have here is yyyy-mm-dd. As for whatever future editors uses, should as always be following whatever is stated on MOS:DATEFORMAT so nothing much to actually worry about.  — Paper9oll  (🔔 • 📝)  11:27, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree with Paper9oll, there's no need for consistency across Korean articles, the only thing that matters is that there's consistency within such articles. However, I would also point out that MOS:DATEFORMAT outright states that YYYY-MM-DD format is unacceptable in prose, so if you do see that in prose, its perfectly fine to correct it. : 3 F4U (they/it) 18:44, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I can happily accept that MDY may be preferred for those articles; I'm not particularly attached. I'll keep an eye out in future for articles that began with a certain standard, wasn't aware of the policy.
 * However I'm still a bit skeptical of a lack of recommended standard for Korean articles. For instance, the article for Assassination of Park Chung Hee was MDY before I recently changed it to DMY. The reason I changed it was to be consistent with Park Chung Hee, which was then DMY. Should I have not changed it, and had two different standards for articles about the same person? Or should I have changed Park Chung Hee back to its original MDY?
 * Feels simpler to just have a single standard (potentially MDY). toobigtokale (talk) 20:29, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
 * tbh i think changing the article from MDY to DMY without first getting consensus on the talk page is not a good move. this isn't any statement on whether or not the change would be good, but i think the change definitely needs consensus to do. : 3 F4U (they/it) 20:38, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Fair, but the other concerns? toobigtokale (talk) 21:10, 25 June 2023 (UTC)